Laser bomb sniffer

Electronics Weekly reports that Cascade Technologies, based in Stirling Scotland has developed a system capable of detecting explosives in tightly sealed packages, without opening them.

At the lab, we were sent a sample of explosives in a glass phial in an aluminium package, and that package had been through the post, company CEO John Fuller told Electronics Weekly. We could detect the explosives without opening it.

From the company's web site:

One such technique, known as Intra pulse spectroscopy, uses the laser in pulsed mode to facilitate its use over the wide range of environmental conditions typically associated with industrial monitoring. Pulsing the laser for up to a microsecond at a time causes instantaneous localised heating within the device, which results in a large frequency chirp. This chirp is harnessed to provide a near instantaneous frequency sweep through many spectroscopic features of interest.