alt Hacker NewsThe author included, near the end, a paragraph about me and my best friend the sonar operator who taught me a lot of what I know about cetacean communication in the 1970s. He was hunting soviet subs in 1962 and he saved us from a nuclear war during the October Missile Crisis because he had detected a sub that the Russians were thinking was not detectable. My friend had also conducted experimental acoustic interactions with cetaceans at sea.
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But sosus was not really about listening. Anyone can listen and hear things underwater. Listening to a sub sounds cool but doesnt answer the real question: where is the sub? What made sosus powerful was the network to merge data from different sensors to triangulate a location. The effort to match contacts between sensors separated by hundreds or thousands of miles, using 1970s tech, must have been immense.
We have all seen sonar waterfall displays, what most do not realize is that those came before the large CRT screens needed to display the data. The "screen" was actually a printer continuously printing the output from a microphone array.
Waterfall printer display is at the 18:52 point. (Footage of these is very rare.) https://youtu.be/fJafj2o3Wo4
Thanks for sharing. So much yet to learn about this topic.
"he saved us from a nuclear war during the October Missile Crisis because he had detected a sub that the Russians were thinking was not detectable"
How did this prevent nuclear war? Why would the soviets otherwise have launched a first strike?
I never heard anyone say "October Missile Crisis." Did you grow up in Cuba or a Cuban American community?