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Comment by reverend_gonzo | Hacker News Reader

This goes to show that even seemingly ridiculous (from the layman's POV) technology can be eventually used to create tecnology that can directly better our lives.

This was originally designed to detect alien life on other planets, but was converted to look for heartbeats and breathing under rubble.

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It certainly makes for a hell of an executive summary for a project status report.

"The bad news is we still don't know if there's life on Mars. But the good news is we just located 4 men under a flattened Dunkin' Donuts in Kathmandu".

However, the claim that this is "based on technology used to detect alien life on distant exoplanets" sounds dubious. Exoplanets are far too distant to use radar on them at all, let alone pick up alien life signs.

Maybe the idea was that a probe or robot sent to distant planets could use this device to detect life signs.

I would think the technology in question is a sensitive detector. In that case, it could work either passively for the exolife search, or in an active SAR situation.

I don't know where they got "exoplanets" from. I Googled a bit and the best [0] I could find indicates some connection to radar tech used on missions like Cassini's.

0. http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-290

First thought was that it's likely a signal processing technique designed to pick out a periodic signal in noisy data which allowed them to pick up out the heatbeats. To me that doesn't seem like much of a leap, but I don't know what they actually did.

I tend to think those four men, and the many others who died would have preferred the money had been spent on the simple, known process of better earth quake proofing the buildings in the region.

I'm not anti science for sciences sake, but this is not a logical argument. Bettering lives in Nepal is cheap and easy with current tech.

I think you might be replying to a different idea than reverend_gonzo was proposing. I think he's just noting that not-obviously-useful technological advances can have unexpected applications. I don't read him as saying that not-obviously-useful technological advances are the best way to save lives in Nepal.

If you just want to save lives, donate to whichever charity GiveWell[1] says is the best charity at saving lives per dollar. Every other use of money is vulnerable to the "but you could save more lives a different way" criticism.

[1] http://www.givewell.org/

I thought it was that dangerous fine line.

Four lives is a drop in bucket in Nepal.

I'm all pro for technology.

But I just don't want people thinking four lives matter in the scheme of things.The world in not that sort of sugar candy and gumdrops sort of place.

Saving lives is cheap and easy as you point out, I'm just saying be aware this is a PR stunt. And hey it'll work. And NASA will get more funding which is great. I just like to be aware of what's real and what's not.

With their GDP, only if someone else does it. Plus Nepal is filled with some very old temples and the like which are not going to be easy fixes; if they survived this long its a testament to chance or their builders.

Bring up their GDP through economic development which will eventually provide the money needed for better construction but that will need to wait until their political situation settles down.

> if they survived this long its a testament to chance or their builders.

People in the old days occasionally got lucky, it's more chance and survivor bias.

Once you travel the world the first thing you should realise is no current buildings/temples/old stuff is real.

They are all rebuilt / patched with concrete.

Case in point, a lot of the temple in Nepal got destroyed in the earth quake 80 years ago. They are rebuilt temples falling again.

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