washingtonian
Gold Member
Is there a metal detector that is advanced enough so that it can actually show you what is in the ground like and x-ray or scan of the metal or something?
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99thpercentile said:I read through all of the links in this thread just to make sure I understood the direction that it was headed. I am making my comments here as a geophysicist who looks for shallow small targets for a living, as well as someone who has been to the sites in the links and knows most of the people mentioned. There are no acoustic or seismic sensors that are useful for detecting or discriminating anything deeper than about a centimeter. There are some shallow target detection systems that use acoustic sources and a microwave detector to find landmines by comparing the resonance of undisturbed soil to that of a shallow landmine. The problem is that the frequencies required to detect or discriminate a very small target attenuate very quickly, so aren't useful. Many of the included links were press releases where I am 100% positive the reported had no idea what they were talking about. Ground penetrating radar (GPR) was mentioned, and it can work exceptionally well in some soil types and not at all in others. Digital signal processing (DSP) is used daily in all types of geophysical surveys, but it can only do so much. One can improve noisy data, but not perform miracles on bad data. The idea of being limited by pixels isn't really correct. All geophysical techniques are limited by the resolution of that method at the depth of interest, potential field methods (gravity and magnetics) have limits in knowing both the size and depth of the target. A large deep target can give the same signal as a small shallow target. These can be modeled based on pre-existing knowledge of the site to limit the targets to a range of depths/sizes. The link to the thread on the OKM sensors is one that I had read before. I have read their whole website and I am convinced that they either don't know what their instruments really do, or are lying about the actual method employed so that that can charge an extortionist price for a fluxgate magnetometer and some sketchy software.
SandFiddler said:I worked on an archeological site that was mapped using Ground penetrating radar. I don't think you could have identified any target as small as a coin.