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Forensics - The telltale bone

Technology developed more than 100 years ago to wirelessly transmit electricity is being adapted to locate clandestine graves. Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Charles Van Neste and colleagues are transmitting electromagnetic waves to penetrate the ground and set up a resonance in buried bones. "The system consists of a transmitter and a receiver that collects the surface waves and passively integrates them through resonance over time," Van Neste said. He and colleagues Arpad Vass, Marc Wise and Lee Hively have discovered that human bone has a resonance at about 2,000 hertz, a fact they exploit to make this approach effective. This proprietary technology borrows from a method of energy transfer developed by Nikola Tesla early last century.