Late last Friday a terrible week that began with the bombing of the Boston Marathon came to a satisfying, if somber, conclusion. The last alleged perpetrator of the horrific events at the marathon and MIT was arrested after a most dangerous game of hide and seek. To help bring Dzhokhar Tsarneav to justice, officials took advantage of what is usually invisible to us—heat.
Photos (and videos) like these highlight just how far detective technology has come. Specifically, Tsarneav was indentified with the aid of a FLIR (forward-looking infrared) camera mounted to a police helicopter. But how does this apparent X-ray vision work, and is there any way the alleged bomber could have hid from this seemingly all-seeing eye? What You Don’t See Gives You Away Infrared (IR) radiation is able to make it through a lot of interference like smoke or fog or a boat tarp because it is composed ...
