Metal detector can identify buried bombs

A SOUPED-UP metal detector could one day tell whether buried objects are unexploded bombs or just harmless junk.

The world is riddled with unexploded bombs left behind following munitions tests and warfare. Governments want to dig them up so the land they are in can be used again. The problem is, "it's difficult to distinguish the unexploded bombs from man-made clutter or junk", says Eugene Lavely of BAE Systems in Burlington, Massachusetts.

Lavely and his colleagues have developed a technique, called time-domain electromagnetic induction, to tell risks from rubbish. Like "a fancy metal detector", it uses a coil to send an electromagnetic pulse 15 metres into the ground, Lavely reported at the American Physical Society meeting in Boston last week. The pulse makes the things it hits reverberate like a struck drum, and the team have identified the reverberation signal of a torpedo-shaped metal object with a hollow core - where explosives may lie.

The researchers are now refining the method so that it is accurate enough to meet US standards, which require 99.9 per cent confidence that all bombs have been dug up before land can be used.

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