Detector

Although smartphones perform many tasks on their own, they're also able to make devices such as drones, robots and cameras cheaper and/or more capable by acting as their "brains." One of the latest gadgets to receive such a treatment is the humble – and potentially treasure-finding – metal detector.

​Cosmic rays are raining down over Earth every day, but you’d never know unless you had the right tools. Those tools mostly take the form of bulky, expensive lab equipment, but thanks to an MIT team, you can now build your own detector for US$100 – small enough to take on a plane or the subway.​

Joseph Wang and colleagues at the University of California, San Diego have created a ring with a difference. It detects chemical and biological threats in the wearer's environment.​

A 20-month experiment conducted a mile underground has failed to detect dark matter particles directly, but the results are still giving scientists important clues on the nature of this elusive substance.

Researchers have developed a lens that operates at terahertz frequencies that are not only simple and inexpensive, but are claimed to produce near-flawless images which could vastly improve biomedical imaging as well as biological and explosive security scanning.

To help find out if its worth going to a particular asteroid, scientists from Vanderbilt and Fisk Universities are developing a new gamma-ray spectroscope that's capable of scanning asteroids for valuable minerals.

Halo WX, a new smoke detector just hitting the market, features all of the smoke and carbon monoxide detection one would expect, while also adding in alerts for natural disasters.

Researchers from the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) in Spain claim to have created a graphene-based photodetector that converts light into electricity in under 50 quadrillionths of a second. This may give rise to a new range of super-efficient, ultrafast electronic components.

With more goods passing through the world's shipping terminals and airports than ever before, hunting explosives is a bottleneck. To help US counterterrorism efforts, GE has developed RFID stickers that act as wireless, battery-free explosives detectors that can be placed almost anywhere.

Tracking migrating pods of gray whales is a major undertaking. In hopes of making binoculars and clipboards a thing of the past, NOAA has installed a new generation of whale detectors to keep an electronic eye on the passing leviathans.

A European Space Agency experiment aboard the International Space Station suggests that space travelers may have less to worry about when it comes to radiation ... thanks to a phantom.

The Institute of Food Research in Norwich and Oxford Instruments have developed a portable detector that can differentiate between horse meat and beef in about 10 minutes, yet is inexpensive and simple to use.