Chemical "Infofuses" Communicate Without Electricity 115
Al writes "Researchers at Harvard and Tufts University have developed a way to send coded messages without using electricity. David Walt, professor of chemistry at Tufts, and Harvard's George Whitesides have developed 'infofuses' that can transmit information simply by burning. The fuses — metallic salts depositing on a nitrocellulose strand — emit pulses of infrared and visible light of different colors whose sequence encodes information. They were developed in response to a call from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency for technologies to allow soldiers stranded without a power source to communicate. In the first demonstration of the idea, they used the infofuses to transmit the message look mom no electricity." Currently the researchers are "trying to figure out a way to dynamically encode a message on the fly in the field without specialized equipment."
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Flapping Lanterns (Score:3, Funny)
Re:cause... (Score:3, Funny)
depends. a mushroom cloud keeps foes away.
Re:GI Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Smoke Sig (Score:3, Funny)
How about an inexpensive crank flashlight with a morse code key engraved on it?
On the upside, not only would you not need matches, but you could use it as a flashlight.
Re:Darpa keeps reinventing the wheel (Score:2, Funny)
Re:cause... (Score:3, Funny)
depends. a mushroom cloud keeps foes away.
Reminds me what my mentor said about a heart surgery he had: "Under certain circumstances that's a good thing, but only if you do it to others."
Re:In other news... (Score:2, Funny)
In other news... IBM Creates a reflection group to adopt SmokeSignalXML 2.0 standard and geek adapts system to read slashdot via a new nifty system called FireRSS. A Native American signal artisans reflect about his doubts of the new system, "It's like the old smoke system... except you have to use an inkjet printer to encode the message... you also need a power supply to print the stuff... you might as well use a flash light"
Re:Doesn't seem terribly practical. (Score:5, Funny)
It's called a battery. You hook it up to your walkie-talkie, and away you go.
Re:Doesn't seem terribly practical. (Score:3, Funny)
Like a battery? Nope, never gonna happen. Too complex and dangerous.
Re:In other news... (Score:2, Funny)
Microsoft announces "Support" for the SmokeSignalXML 2.0 standard in IE 12.3
Microsofts version of the standard isn't quite fully standard compliant but is touting itself to be "Better than the standard." Microsoft has also announced that The full office suite is moving to the new MS / SmokeSignalXML 2.0 standard and that windows 9 will now use it in all its apps even notepad.
No need to bother allowing dynamic encoding (Score:4, Funny)
You only need to have one preset message:
"Enemy advancing on current position."
Re:Weird (Score:3, Funny)
They're planning for an invasion of the Waverlies, I guess.