Army Working on Science’s Outer Limits

It’s like some­thing out of “The Terminator.” Self-​​aware vir­tual humans, regen­er­at­ing body parts on “nano-​​scaffolding,” mind con­trolled weapons — all the stuff of movie robots, comic heroes and oth­er­worldly tomes.

But for some, this kind of higher-​​than-​​high tech is as real as life and death.

Dr. John Parmentola, Director of Research and Laboratory Management with the Army’s sci­ence and tech­nol­ogy office, told mil­i­tary blog­gers Nov. 3 that the Army is “mak­ing sci­ence fic­tion into real­ity” by cre­at­ing real­is­tic holo­graphic images, gen­er­at­ing vir­tual humans and div­ing into quan­tum computing.

It may sound like a trailer for the next “Star Trek” install­ment, but Parmentola is deadly serious.

For the last sev­eral years, the Army has kept a close eye on research into areas of sci­ence that might have once been called “para­nor­mal;” its prac­ti­tion­ers drummed out of the acad­emy as kooks and nut-​​jobs. But now the idea of implant­ing spe­cific mem­o­ries or eras­ing dam­ag­ing ones, for exam­ple, isn’t mere fantasy.

Dr. Joe Tsien, a neu­ro­bi­ol­o­gist at the Medical College of Georgia and co-​​director of the Brain Discovery Institute, has been able to erase cer­tain mem­o­ries from mice sub­jected to trau­matic expe­ri­ences in a lab­o­ra­tory envi­ron­ment, Parmentola said. From a prac­ti­cal stand­point, the Army could use this kind of tech­nol­ogy to help Soldiers who’ve been psy­cho­log­i­cally scarred by star­ing death straight in the eye.

“You can imag­ine peo­ple who have hor­ri­fy­ing mem­o­ries, it would be great if we could elim­i­nate them so this way they’re not plagued by these mem­o­ries uncon­trol­lably,” Parmentola said. “We have Soldiers that have this prob­lem, like PTSD and trau­matic brain injury, but there are many other exam­ples that occur in the civil­ian world.”

The Army plans to high­light Tsien’s and other research into the ragged edges of sci­ence fic­tion at the 26th Army Science Conference in Orlando next month, where experts in neu­ro­ro­bot­ics, high-​​tech com­puter dis­plays and quan­tum physics will explain how Soldiers could ben­e­fit from the types of rad­i­cal sci­ence most have only seen on episodes of the “X-​​Files.”

Take mind com­mu­ni­ca­tion, for exam­ple. Experiments have shown that cer­tain thoughts gen­er­ate elec­tri­cal impulses on the sur­face of the scalp, Parmentola said. Think com­man­dos who can stealth­ily com­mu­ni­cate with­out using their voice or Soldiers who con­trol weapons with their thoughts from a dis­tance over a wire­less connection.

“You could wear a cap that is sen­si­tive to these elec­tri­cal impulses, pick up the pat­tern and amplify those small sig­nals send it over a wire [or wire­lessly] con­nect it to a device,” Parmentola said. “So if you think of a thought ‘turn on,’ it will auto­mat­i­cally turn on a com­puter or that device.”

Or how about regen­er­a­tive med­i­cine? Parmentola said researchers aren’t far away from being able to grow back body parts — both inter­nal organs and limbs — that have been lost in com­bat or other acci­dents. The tech­nique focuses on the use if molecular-​​sized par­ti­cles that act as a kind of scaf­fold­ing to sup­port the growth of body tis­sue — say, a fin­ger — and dis­solves as the bio­log­i­cal mate­r­ial solidifies.

It’s not that unlike what a sala­man­der can do when it loses a limb.

“We’re begin­ning to under­stand how this occurs and if we can, it holds the hope of, being able to regrow limbs on peo­ple,” Parmentola said.

Then some of this space-​​aged research takes a turn into the Einsteinian world of quan­tum mechan­ics and par­ti­cle physics — places most mere mor­tals who sim­ply hump hills with ammo-​​laden rucks fear to tread.

“Quantum ghost imag­ing,” for exam­ple, is as com­pli­cated as it sounds. Basically it’s a phe­nom­e­non of physics that allows images to be ren­dered through the pair­ing of pho­tons that do not reflect or bounce off an object, but off of other pho­tons that did, thereby cre­at­ing a sort of “ghost” image of it. This tech­nol­ogy would enable the Army to gen­er­ate images of per­son­nel and equip­ment through clouds and smoke.

“It’s like hav­ing a trac­ing tool that goes over the image and that’s con­nected to another one on a piece of paper that exactly imi­tates what it is that you are trac­ing with the other pen,” Parmentola said. “It takes advan­tage of a remark­able prop­erty of quan­tum mechan­ics to try and do this.”

And if you do end up at the Army Science Conference next month, don’t be star­tled by the three-​​dimensional holo­graphic image of a sol­dier talk­ing to you (not that the regen­er­ated arm, mind-​​controlled com­puter or implanted mem­o­ries won’t freak you out enough) as you walk down the hall. It might just be the vir­tual human Army researchers are cre­at­ing to make sim­u­la­tors and war games more real­is­tic for train­ing, Parmentola said.

They’re work­ing on cre­at­ing “pho­to­re­al­is­tic look­ing and act­ing human beings” that can think on their own, have emo­tions and talk in local slang.

“I actu­ally inter­act with vir­tual humans in terms of ask­ing them ques­tions and they’re respond­ing,” Parmentola said.

To test out the com­puter gen­er­ated humans’ “human­ity,” Parmentola and his researchers want to unleash some of their cyber Soldiers into so-​​called “mas­sively multi-​​player online games” such as “World of Warcraft” or “Eve Online” — games fre­quented by thou­sands of super-​​competitive human play­ers in teams of vir­tual char­ac­ters fight­ing bat­tles that can last for days.
“We want to use the mas­sively multi-​​player online game as an exper­i­men­tal lab­o­ra­tory to see if they’re good enough to con­vince humans that they’re actu­ally human,” he said.

– Christian

November 4th, 2008 | Bizarro | 41587 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2008/11/04/army-working-on-sciences-outer-limits/Army+Working+on+Science%27s+Outer+Limits2008-11-04+14%3A04%3A58Ward You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.