1. In connection with an object having native material and potentially having foreign material, a method for detecting one or both of said native material and said foreign material by parallel-mode spectroscopy, comprising: a) parallel-mode data acquisition comprising: i) producing an interrogating signal simultaneously containing electromagnetic radiation of sufficient bandwidth in the range of approximately 10 GHz to approximately 25 THz to allow simultaneous detection of a plurality of signals at a plurality of frequencies, each signal being at some amplitude, which collectively provide a unique spectral signature of a material whose detection is desired; ii) exposing said object and any associated foreign material to said interrogating signal so as to cause interaction between said signal and said object and any associated foreign material; iii) detecting a modified signal resulting from the interaction of said interrogating signal with the object and any associated foreign material; and b) signal processing and data reduction, comprising: i) processing said resulting signal to produce a three-dimensional data matrix representative of at least any foreign or native material associated with the object; ii) providing a reference library of data representing known chemical or biological materials of interest; iii) using correlation technique to compare said data matrix to said reference library, to produce at least one correlation peak corresponding to at least one associated foreign or native material from the reference library data: and c) providing the results of the foregoing comparison.