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Underwater robot tracks sperm whale conversations in real time

reuters.com

11–20 of 22 posts

Re: Underwater robot tracks sperm whale conversations in real time

#11
post #3

They said we have six months to get our shit in order or they're calling their big brother tube-shaped space probe and we won't like talking to him.

You mean the ones doing the same thing to us as we are to the whales? Just watching and trying to figure us out

Re: Underwater robot tracks sperm whale conversations in real time

#13
post #8
post #3

They said we have six months to get our shit in order or they're calling their big brother tube-shaped space probe and we won't like talking to him.

"There’s no point in acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now.”

It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard Seal'.

Re: Underwater robot tracks sperm whale conversations in real time

#15
post #3

They said we have six months to get our shit in order or they're calling their big brother tube-shaped space probe and we won't like talking to him.

I’ve never quite appreciated the peak hippie bizarreness of a space probe checking in to see if the whales are still home Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Great San Francisco based movie tho.

Re: Underwater robot tracks sperm whale conversations in real time

#19
post #9

Logistics here are extra interesting. Sperm whale clicks are basically a sonic weapon. This is maybe the loudest animal known in the history of the evolution, known to be capable to kill an human just with sound if they get alarmed. I wonder if we would be able to watch the destruction of the robot with a extra loud sound wave at any given point or how they designed to avoid it.

Is this actually true? I've heard this but have never seen evidence of this actually happening before. Are we saying that, theoretically, a sperm whale's ecolocation is so powerful that if a human was swimming near it within some specified range they'd die?

Re: Underwater robot tracks sperm whale conversations in real time

#20
post #17

Reminded me of the quantum cryptography concept where people could hoard encrypted data and wait until the tech caught up and allowed decryption. The whales would need to be communicating with this in mind...

How should we be communicating with this in mind? Assuming there's some higher intelligence, or future humans who can decrypt our private streams?
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