Can an x-ray machine really detect explosive gels?

Question

The government's latest action to make air travelers feel safer is to force passengers to put all of their liquids and gels into a plastic bag and screen it separately from the rest of the x-rayed gear.
Does that really make any difference? Do explosives look that different from toothpaste in the x-ray machine?

Answer 1

No. One reason why they might make you put it separately is that explosives need other parts to work: detonator caps, timing devices, etc. and most of those are made of metals. In the jumble of crap that is the average traveller's bag you might miss small things like that, but if you look at it separately you won't.

The real reason they make you put it separately in a small bag is that if someone comes in with a 7/11 double gulp (64 oz, 2 liters) that's even half filled with high explosives, that's probably enough to knock an airplane out of the sky. So it's largely just a quantity issue. A little 3 oz piece explosives is not very likely to do much damage.

Since you did pick one specific question, an explosive would actually probably look different than toothpaste specifically, because toothpaste has heavier elements in it--first the tube likely contains some metal, and the toothpaste itself often contains silicon, etc. which will absorb more x-rays than most explosives. But explosives won't look any different than water in an xray machine, for example, or any random hand-lotion.

So in summary, they might be a) looking for small metallic parts which would comprise a control device/timer/detonator, and b) limiting the amount of stuff you can carry on.

In practice, of course, FAA investigation teams regularly manage to sneak guns, explosives, knives, etc. on to planes past security. Hope that makes you feel confident...

I'm just waiting for some crazy al-queda terrorist to wear explosive pants unto a plane, and then we'll all have to take our pants off when we go through security.

Answer 2

no X rays can only detect solids and not semi solids therefore no jels canbe detected

Answer 3

I guess.....