Is this device possible (hope not)?

[Dennis]

I'm no expert in this field of science, but I wanted to share this with you guys since it worries me. I had a weird dream that was worrying to me because it seems like it would be the next big thing that is catastrophic to mankind since the invention of the nuclear bomb because warfare would be become far more deadly with this device I dreamed about as nuclear bombs have done so.

So the device I had a dream about had replaced all military radar systems that were used to detect objects before because this new device did not send out an electromagnetic wave to bounce back to a reciever off of an object, and thus, it could not be defeated by stealth technology that works on radar or by jamming technology. This device simple "read" 3-dimensional information where the device would scan within its field of view. It was much like if you took a telescope and pointed it at an object, but instead it would just read all the particles of matter within that field of view and then a very powerful computer system would filter out the "noise", which is basically anything not of interest to the operator of the machine (like air, trees, etc). Basically, you cannot hide from this device according to my dream. No mater what you did or tried, you would always be found since you exist in the 3-dimensional space it can scan in.

I just thought I would tell you guys my dream. I just hope this technology is not possible.

 

[DaveC426913]

If you can't describe how it does what it does, it might as well be magical.

It's not an active detection system like radar because, as you say, it doesn't send out signals.
So it's passive. Which means it must "read" only what the object naturally emits. So, what do your objects of interest naturally emit that can pass through trees and rocks? And how do they emit this in a way that is still coherent after passing through other material? etc.

 

[Dennis]

If you can't describe how it does what it does, it might as well be magical.

It's not an active detection system like radar because, as you say, it doesn't send out signals.
So it's passive. Which means it must "read" only what the object naturally emits. So, what do your objects of interest naturally emit that can pass through trees and rocks? And how do they emit this in a way that is still coherent after passing through other material? etc.

So basically there is no way to read "some kind of emittance from particles" (whatever that could be) past other particles blocking it and make sense of the data, even with very powerful computers. I'm glad this is not possible based on what you have told me. How about simulation theory proposed by some peers in the science community? In other words what if we live in a simulated world and there was a to hack into reality to get the location of anything in that reality. Much like if AI NPC in a game could create a virtual device in it's game world to extract the coordinates of some object in that game world by gaining access to the game code that was written by the programmer.

 

[Nugatory]

How about simulation theory proposed by some peers in the science community? In other words what if we live in a simulated world and there was a to hack into reality to get the location of anything in that reality. Much like if AI NPC in a game could create a virtual device in it's game world to extract the coordinates of some object in that game world by gaining access to the game code that was written by the programmer.

Sure, if you assume the simuulation hypothesis then anything is possible; the master software developer just has to hack together a few lines of code to make something that is impossible under the laws of physics possible. All science is meaningless, because any experimental result can be explained away by saying "that's just what the code is doing" and there is no way of [proving or disproving the hypothesis.

Thus the forum rules specifically disallow discussion based on the simulation hypothesis: it may or may not be interesting, but it is definitely not empirical science.

So you have the answer to your original question: no, not physically possible given our current understanding of the laws of physics..
That is as far as the discussion can usefully go, so this thread us closed.

 

[russ_watters]

Sounds like a digital camera with image processing to me.