4 ms·

The U.S. Navy Tried to Turn Whale Songs into Secret Code (2017)

39 points by tintinnabula 5y ago

klysm 5y ago
Ocean background noise steganography?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jfoutz 5y ago
This is kind of amazing. The willingness to try, at least on the surface, ridiculous things is great. There are lots of ways to spend money, and in 1957 there were probably better ways to spend the money. But for pure research, this highlights so many things. How to record? how to clean the sound? How to broadcast? what the heck is the marine life actually doing? Perhaps marine life behaves differently around submarines? Even if it didn't work, you could pretend it did, and transmit disinformation. The only thing that didn't work out about this (imho) was keeping the research secret. The US never could keep secrets anyway. Partner with universities. Put post docs on ships for research. Do silly, silly things. Learning more may not be the right thing, but it's almost never the wrong thing.
- perl4ever 5y ago
  >in 1957 there were probably better ways to spend the money Around that time, people were working on nuclear powered aircraft. Both the US and Soviet Union flew aircraft with nuclear reactors although neither (apparently) got to the point of powering engines with them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_aircraft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_aircraft
  - jfoutz 5y ago
    Well, ok. Swords to Plowshares, project Orion. There are things that might be more dangerous that might need a little bit more thought before just giving it a shot. But RTGs turned out to be pretty neat. Superconducting supercollider was pretty much the end, as far as I can tell. That seemed to be the end of "try whatever crazy idea" and switched to "try what's promising". I mean, I guess it's ok. I would have preferred "try what's cheap".
    - canadianfella 5y ago
      RTGs?
  - danlugo92 5y ago
    They got the TR3B Astra now, not sure if viable (I guess they'd only use it in an important assignment (ala secret helicopter used in Bin Laden raid) or something or in 20-30 years). It kinda hovers instead of propelling itself forward. Funnily enough it looks a lot like some black triangle actual UFOs (e.g. not American, probably alien), so there's a lot of overlap with ufology and "conspiracy "theories"" so some people claim it's fake. It uses a nuclear reactor + mercury. Something tells me the mercury needs constant refuel though, probably would have to be deployed from an aircraft carrier. https://matrixdisclosure.com/tr-3b-black-triangle/ https://matrixdisclosure.com/tr-3b-black-triangle/
- canadianfella 5y ago
  > Learning more may not be the right thing, but it's almost never the wrong thing. Does this sentence mean anything?
jacobwilliamroy 5y ago
One thing the whales did teach us is that at certain depths one can transmit low frequency sounds over thousands of miles. Unfortunately the navy's low frequency active sonar is also extremely dangerous and will either kill or fatally injure anything that gets caught within a few hundred miles of the sound blast, including whales. So thanks whales; also sorry whales. : (
- zdkl 5y ago
  > within a few hundred miles of the sound blast With a sonar? That's incredible, do you have a source/name/something I can look up?
  - jacobwilliamroy 5y ago
    The deepwater sound channel conducts low frequency noise very efficiently, like a waveguide. The low frequency active sonar which the navy uses is as loud as a 747 jet engine and it can travel a very long distance through the deepwater sound channel without losing much energy. Mass beachings are still common near wherever the navy is testing it's active sonar and beached whales have been found with ruptured inner ears, though I can't find the reports now. A lot of the navy's active sonar technology is classified so most of what we civilians know about it is based off of hydrophone measurements, autopsies of dead whales, maps of mass beaching events and whatever information the navy has made publicly available.
JGM_io 5y ago
This is how the whale wars started. We should've never called them fat
throw0101a 5y ago
See also "JANUS", an IEEE standard for encoding data into acoustic signals. Basically an underwater modem: * https://spectrum.ieee.org/video/telecom/standards/underwater-robots-learn-a-new-language-janus https://spectrum.ieee.org/video/telecom/standards/underwater... * https://www.januswiki.com/ https://www.januswiki.com/

39 points by tintinnabula 5y ago

klysm 5y ago

Ocean background noise steganography?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

jfoutz 5y ago

This is kind of amazing. The willingness to try, at least on the surface, ridiculous things is great. There are lots of ways to spend money, and in 1957 there were probably better ways to spend the money. But for pure research, this highlights so many things. How to record? how to clean the sound? How to broadcast? what the heck is the marine life actually doing? Perhaps marine life behaves differently around submarines? Even if it didn't work, you could pretend it did, and transmit disinformation. The only thing that didn't work out about this (imho) was keeping the research secret. The US never could keep secrets anyway. Partner with universities. Put post docs on ships for research. Do silly, silly things. Learning more may not be the right thing, but it's almost never the wrong thing.

perl4ever 5y ago
>in 1957 there were probably better ways to spend the money Around that time, people were working on nuclear powered aircraft. Both the US and Soviet Union flew aircraft with nuclear reactors although neither (apparently) got to the point of powering engines with them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_aircraft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_aircraft
- jfoutz 5y ago
  Well, ok. Swords to Plowshares, project Orion. There are things that might be more dangerous that might need a little bit more thought before just giving it a shot. But RTGs turned out to be pretty neat. Superconducting supercollider was pretty much the end, as far as I can tell. That seemed to be the end of "try whatever crazy idea" and switched to "try what's promising". I mean, I guess it's ok. I would have preferred "try what's cheap".
  - canadianfella 5y ago
    RTGs?
- danlugo92 5y ago
  They got the TR3B Astra now, not sure if viable (I guess they'd only use it in an important assignment (ala secret helicopter used in Bin Laden raid) or something or in 20-30 years). It kinda hovers instead of propelling itself forward. Funnily enough it looks a lot like some black triangle actual UFOs (e.g. not American, probably alien), so there's a lot of overlap with ufology and "conspiracy "theories"" so some people claim it's fake. It uses a nuclear reactor + mercury. Something tells me the mercury needs constant refuel though, probably would have to be deployed from an aircraft carrier. https://matrixdisclosure.com/tr-3b-black-triangle/ https://matrixdisclosure.com/tr-3b-black-triangle/
canadianfella 5y ago
> Learning more may not be the right thing, but it's almost never the wrong thing. Does this sentence mean anything?

jacobwilliamroy 5y ago

One thing the whales did teach us is that at certain depths one can transmit low frequency sounds over thousands of miles. Unfortunately the navy's low frequency active sonar is also extremely dangerous and will either kill or fatally injure anything that gets caught within a few hundred miles of the sound blast, including whales. So thanks whales; also sorry whales. : (

zdkl 5y ago
> within a few hundred miles of the sound blast With a sonar? That's incredible, do you have a source/name/something I can look up?
- jacobwilliamroy 5y ago
  The deepwater sound channel conducts low frequency noise very efficiently, like a waveguide. The low frequency active sonar which the navy uses is as loud as a 747 jet engine and it can travel a very long distance through the deepwater sound channel without losing much energy. Mass beachings are still common near wherever the navy is testing it's active sonar and beached whales have been found with ruptured inner ears, though I can't find the reports now. A lot of the navy's active sonar technology is classified so most of what we civilians know about it is based off of hydrophone measurements, autopsies of dead whales, maps of mass beaching events and whatever information the navy has made publicly available.

JGM_io 5y ago

This is how the whale wars started. We should've never called them fat

throw0101a 5y ago

See also "JANUS", an IEEE standard for encoding data into acoustic signals. Basically an underwater modem: * https://spectrum.ieee.org/video/telecom/standards/underwater-robots-learn-a-new-language-janus https://spectrum.ieee.org/video/telecom/standards/underwater... * https://www.januswiki.com/ https://www.januswiki.com/