The Star Trek Scanner – arriving shortly at a Mars Rover near you..

Point and click identification courtesy of Raman Spectroscopy!

ABC Science Show – Mars Science Laboratory Saturday 4 March 2006

Bonner Denton has a demonstration he uses upstairs. He takes a bottle of Tylenol, a white plastic container and the pills are inside. You can shoot the Raman and a laser goes through that white plastic, it identifies the three parts of Tylenol and it tells you what the plastic is made out of. It works on leaves. I can identify the species of trees by shooting their leaves. I don’t think the biologists are aware of this yet.

Potentially very useful indeed..