Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New quantum receiver the first to detect entire radio frequency spectrum

phys.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–79 of 79 posts

Re: New quantum receiver the first to detect entire radio frequency spectrum

#71

Post by kuschku »

onion2k wrote: post #60
infogulch wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would a 24th century all-purpose info-tool not actively monitor and attempt to characterize all signals received? I mean look at all the sensors we can pack into a phone nowadays: crazy zooms, infrared, a wide range of radios. And that's in just 10 years, imagine how much improvement can be made in another 400 years. Honestly, if I were regularly beaming down to visit planets at wildly varying and unknown levels…

I mean look at all the sensors we can pack into a phone nowadays Mobile phones used to include a FM receiver but more recent ones have stopped including it because it wasn't deemed useful enough.

Buy a Nokia, Xiaomi, Motorola, or even the korean version of Samsung devices.

All of them have FM, some even DVB-T and DVB-H support.

It's only the "premium" class in the US that doesn't include these feature (or dual sim, or micro sd slots, or 3.5mm jack, etc)

Re: New quantum receiver the first to detect entire radio frequency spectrum

#72

Post by elmo2you »

randmeerkat wrote: post #48
elmo2you wrote: post #33

Maybe it's just me, but this reads to me is as a big load of cleverly worded (misleading) statements that say little, yet make all kind of vague suggestions. I don't know any details about this particular tech, but I think the article says this can detect radio waves over a relatively large spectrum (0Hz..20GHz) simultaneously. It doesn't mention anything about focusing on any particular frequency, or even if it can…

This is a bit cynical, but a great rant and it makes some good points. I’m curious what’s your opinion on Bitcoin?

> I’m curious what’s your opinion on Bitcoin

a Ponzi scheme by any other name .. which primarily works because it exploits the uncertainties which many people feel about yet another system we are all invested in (whether we like it or not), sporting an extremely unfair distribution and being fundamentally broken too (in fact, at this point it pretty much functions like a Ponzi scheme too): The Dollar dominated world economy.

It is a Tulip mania in the making, which is going to make smart/early investors very rich (as long as they act quickly) when an sudden event (unexpected for most people) will trigger a serious crash of the world economy (which at this point appears almost inevitable). I'm pretty sure that plenty of serious investors are cynically gambling on exactly just that.

Sadly, an increasing proportion of primarily the US economy (and plenty of foreign ones, somehow dependent/reliant on it) revolves around stocked-up capital (potential power, but not used for anything useful, just speculation and political influence) on one hand and increasingly desperate fraud and deception, trying to access this piled up capital. The daily news is distracting most people away from this reality, but I think it is getting worse, rapidly. Something will crack, eventually.

Bitcoin isn't the real problem. It's mostly a symptom of a far bigger problem (will only be "solved" with a crash).

Similarly, plenty of technical/science news these days appears to be no more than deceptive marketing campaigns. But that is again, just like bitcoin, more like a symptom of an even bigger problem than the actual problem itself.

Re: New quantum receiver the first to detect entire radio frequency spectrum

#73

Post by vidarh »

spicybright wrote: post #68
vidarh wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't explain its absence from most phones from manufacturers that do not have any chance on getting sold directly by carriers. You will find occasional features on those phones - such as multiple SIM slots - that are rare on phones sold directly by carriers, but FM radio has become rare even on those.

Multiple sim slots are extraordinarily common outside the united states.

On phones sold directly from carriers? Where? Not doubting that it's possible, but I've not seen that anywhere I've looked.

I know it is common outside of what carriers sell - every phone I've owned for the last decade have had multiple SIM slots. But none of the phones offered by my carrier does, at least last I checked.

In any case, the point is that even on phones by manufacturers that have no reason to care what the carriers think - and none of the phones I've had in recent years have been carried by any carriers as far as I can tell -, FM radio is no longer a common feature, and so pressure from carriers is not a good explanation.

Re: New quantum receiver the first to detect entire radio frequency spectrum

#74

Post by ajsnigrutin »

callesgg wrote: post #70
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So basically, 3x higher than an hackrf (1MHz-~6GHz)? Not bad, but also not something revolutionary.

Hackrf only captures 20 MHz of spectrum. But is tunable to the range you described. You would need 1000 hackrf to capture the entire range at once.

Bandwidth is 4MHz, according to the article.

Re: New quantum receiver the first to detect entire radio frequency spectrum

#75

Post by rthomas6 »

bob1029 wrote: post #21

What sort of exotic signal processing solution would be required to support 20GHz of bandwidth at any useful sampling rate and bit depth? How would you actually collect a meaningful amount of information from every station in range simultaneously? I feel like this is something that may be possible in physics, but is not well supported in practical applicability. The amount of signal processing hardware required to su…

FPGAs, basically.

Re: New quantum receiver the first to detect entire radio frequency spectrum

#76

Post by coretx »

vidarh wrote: post #66
coretx wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it mostly stopped due to carriers not wanting FM due to it being competing with traffic bills - this despite pressure from civil society; think emergency responders, not wanting to drop the functionality for obvious reasons.

That doesn't explain its absence from most phones from manufacturers that do not have any chance on getting sold directly by carriers. You will find occasional features on those phones - such as multiple SIM slots - that are rare on phones sold directly by carriers, but FM radio has become rare even on those.

I don't know about current models, but in the past a trace was cut and a resistor placed in order to _disable_ FM. Multiple SIM support is also simply sabotaged due to carrier pressure and a price to pay per registered IMEI.

Re: New quantum receiver the first to detect entire radio frequency spectrum

#77

Post by madengr »

mindcrime wrote: post #55
madengr wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fractal antennas are mostly snake oil. You’ll always see then driven against a large counterpoise (ground plane), as the counterpoise becomes the radiator. You can make use of Chu’s limit without resorting to fractals. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chu–Harrington_limit

FYI @madengr, almost all of your recent comments - going back a few months, are in [dead] state. Not sure if you've been shadow-banned or what, but you might want to contact the mods or something.

Ha ha, yes I have been shadow banned for several months.

Re: New quantum receiver the first to detect entire radio frequency spectrum

#78

Post by waste_monk »

onion2k wrote: post #60
infogulch wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would a 24th century all-purpose info-tool not actively monitor and attempt to characterize all signals received? I mean look at all the sensors we can pack into a phone nowadays: crazy zooms, infrared, a wide range of radios. And that's in just 10 years, imagine how much improvement can be made in another 400 years. Honestly, if I were regularly beaming down to visit planets at wildly varying and unknown levels…

I mean look at all the sensors we can pack into a phone nowadays Mobile phones used to include a FM receiver but more recent ones have stopped including it because it wasn't deemed useful enough.

As I understand it the FM radio feature requires physical headphones to act as an antenna. Maybe enough people are on bluetooth headphones (Airpods etc.) that it's no longer cost-effective to include the physical headphone circuitry which is required for the FM receiver to work.

Re: New quantum receiver the first to detect entire radio frequency spectrum

#79

Post by chemmail »

Very interesting. I was watching skinwalker ranch scifi doc program, and they found a signal with the same oscillations from 25MHz to the "GHz". They had a rocket scientist, Travis Taylor, (PhDs in Optical Engineering and Aerospace System Engineering, MS/E in in Physics and Astronomy) state that it was impossible to have such a huge range in frequencies from HAM band (all the way down to RC car bands) to microwave bands. I would assume if someone need to do this, they would need a huge array of transmitters or something like this to transmit such a broad spectrum.
Post reply on HN