X-ray Specs

AIRPORT SECURITY Is that a belt or a bomb? The problem with today's airport baggage-screening technology is it can't distinguish among different kinds of metal - and therefore has trouble telling a stainless steel buckle from the silver azide used in a detonator. Jim Raistrick, a chemist at Keele University in Staffordshire, England, may have a solution: an X-ray technique that scans a suitcase at many different frequencies and uses the resulting absorption patterns to identify silver, mercury, lead, and other common bomb-making materials. Raistrick's system is compatible with existing airport security equipment, and he estimates the new hardware and software required won't cost more than $100,000 per machine. START Stretching Physics Nanotech's Teeny Tiny Truth Wired | Tired | Expired Food Fight Deep See Instant Refills Plastics Surgery Darpa: Lost in the Translation Adidas Reboots X-ray Specs Better Teeth Through Biochemistry Watch Where You're Going Pole-Sitter In the Driver's Seat DVD Lasers: Why Blue Beats Red Junk Nouveau Jargon Watch Hacking the Genome Intellectual Capitals