More likely, the story is designed to make the public believe that US propaganda is actually aimed at the "foreign adversary" rather than at the US population. The emotionally appealing bit is the idea that even if the story is fake, Iran is now thinking it is dealing with an adversary that has and is using tech that is right out of science fiction.

In reality, it's all aimed at us, the people. All of the "tough talk", the comments that appear intended for dissident groups within Iran, etc., is all meant to mislead the people (us) who can stop the war so we don't do so.

We know it's simple to detect someone's heartbeat from just colour changes of ones skin in a regular video taken with a phone camera. Wouldn't this be trivial with military level IR tech? Sounds way more likely than some amazing new top secret technology that is somehow filtering out every other magnetic field and can detect a heartbeat through mountains.

Why is everyone debating some theoretical advanced heartbeat or otherwise people detection tech rather than the absolutely obvious answer - some kind of advanced, specialized transmitter that's designed to be hard to detect and simply transmits the encrypted GPS coordinates of the pilot?

Because the NY Post ran an article that said

"The CIA used a futuristic new tool called “Ghost Murmur” to find and rescue the second American airman who was shot down in southern Iran, The Post has learned. The secret technology uses long-range quantum magnetometry to find the electromagnetic signal of a human heartbeat"

Note, I agree that it was probably some novel beacon technology. Just answering your question about why people are debating whether it was a device that could detect a human heartbeat from long range.

Or just rocking up to the nearest village with a thousand dollars in cash and asking where the pilot is.

There were commercially available lidar/ladar sensors that can do basic spectroscopy at a great distance. Specifically, the public specification showed it was able to pinpoint C02 or nitrate levels over 14km away.

Keep in mind this was published over a decade ago, and I'm sure they have systems with better specs these days. Too bad these were too cost prohibitive for FSD automotive platforms.

There are magnetic sensors that could detect rusting-container currents over 3 meters away, but still unlikely possible outdoors. There is a point where the thermal noise floor means any signal is lost at a minimal threshold.

I am sure folks are extra cautious about detailing key technology these days. =3

There are so many easier ways to detect a person that I don't understand why they chose going with this charade

It is more plausible than most of the stuff said publicly by the administration, and makes Americans feel like the trillions are worth it.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic -- Clarke's three laws

HOWEVER, sometimes, if a technology is sounded like a magic too much, then maybe it just is, without any technology in it.

By Veritasium, for anyone else wondering whether to click

Thanks, saved me a click.

What’s wrong with veritasium?

It's been bought up by venture capital and it's rubbed a lot of fans the wrong way with the changes by the new management.

Back many years ago I worked on a research project which used UWB radar to detect breathing through walls / rubble / etc. But the distance was in the range of 1-10 meters. The application was to use such sensors for finding survivors after earthquakes etc.

or bombings

If they can detect the faint signal of a heartbeat from so far away, why not instead deliberately transmit a weak, wider-bandwidth pseudorandom magnetic signal? Such a signal would be even harder to detect than a heartbeat without prior knowledge, yet easier to identify and track using a matched filter.

They want to lie about how they found the soldier, and potentially have China spend a few billion trying to copy technology that can never work.

Militaries and their disinformation units are like this.

There are at least 5 different narratives about how the US found Osama bin Laden, which contradict each other:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Osama_bin_Laden#Alt...

When a military achieves something and there's intense speculation on how they did it, they will want to obfuscate how they did it. One of the best ways to do that is to give a range of different explanations, some fanciful, some plausible, none of which are completely accurate, leaked to a range of credible and non-credible people. A disinformation campaign.

Why are we assuming China is too gullible to know this technology can never work, when it's so obvious to the lay HN commentariat?

Presumably we're cunningly exploiting specifics of their world view.

Despite the authoritarian rule, PRC still values education highly in quite a few contexts where it doesn't interfere too much with the authoritarianism, and the country not only has plenty of physics graduates who will have learned about the Josephson effect, but might well listen to them and give them adequate grants for R&D.

Because not everyone has a transmitter, but everyone has a heartbeat?

Though in this case the pilot likely had a transmitter and that's exactly how they found him.

I think the link must be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVTPv4sI_Jc

That's my fault, I was writing an email about COPPA at the same time and pasted in the wrong link. Oops!