Airport security: The future could simply involve walking through a corridor

Most passengers say that the worst part of the airport experience is the security checkpoint, in which travellers are temporarily transformed from valued customers to suspected international terrorists. Only when passengers have divested their outer layers of clothing, separated laptops and liquids from their cabin baggage and possibly been ordered to remove their shoes are they allowed to proceed to their flights. But within a couple of years, travellers could simply walk through a short corridor, with coats on and car keys and phones in pockets, being screened by ultra-low temperature sensors. Meanwhile their bags will go through the usual X-ray machine – but the staff watching the screens will have been taught not what to look for, but what to ignore. The technology for “walk-through security scanning” developed by Cardiff University is derived from astronomy detection. It uses infra-red cameras that are so sensitive they could “see” a 100-watt lightbulb from half-a-million miles away. In an airport context, hidden cameras using one-millimetre wavelength technology are installed to examine passengers from a range of angles. Their sensitivity requires temperatures just one-quarter of a degree above absolute zero: 273 degrees below freezing. For such cameras, the radiation emitted by the human body acts as a kind of lightbulb, due to it being warmer than the surroundings. The image projects through clothing and reveals significant items carried by the passenger. Story has more background on the company developing security technology.<br/>