Word: plumes
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Dynamics Lab, has an invention for you. According to Settles, the human body produces a column of warm air that rises from the feet to the top of one's head, catching constantly shedding skin cells. Settles even has a catchy name for this phenomenon: the human thermal plume. He has created a portal, similar to a walk-through metal detector, that can detect the presence of microscopic amounts of explosive material in the plume...
Travelers passing through the detector will feel a rush of air as a fan blows the plume--and the dead skin cells with it--into a particle separator, which is able to detect the presence of bombmaking materials and other contraband sticking to the skin. Though the invention is thus far being designed only to detect bombs, Settles says his portals could also be used to detect illegal narcotics, smuggled money and evidence of chemical or biological weapons...
Within moments of liftoff, the infrared sensors on a Pentagon satellite perched 22,000 miles above the earth should pick up the rocket's flaming plume. The satellite will alert ground-based radars in Hawaii and Kwajalein, which will begin searching the northeastern skies for the intruder. In a fully deployed system, early-warning radars in Alaska, California, Britain, Greenland and Massachusetts would get the alarm. Updates on the target's path will pour into the U.S. Space Command's outpost at Cheyenne Mountain, Colo. Computers there will assemble a "weapons task plan" based on the incoming weapon's trajectory...
...issue has led to a flurry of diplomatic byplay. Putin is offering to cooperate with NATO on a "boost-phase" antimissile system that would shoot down large missiles on their way up (easier to target with the fiery exhaust plume trailing them) rather than when their much smaller warheads are in mid-flight, as in the U.S. plan. Putin's proposals are sketchy, but Europeans, worried about being left out of a U.S. shield, are listening. American officials advise caution and note that Moscow does not have the financial wherewithal for such a scheme...
...these secret spies in the sky have a problem: they're not so secret. Too heavy to lift without a fiery rocket plume and too bright to avoid being seen from Earth, the NRO's birds are hard to hide. And an international band of amateur astronomers has determined to find, track and webcast the location of all the members of this orbital fleet for anyone who cares to look--including such less than friendly sorts as Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong...