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NASA's Radar Found 4 Men Trapped in Rubble in Nepal by Their Heartbeats
- mezeek 11y agoI wonder for how long the Navy Seals have been using this.
- dangerlibrary 11y agoIt seems likely that the US GEO-INT has more purpose-built tech for the Seals than NASA uses. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Geospatial-Intelligence_Agency http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Geospatial-Intelligenc...
- mikeyouse 11y agoI distinctly remember Tom Clancy writing about this type of technology near the end of Rainbow Six (published in 1998) -- He always seemed pretty well informed on what was undergoing testing if not what was actually in use.
- Terr_ 11y agoNah, Clancy just got taken in by a common fraud: http://articles.latimes.com/1998/sep/24/local/me-26013 http://articles.latimes.com/1998/sep/24/local/me-26013 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadro_Tracker http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadro_Tracker There have been dozens of similar frauds since, where the snake-oil-salesmen just dress up a dowsing-rod with blinking lights. Remember, Tom Clancy was a fiction writer in the same vein as Dan Brown novels or CSI TV shows. His main nod to realism was in realms like military jargon or describing the correct fire-selector for a given model of gun.
- andrewrice 11y agoThe "heartbeat sensor" was actually an item in the Rainbow Six FPS, too.
- txru 11y agoWhen I read Rainbow Six, I remember wondering if he wrote parts of it to be more applicable in the video game, a la Splinter Cell. The heartbeat monitor, the map types (jungle, city, amusement park)... it seemed like nice fit. They were still a good read though.
- Crito 11y agoI remember having the same thought with that book. Elements of the book seemed to be there for the benefit of spin-off video games, much like you'll sometimes find a character in a movie probably exists for merchandizing. Maybe I gave him too little credit in this case. Either he was familiar with prototype tech that we aren't aware of yet, or he was actually a decent near-future sci-fi writer.
- Cushman 11y agoWeren't they made at the same time, in fact? Edit: Mind you, I only know this because I looked it up after having that exact thought reading the book :) Yeah, according to this wiki citation[0], the tie-ins were a bit ad-hoc but the game plot was actually finalized before the book was done, which accounts for the discrepancies. So there's no real way of knowing what started out as a game mechanic. Worked out better than Splinter Cell, anyway-- I don't think I got through more than a page of the novelization. (Which wasn't written by Clancy, FWIW.) [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20010804114957/http://gamasutra.com/features/20000121/upton_01.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20010804114957/http://gamasutra....
- sean-duffy 11y agoI came here to say this, a device for tracking heartbeats was described quite extensively in Rainbow Six. I got the impression it was more of him extending his fiction creative license than drawing any inspiration from a real product, though. But it does make it very exciting that there appears to be an actual way of doing this.
- soup10 11y ago"NASA's" yea right. This screams military tech.
- tomswartz07 11y agoNot to split hairs, but NASA and the military are, and throughout their history, very much intertwined. There's a reason that the first astronauts were fighter pilots.
- castis 11y agoSerious question, would anyone else have been more qualified for those positions?
- Crito 11y agoHe picked a bad example, because honestly you are right. A better example might be how the DoD influenced/compromised the design of the Space Shuttle. The only reason it had those big-ass wings was so that it could fly polar orbit missions for the military. It never actually flew any of those missions, but it did fly a few classified military missions: STS-51-C, STS-51-J, STS-27, STS-28, STS-33, STS-36, STS-38, and a few others.
- whyaduck 11y agoI won't argue that there isn't cross-pollination between NASA and the military, but if you're looking for a test pilot for your new, high-performance aircraft (or, say, rocket), you'd be hard pressed to find a more qualified candidate than a military test pilot.
- nerdy 11y agoFrom the Nazi V-2 team to the US X-37 there is a long history of considerable inter-connectivity. Not just people but technology, manufacturing & testing methods, etc. It's a more significant than cross-pollination to me.
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- reverend_gonzo 11y agoThis goes to show that even seemingly ridiculous (from the layman's POV) technology can be eventually used to create tecnology that can directly better our lives. This was originally designed to detect alien life on other planets, but was converted to look for heartbeats and breathing under rubble.
- ffthrowaway020 11y agoThis device can also be used to further the American Police State. I am a Targeted Individual and a victim of Gang Stalking [1]. And, I suspect that this technology was used by an upstairs neighbor to track me around the apartment and electronically harass me using a microwave device. He would use a pulsed RF/microwave device (a Directed Energy Weapon [2]) to irradiate me as I moved around my apartment and also while I slept. Whenever I disabled WiFi, cell phones, etc. and moved slowly, he would stomp heavily/loudly on the floor, relocate me within seconds and the irradiation would resume. I bought an EMF meter to attempt to detect evidence of the harassment but could detect nothing. I have read that these DEWs can range up to 95 GHz, way beyond the capabilities of my device. As a result of his efforts, I now have electromagnetic hypersensitivity and my data-only iPhone delivers small stings to my fingertips. Initially, I thought that the neighbor was using the loud stomping to generate a sonar/like wave that he could use to locate me within the apartment. Some researchers at the University of Washington described detecting gestures within a home using WiFi signals [3] and I thought sound waves might be used to achieve a similar effect. For the uninitiated, this blurb describes the Stasi tactic called Gang Stalking (otherwise known as Organized Stalking): "Organized stalking methods were used extensively by communist East Germany’s Stasi (state police) as a means of maintaining political control over its citizens. The Stasi referred to the tactics as “Zersetzung” (German for “decomposition” or “corrosion” – a reference to the intended psychological, social, and financial effects upon the victim). Although they are illegal in the U.S., the same covert tactics are quietly used by America’s local and federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies to suppress dissent, silence whistle-blowers, and get revenge against persons who have angered someone with connections to the public and private agencies involved. Illegal counterintelligence operations have been perpetrated against Americans by urban police departments in the U.S. since the late 1800s. Traditionally, the groups of mostly-undercover police officers involved are called “red squads,” although the modern official term is “Law Enforcement Intelligence Units (LEIUs).” The most well-documented example of such operations was the FBI’s infamous Cointelpro (Counter-Intelligence Programs) under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover." No, I didn't do anything to "deserve" this treatment. [1] http://fightgangstalking.com/what-is-gang-stalking/ http://fightgangstalking.com/what-is-gang-stalking/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed-energy_weapon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed-energy_weapon [3] http://www.washington.edu/news/2013/06/04/wi-fi-signals-enable-gesture-recognition-throughout-entire-home/ http://www.washington.edu/news/2013/06/04/wi-fi-signals-enab...
- dsr12 11y agoLink to NASA article: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4574 http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4574
- VonGuard 11y agoWow, Star Trek life signs sensors!
- nmyk 11y agoOff topic, but this headline is a good example of a crash blossom: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntactic_ambiguity#In_headlines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntactic_ambiguity#In_headline...
- castis 11y agoIts awful to imagine someone was trapped in rubble by their own heartbeat.
- civilian 11y agoOr, alternatively, the heartbeat of NASA's radar found 4 men trapped in rubble?
- nsomaru 11y ago"Radar" is in the singular, so the plural "heartbeats" cannot apply to it. edit: Also, if somehow the radar had multiple heartbeats, we would have used "its heartbeats" rather than "their heartbeats." disclaimer: I am not a grammarian or a linguist (IANAGOAL?)
- eridius 11y agoThat's not the ambiguity. The ambiguity is whether the Radar found them by their heartbeats, or whether they were trapped by their heartbeats.
- sliverstorm 11y agoOr did the radar find the men, while trapped in the rubble by the men's heartbeats?
- eridius 11y agoThat doesn't work because "found 4 men" is not a modifier on "NASA's Radar". If it said "NASA's Radar Found By 4 Men Trapped In Rubble" then that would work.
- lloydde 11y ago> used to detect alien life on distant exoplanets I love that lead. Life detected!
- nitinics 11y agoFirst of, Thanks for this technology that helped save some of my countrymen. This goes to show that technology can indeed help in many avenues to save lives. I am originally from Nepal living in NYC, and looking for ideas that could create technology-aided sustainable development as a key to rebuilding. Ideas that come to me, which might have high $$ values for implementation are - 3D printed housing, Organic Farming for quick rehabilitation on these villages, Open-Source BTS for communications etc. As costs go lower, these affected areas might be the right place to implement these. As much as I am devastated by what is happening in Nepal right now with the death toll only rising, I would like to reach out to the technology community out here or anywhere to provide me with ideas into helping us rebuild. Most of the relief efforts are donation-based, however, for longer term - creating a sustainable economy in these low privileged areas with the help of emerging technologies is what I think is crucial for faster recovery.
- fasteo 11y agoSlightly OT, but along the same lines. Measuring the human pulse from tiny head movements to help diagnose cardiac disease [1] [1] http://www.kurzweilai.net/measuring-the-human-pulse-from-tiny-head-movements-to-help-diagnose-cardiac-disease http://www.kurzweilai.net/measuring-the-human-pulse-from-tin...
- pbhjpbhj 11y agoIn the same vein [ugh, sorry, pun not intended] there's the video magnification techniques that detect and amplify micro variations across video frames - e.g. in skin tone/colouration for pulse monitoring [1] and e.g. in structures for engineering analysis [2]. [1] http://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/vidmag/ http://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/vidmag/ [2] http://people.csail.mit.edu/celiu/motionmag/motionmag.html http://people.csail.mit.edu/celiu/motionmag/motionmag.html
- klean92 11y agoIt sure is great for those guys. But it also says it is getting harder and harder to hide...
- arjn 11y agoThis is both fantastic and frightening. Imagine what capabilities the US military has for finding people.
- mangeletti 11y agoThis technology is really awesome, but I have to admit that I am scared to death of anything that can find me by my heartbeat under 6 feet of building rubble. The first thing that came to mind were those robotic octopi from The Matrix.
- Phlarp 11y agoOr the little compliance spiders from Minority Report
- socceroos 11y agoNo need to give the pollies any ideas, mate.
- stephengillie 11y agoWhy is our first response to new technology one of fear? This is a device designed to find alien life, the article is about it being used to save human lives, but all you see is a tool to find and attack you. This isn't meant personally; you see this "Dystopia ex Technology" in Hollywood movies and popular novels. For every "Pacific Rim" we have, there's several "Matrix" clones ready to tear down our confidence in machines.
- fredkbloggs 11y agoIt's not the machines we fear. Most people do understand that it's not the tools but the people using them, and we know far too well the sort of people those are likely to be. The dystopian nightmare has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with governments. It's always been so.
- arkx 11y agoThere is a new wave of fear of strong AI, based on writings by Nick Bostrom, especially his book 'Superintelligence'. Elon Musk has helped to spread the word.
- beloch 11y agoI can't believe nobody's said it... They're "scanning for lifeforms". Chalk up another Star Trek technology made real!
- kristopolous 11y agoWith technology like this, Anne Frank's diary, if written today, would be the size of tweet.
- indians_pro 11y agoThat makes no sense.
- Already__Taken 11y agoShe would have been found immediately. Because a tweet is very short.
- edvinbesic 11y agoIs this part of the program that just received budget cuts so that NASA can focus on the 'hard sciences'?
- lifeformed 11y agoSo how does this actually work? What aspect of a heartbeat is detectable in such circumstances?