For the last year the eyes of the physics world have been on Dr. Aprile's experiment in the Gran Sasso National Laboratory, part of Italy's National Institute of Nuclear Physics, which is widely acknowledged as the biggest and most sensitive detector out there.
Because for many years the frog leg was the most sensitive detector of differences in electrical potential, final acceptance of the view that currents can be generated by living tissues had to await the construction of galvanometers sensitive enough to measure the minute currents generated in muscles and the small potential differences across nerve membranes.
The most sensitive detector of hog farm air pollution, he adds, is still the human nose.
Last year, I visited the most sensitive detector on the planet: the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (Ligo).
To maximize the chances of detection, the Auger Observatory, currently the world's most sensitive, has detectors spread over an area of twelve hundred square miles.
We were reminded of this on hearing about the work of a Japanese geneticist, Dr. Sadao Ichikawa, who has found that a spiderwort hybrid, a roadside wild flower that grows in central Texas, may be one of the most sensitive biological detectors of low-level ionizing radiation.
The wandering spider boasts one of the world's most sensitive vibration detectors: It can pick up the slightest rustling of a leaf from several meters away.
The most sensitive magnetic detectors must be immersed in liquid nitrogen or some other chilly liquid, so they cannot get close enough to the chip to resolve the magnetic variations just above the chip's surface.
However, for toxicological studies generating small amounts of biological material (e.g., limited numbers of cells collected in population or laboratory studies) only the most sensitive ICPMS detector yields satisfactory sensitivity.
Mounted on the ISS is the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), the most sensitive particle detector ever launched into space.
