new scanner thing

When I first saw "picosecond programmable laser" I thought John was looking at a big payday.

I does seem like bedazzling some DHS guy with techno babble and how you gadget can detect something dangerous(tm) is a great way to get lots of money for something that is practically pointless

-Lasse

Well, maybe I am.

--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com

Precision electronic instrumentation Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators Custom laser drivers and controllers Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links VME thermocouple, LVDT, synchro acquisition and simulation

Old news; at least 2 years and probably 5-8 years old. They all need permission to use nose to smell a fart.

Hopefully NOT the candy bar..

Only if the department of Homeland (In)Security are daft enough to sign the cheque. It is pure technobabble and would be utterly useless in an airport setting. I smell a large rodent in the 160 feet claim too...

Sounds like they have reinvented Lidar and are making excessively bold claims for how well it would work for trendy security applications.

om>

ity-laser...

ught John was

=20

They do seem to be claiming to be doing remote absorbtion/Raman spectrometr= y, which is rather more than Lidar. I'd bee a bit surprised if the absorbti= on/Raman spectra of small particles of dust and dirt were all that well-res= olved or informative, and you'd have to process a lot of them if you were s= canning the surface of 6 foot high cylinder with a radius of 160 feet.

--=20 Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Presumably they can aim a pulsed, wavelength agile laser at a spot and see what bounces back, a spectrum per pixel, hyperspectral imaging at a new level, maybe. I wonder how specific a chemical analysis can be got from reflections like that. Chemical analysis absorption spectroscopy is usually done in liquids and gasses. Space probes flying over the moon, or even crawling around on Mars, don't seem to do very specific detection of ice or minerals.

Raman spectroscopy on PEOPLE? Geez, it will work, but the people scanned may not like it one bit! Having you skin burned off with a laser seems to be big stuff in cosmetic treatments these days, though.

Jon

Scan them at low power and, if you spot a terrorist or someone smuggling a drink on board, crank up the power and execute them on the spot.

...anything for the excess printed dollar..

Now you're thinking like a marketing guy..