DARPA is putting together a research program that would allow the Pentagon to see through thick concrete walls and deep underground chambers using beams of subatomic particles called muons.
The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is organizing its Muons for Science & Security (MuS2) research program to create a compact source for generating these deeply penetrating subatomic particles.
If successful, the technologies developed would allow the US military to “image through concrete walls several meters thick, map the core of a volcano from the outside, or peer deep underground to locate chambers and tunnels.”
“If successful, a transportable muon source could enable imaging through concrete walls several meters thick or locating chambers & tunnels hundreds of meters underground” — DARPA MuS2 Program
“Making muons requires such high-energy particles that production is limited to large physics research facilities” — DARPA MuS2 program
Currently gamma rays, X-rays, neutrons, protons, and electrons are already in use for medical diagnostics, cargo scanning, and aircraft testing.
However, none of those sources can see through thick walls of concrete or deep layers of rock, such as those used in the construction of deep underground military bases or naturally formed tunnels.
That’s where muons come in.
According to the DARPA, “Muons are similar to electrons but about 200 times heavier. At high energy, muons can travel easily through dozens to hundreds of meters of water, solid rock, or soil.”
“But making muons requires such high-energy particles that production is limited to large physics research facilities such as the United States’ Fermilab national particle accelerator in Illinois and the European CERN accelerator in Switzerland.”
“Our goal is to develop a new, terrestrial muon source that doesn’t require large accelerators and allows us to create directional beams of muons at relevant energies” — Mark Wrobel, DARPA MuS2 Program Manager
Heading up the research project is DARPA program manager Dr. Mark Wrobel, whose interests include “the development of new capabilities for detecting and interdicting threats associated with weapons of mass destruction, including chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats to national security.”
“Our goal is to develop a new, terrestrial muon source that doesn’t require large accelerators and allows us to create directional beams of muons at relevant energies, from 10s to 100s of GeVs – to either image or characterize materials,” said Dr. Wrobel in the MuS2 program description.
“Enabling this program is high-peak-power laser technology that has been steadily advancing and can potentially create the conditions for muon production in a compact form factor.
“MuS2 will lay the ground work needed to examine the feasibility of developing compact and transportable muon sources,” he added.
DARPA seeks compact source for generating muons, highly penetrating subatomic particles. If successful, a transportable muon source could locate tunnels 100s of meters underground: https://t.co/3sIz2R8Iqx pic.twitter.com/yYsVml7U5V
While DARPA’s MuS2 program looks to develop tools to discover what lies beneath thick surfaces, such as caves and tunnels, the Pentagon’s research funding arm has also been working on ways in which to navigate subterranean spaces.
Launched in 2017 DARPA’s Subterranean Challenge (SubT) “explored new approaches to rapidly map, navigate, search, and exploit complex underground environments such as human-made tunnel systems, urban underground, and natural cave networks.”
Over the years, SubT Challenge performer teams developed new approaches using robotic systems that could rapidly map, navigate, and search subterranean domains.
In early 2020, DARPA announced it was forming the Invisible Headlights research program that could lay the foundation for autonomous vehicles with 3D vision that would be able to see without being seen “at night, underground, in the Arctic, and in fog.”
The goal of the Invisible Headlights program was to discover how to transform the ambient thermal light present in all environments into a totally passive 3D sensor that would be accurate enough and fast enough to support autonomous navigation.
When you combine DARPA’s MuS2, Invisible Headlights, and SubT Challenge, what you get is the ability to see into places that were previously hidden, navigate them remotely, and do so without ever being detected.
From an intelligence, humanitarian, or military point of view, these capabilities could provide swifter, more efficient means of gathering intel, performing rescue operations, or even executing targeted assassinations.
If these capabilities were ever to be deployed by domestic law enforcement, they could pose severe threats to individual privacy and the right to be secure from unlawful search and seizure, especially if they were ever used to surveil citizens without a warrant.
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In 2016, Adam David Jones woke up from a coma in a trauma center with no memory of how he got there. They told him someone had smashed the back of his skull in with a cinderblock and that half his skull was gone from emergency surgery.
A month early, the day after Good Friday, Adam was busy working at a political rally he had organized in Harrisburg, PA. Later that evening, after it was over and he was getting ready to leave, a friend asked if he would accompany her to an afterparty she was invited to. He agreed to go because she didn’t know the man who asked her, and he wanted her to feel safe.
When they were close to the party, the man suddenly said they might not all be welcomed and wanted one of them to leave. Adam volunteered to leave and that was the last thing he remembered.
Fast forward a year later, and the trial takes place to seek justice for the attack. After Adam’s friend testified, he was called to the stand, but Adam was unable to identify the attacker due to his lack of memory of the event.
Despite the fact that police found the accused attacker at the scene of the crime covered in Adam’s blood, and with Adam’s money in his pocket, it was considered a “He said, she said” case and he was found not guilty.
This was the moment Adam was inspired to create Zeer, a next-generation personal and public safety tech that creates a frictionless response for when you are in danger, to allow you to get help, and record evidence to prosecute the person who attacked you.
In this episode, Adam shares why prosecuting will attackers will become easier with Zeer, but why provension will remain a harder challenge. He also shares how Zeer will be able to alert users to danger through the use of data that factors in time of day, area, and temperature, to name a few.
Adam also explains that we know that crime rises along with the temperature and how this can help better predict crime and danger.
Sam, the host, also chips in, drawing on a point made by his previous psychology professor, that highlights why a direct link can not always be drawn between correlations, with the example that when more ice cream is consumed by the population, robbery rises, and shares the missing piece of information that explains why this is the case.
Additionally, Adam shares how Zeer can specifically help victims of domestic violence by initiating a recording using a safeword that begins recording without the attacker knowing, and either stores it in the cloud, contacts an emergency contact, contacts the police, or all of the above. We also discuess the legal and ethical issues around recording people without them knowing.
And finally, Adams talks about how Zeer is currently raising its first round of funding, where they look to raise $1.8 million, alongside how listeners can get involved to try out their beta program for Zeer.