Designing Wireless Sensors To Be Dropped Into Volcanoes 126
Thorfinn.au writes with this quote from El Reg:
"Topflight engineers based in Newcastle have hit upon a radical plan for warning of volcanic eruptions. They intend to build a heatproof sensor unit which can be dropped into a volcano's caldera and wirelessly transmit data to monitoring stations despite being possibly immersed in molten rock. 'At the moment we have no way of accurately monitoring the situation inside a volcano and in fact most data collection actually goes on post-eruption. With an estimated 500 million people living in the shadow of a volcano this is clearly not ideal,' explains Dr. Alton Horsfall of Newcastle Uni's Centre for Extreme Environment Technology. 'We still have some way to go but using silicon carbide technology we hope to develop a wireless communication system that could accurately collect and transmit chemical data from the very depths of a volcano.'"
Maybe they can find proof of Lord Xenu's crimes (Score:5, Informative)
I don't think so (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Maybe they can find proof of Lord Xenu's crimes (Score:4, Informative)
LOL /came here to make some random Xenu comment //leaving satisfied
Re:Why? (Score:2, Informative)
Bait the hook for Wesley Crusher types.
Except Wesley Crusher got to have sex with Ashley Judd [memory-alpha.org]......
Misleading summary (Score:5, Informative)
According to Horsfall and his fellow nails-tough tech developers, their carbide electronics can keep working up to temperatures of 900C. This is actually sufficient to withstand immersion in some lavas/magmas, though by no means all. In any case it's difficult to see how any wireless signal could be transmitted through molten minerals, so presumably the inventors are talking more about locating their kit in places within a caldera which - although extremely hot - are not enough so to actually melt rock.
The caldera [wikipedia.org] is not a synonym for lava puddles. They're talking about putting a sensor in the caldera where it can detect gasses. It's not likely to be floating, much less submerged, and in fact that would presumably interfere with the mission of detecting various gasses.
(I've only read the article, not the papers)
Re:Next stop: Venus? (Score:3, Informative)
Venus is 425 C (or so), and these are rated up to 900 C, so they absolutely should work on Venus.
Of course, this is not new. From a description of the Soviet Venera landers [mentallandscape.com] :
"By the time of Venera-13 and 14, a surprising amount of complex equipment was simply installed outside the pressure hull, exposed to the intensely hostile surface conditions. By this time, Soviet engineers had developed new heat-resistant materials and electronics that were comfortable in this working environment."