h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

>>I bet every forensic lab in the country's got one of them <<
I'll bet they /want/ one, though I'll bet the CSI lab has got one

...or what about the Net: entering an IP address, and coming back with a photograph?

Phil

As far as I can tell it is definatly hollywood non-sense, I use EDTA to chelate heavy metals such iron and copper thus preventing these metals acting as pro-oxidants in aqueous solution (in other words EDTA acts as an antioxidant).

The metals will still be in solution bt they are trapped by the EDTA so they dont react with unpaired electrons of chemicals in the body such as nitric oxide or superoxide anion.

As far as I can tell there is no way the vampire would explode (but as vampires are the undead prehaps they would who knows)and certainly nothing to do with iron in heamaglobin. The iron in heamoglabin is tightly bound in a heme-porphryn (sic) group. The most powerful magnets in the world do not remove iron from heamoglobin, thats what MRI machines at the hospital use.

Also I work with blood vessels and often include EDTA as an antioxidant in my pysiological salt solution, with no harm to the tissue. Nitrogycerine would not explode in blood vessels as it is used as a trreatment for angina where it releases the gas nitric oxide in blood vessels (unless it were inserted into the blood as a solid then detonated like the sodium azide used in car airbags, that kind of gas expansion would certainly blow you up.

Whoa i've just realised i'm a geek!