Very Unlikely Quantum Sensor Found Downed Aviator In Iran (w Dr Ramsey Faragher)

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]But the the math doesn't work, and it would be insane to use that approach when the guy has a personal radio locator beacon, which transmits once a minute or once an hour or whatever it might be, to satellites and provides a GPS location, which is accurate to a few meters. Yeah.

[00:00:16]>> So, I I strongly suspect that he was not picked up with a 2026 era quantum magnetometer. I suspect he was picked up with a 1995 era >> [laughter] >> emergency GPS-based radio locator beacon.

[00:00:37]>> [music] >> And on that topic, should we do the chap who would have had clearances for sure cuz he was flying in an F-15 and ended up behind Iranian lines. Absolutely. I wanted to come to you. You've been You've been very quiet and well-behaved over the last kind of hour, but now now we're in your bailiwick. We're in the We're in the sensors. We're We're talking about sensors. So, it's been reported, as you said, that a US pilot was downed in Iran, and he was found with an ingenious piece of quantum technology, so a quantum accelerometer, basically. Um and naturally, uh our clickbait friends uh were all over this. This quantum tech was likely used to find missing Iran soldier. However, as a quantum sensor maestro that you are, a real-life Q, Ramsey, and someone with experience working with sensitive wartime technologies at BAE Systems and and elsewhere, you had some challenges with this, right?

[00:01:40]>> So, um this F-15 got shot down, and the pilot and their weapons operator both ejected, and the weapons operator was uh um lost for a few days, and they had to find them. And they then did successfully find them. And this whole story has come about because of some particular wording that was said in the press briefing, and then how there was some extrapolations from there. Perfect.

[00:02:11]So, yeah, there was some um uh extra- extrapolations of things that have been said. So, this thing about um if your heart is beating, we will find you, right? So, I've got a few theories as as to where this heartbeat concept has has come in because there's uh This was definitely the key expression. Um So, before we get to that cuz you have some You have some different ideas about what might have actually happened. So, this this was said um in a brief It was reported by the New York Post that basically they'd found this downed airman by detecting his heartbeat with a quantum sensor. And this this quote, "If your heart is beating, we will find you," came out. And this was repeated by Donald Trump, obviously, you know, great scientific mind. Um but this raised a a few potential red flags. So, So, what is the idea that they initially said? What type of sensor were they using or claiming to have used to kind of found this person? Cuz they were basically saying this person was lost in the Iranian desert, and they sensed their heartbeat from tens of kilometers away and were able to kind of zoom in and pick them up. So, what What did they claim to have used?

[00:03:24]So, the extrapolation you ended up at from following that that statement uh was uh the claim that a new type of quantum-based sensor a very particularly highly sensitive magnetometer was used to literally hear the downed airman's the [clears throat] magnetic field of their heartbeat. As your heart beats, there's a a magnetic pulse, tiny tiny magnetic pulse that your heart's generating. And the sort of concept was that this new quantum sensor, which is real, these particular new quantum sensors are real, and people have been testing them for navigation purposes, as I can discuss in a moment, could have been used to to detect the actual heartbeat of the airman. Now, um you try and do the maths on this. The fact that we know what the the actual pico-Tesla level of the magnetic field of your heartbeat is, you know that it's a one-over-cube drop-off for magnetic fields. So, the further away you get, it gets incredibly hard to to to pick up the signal. It drops away much faster than a radio signal drops in power. And um uh the the the factor is that the sort of background noise level of the uh Earth, uh its own variations in in magnetic field, but there's variations and noise in in the magnetic field because charged particles are whacking the atmosphere all the time. And so, the There's lots of natural noise that's well above this sort of level of of the the signal from your heart. But also, if they're flying the sensor in a helicopter or an aircraft, then the fields being generated and the amount they're varying by those aircraft um uh vastly higher than this.

[00:05:19]>> He's probably got a huge spinning rotor full of iron or iron compounds above your head, which is probably not doing you any uh any help when you're looking for magnetic signals. And we can we can come to what the sensor is really used for in reality in a moment, but to sort of stick on where the truth and the extrapolation might have come on the uh pilot and and what they really found in them, maybe why they've allowed this story to run a bit. I can I can give you a rapid tour de force. So, >> [laughter] >> the heartbeat stuff, right? So, that that statement, the start point, right?

[00:05:56]If your heart is beating, we will find you. So, there's a few levels as to what that can mean. Um The slightly mad one, which is this one, is that we have a heartbeat sensor that is accurate to like 40 km or whatever they're claiming.

[00:06:12]So, we'll put that to bed for a moment cuz it's not that one. Um So, you know, the other two things I think you might have been referring to here, um well, certainly, firstly, it's just a cool-sounding statement, right? Which is the the classic We're not We're not leaving anyone behind.

[00:06:28]>> Yeah, yeah.

[00:06:29]If we think your heart is still beating, we will come and get you. We will not leave anyone behind. That's probably what this was.

[00:06:36]The other thing it might have been referring to is, of course, one of the technologies they would have certainly been using infrared cameras.

[00:06:43]And that's very much a slightly poetic um thing here, right? If you're If you're alive, you're hot. We will find you. We'll find you with the infrared cameras, right? And we'll come looking for you.

[00:06:55]>> The top of your chest is probably going to be super hot, so, you know, we'll find you then. So, I suspect in reality it was the first one of these two. It was the evocative We leave no one behind. Yeah.

[00:07:07]>> I'll tell you another way that the word heartbeat might have been overheard, and then everything extrapolated from there.

[00:07:15]>> Culturally appropriate whispers.

[00:07:17]Yes. Yeah. Uh So, what we do know for a fact that they would have had is that when the F-15 uh aviators ejected, the then emergency beacons were set off in the aircraft until it crashed, um but also in the uh seats, the ejector seats, and the the the pilot, the two aviators, will have a portable emergency beacon, probably unclipped from the seat. And this guy was hiding in a crevice, um injured, and he would have had that um radio locator. Now, um these things are designed to have a battery life of like 30 days, and they're a radio beacon that can be picked up by satellites.

[00:08:03]>> Mhm. Um it's uh a very In order for them to still be covert, so not be discovered because they're constantly broadcasting some signal, yeah. Yeah, there's a very well-established I'm not breaking any top secret stuff here. Um If we just hear a single gunshot, we we will uh >> [laughter] >> Yeah. As you can expect, we'll just get downed straight away.

[00:08:28]Um It's It's well-known that in these sorts of uh areas, what you what you would be using is what's called a spread spectrum um technique. So, the emergency beacon would periodically, maybe once an hour at first until uh you set it to a higher rate so that when you think they're getting close to you to find you, um maybe once an hour, it will send a a coded message um that is below the noise floor of that radio band. So, someone nearby with a radio power receiver cannot detect your broadcast. It's so weak, it's below the noise floor.

[00:09:12]Um but the satellites >> [snorts] >> know this code word, and they can search for it using what's called coherent integration and find it out of the the noise floor. Nice magic bit of digital signal processing.

[00:09:26]And these sorts of periodic simple broadcasts that are just like a click, the system checking in, we call them heartbeats. So, so we refer to that as the heartbeat message from that >> It's It's to show that the thing is still operational, just like if your heart is beating, you're you're still alive, basically. Yeah. So, there's a very good chance that in the situation room, and there would have been a lot of people very worried, very senior people very worried about this aviator was lost, whether they were going to find them, whether this person was going to be captured and how they're going to be treated. You know, it would have been horrendously bad bad in lots of ways if this person had been captured. So, there's quite good chance that lots of senior people with little understanding of different technologies involved might have been hearing the discussions about how they knew where he was, what the beacons were doing. And there's a chance someone simply said, "We've detected the heartbeats.

[00:10:28]So, we know he's there." Yeah. And what they're referring to is the heartbeats from the radio locating device.

[00:10:34]And someone else has overheard that and thought they literally meant we've detected the person's heartbeats.

[00:10:39]So, that's that's probably where there's a bit of um confusion that's come in the mix and where this whole story came.

[00:10:45]Because if kind of that sort of little bit of information slipped out the side and a reporter heard it and the reporter was like They said they've picked up his heartbeats and then the reporters picked up the phone to, you know, the um the the friendly uh technologist that that reporter always phones up and goes They said what the Yeah, you could see in the article.

[00:11:08]They're like, "What the hell? What the hell are you talking about?" Yeah. So, if you go to some technologist and go, "What kind of technology could pick up heartbeats from space?" And that technologist has been recently reading about all of the quantum technologies for navigation and sensing and how sensitive they are, they might go, "Well, the only thing I can think of is heartbeats, magnetic fields, ludicrously sensitive magnetometers, new quantum tech."

[00:11:31]But the the math doesn't work and it would be insane to use that approach when the guy has a personal radio locator beacon which transmits once a minute or once an hour or whatever it might be to satellites and provides a GPS location which is accurate to a few meters. Yeah. So, I I strongly suspect that he was not picked up with a 2026 era um quantum magnetometer. I suspect he was picked up with a 1995 era >> [laughter] >> um emergency GPS-based radio locator beacon. So, so to just go a little bit deeper into this for people. So, this is supposedly the the ghost murmur which was developed by Lockheed Martin and and as Ramsey said, your heart emits these tiny magnetic pulses because it's driven by ions flowing through the the neurons of the heart and you get this periodic uh pulse from the heart and and people have been using this since the '60s to kind of monitor hearts. Particularly useful fetal heartbeats because it's very difficult to to get the electrodes on there and and measure the heartbeat um electrically. Um and we've had these things called SQUIDs which do something similar. Now, the idea with this this uh I don't exactly know the science that's going on, but apparently this this ghost murmur is made out of um diamonds where they replace one of the uh carbon atoms with a nitrogen atom.

[00:12:53]They call it a nitrogen vacancy.

[00:12:55]Essentially traps a single electron and then when these pulses come towards it, you can kind of spin the single electron. It becomes a kind of quantum sensor and therefore you can get um very very tiny magnetic fields to kind of spin um this electron. Now, the problem, as you said, and why scientists are incredibly skeptical that you could detect this person from tens of kilometers away. Uh first of all, the signals from a changing magnetic field from the heart are extremely weak. So, on the surface of the chest of an adult, that's only a few centimeters away from your heart, you're already measuring I think you've got here 0.1 nanoTeslas.

[00:13:34]So, that's a millionth as strong as the Earth's magnetic field straight away. So, you're already tiny tiny tiny magnetic fields.

[00:13:44]And then you talk about detection at a distance as you said, you know, it's falling off, right? So, it's barely detectable after a few centimeters on the surface of the skin, never mind tens of kilometers or 60 kilometers as as Donald Trump was saying. And as you also said, environmental noise. So, you can swamp this very easily with other magnetic signals. So, if you're in the desert in Iran, it's not exactly a quiet place magnetically, right? You've got mineral deposits, you've got power lines, um you've got the rest of the war happening in the background. So, how do you isolate those specific um you know, signals from a heartbeat?

[00:14:20]That's going to be very very difficult.

[00:14:22]And they had lots of people on the ground. Iran had lots of people on the ground looking for this um soldier. The these sensors we're talking about are not hugely directional. You're not pointing at Pennsylvania.

[00:14:37]And so, if you fly over a region, you're detecting the um magnetic field and its fluctuations and variations just of the area around you. And so, even if you had some amazing signal processing that you were doing in order to detect heartbeats, um you wouldn't be able to distinguish this guy's heartbeat from all of the other people's heartbeats looking for him. So, that aspect of it makes no sense as well I uh too, so. It strikes me that if you have to get sort of close enough to be able to do this, you you're going to be able to see the guy, right? Probably or you're going to be in the region where as you said, you're going to be able to use a radio more effectively. So, it it seems it seems absolutely absolutely wild, to be honest. There's there's also an issue here, right, of the the nature of the technology being used kind of in theaters. So, it depends what they are using, whether they're using this ghost murmur or whether they're using a kind of more traditional kind of SQUID. If you're using a more traditional kind of SQUID, you've got this kind of ultra-cold rubidium atoms.

[00:15:36]Like how you use that in the Iranian desert flying 40 m above the ground, I don't know. Yeah. I don't know how fragile these things would be if you were using them in theater. I'd have to research that a little bit more.

[00:15:48]So, the thing that is the big showstopper kind of headline thing about the new quantum uh diamond-based tech is it's like tiny. It's sort of literally this kind of size.

[00:16:02]>> And that's what's cool about it. Right.

[00:16:03]Um other than that, it's just a magnetometer. Um but quite a sensitive one. But yeah, the superconducting SQUID stuff, that's not how they would have been doing it.

[00:16:13]Is the hype around this a big problem?

[00:16:16]So, we see our usual like I said, our usual clickbait friends push this out.

[00:16:20]You know, in a way, it's a cool idea, it's cool technology, but there's a problem here, right?

[00:16:25]Because this is technology which is usually used for discovering, for example, abnormalities in fetal hearts.

[00:16:33]And if you get over hype of how this can be used, then potentially you can see backlash, cutting of funding, this type of thing. So, one of the researchers that we saw in the in the science article talking about this, so they reached out obviously to these technologists, they were saying that they were really worried that people covering this and saying it can do all these crazy things being completely over the top will lead to backlash. So, it's all well and good the Trump administration kind of saying, "Isn't it amazing what the US military can do and we can discover these heartbeats from 60 km away?" And Trump saying this. But then last year, they actually cancel canceled an initiative to encourage small businesses to develop exactly this kind of quantum sensor for applications like looking at fetal heartbeats, detecting heartbeats from small distances away. So, there's a again, as we kind of come as a as a kind of general principle throughout this discussion, hype doesn't necessarily help you all the time, right? It's a double-edged sword. You shouldn't be saying these things if it's not necessarily something that's that's truly happened.

[00:17:41]Yeah, I mean, it probably wasn't a huge plan um that they were going to be um announcing this thing true or not. I think a lot of the the nature of the downed airman dealing with that and and the rescue mission, um this the fact that this sort of probably not true rumor came out and they they were happy to to kind of let the idea that the US military have this insanely cool new power that would allow them to detect any human um using their heartbeat from any distance away. That's kind of what I wanted to jump on. As why would the US military, if this if this story is not accurate, and and I think most scientists and technologists are in agreement that as presented, discovery from tens of kilometers away it is not in fact accurate. Why would Skunk Works, why would, you know, the US military want this idea to propagate unchallenged in the in the media?

[00:18:45]So, um it Or allow it to happen. Maybe not want, but allow it to So, there's there's a couple of things there. Um certainly if there was some cool tech that was secret that they did use that wasn't this, but was actually physically possible, but they didn't want to have to explain what it was because they wanted to keep it secret, then this is a great thing to go, "Yep, sure, fine. It was an an awesome new quantum tech that we've got. Let's go with that." And in the same way as well that all of the UFO stuff over the years, vast majority of UFO things, brilliant picture, have been that fella and a few others >> [laughter] >> over the years of of nighthawks being seen over airbases and blackbird being seen and U2 spy planes being seen and all these lights in the sky that were secret aircraft that the military didn't want to confirm that yes, there's an an aircraft that we don't particularly want you to you to take photos of that's being tested in that range. Anytime that someone was phoning up going, "I think I saw aliens over your base." They'd go, "You're right, it was aliens over our base, you know, what I'm saying?

[00:19:52]>> [laughter] >> It's It's flying sources, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Don't take pictures of my plane.

[00:19:57]Um and it It's a lot of that, right? If um it's a little bit like the don't interrupt your enemy when they're making a mistake. Um uh if if something is uh distracting away from the thing you're trying to keep secret, then allow it to keep distracting away.

[00:20:19]And it also helps, I guess, from the the kind of Trump administration angle, like you said, if the American military were trying to project that the American military is this all-conquering force, it having these god-like tracking powers is is is is all good for that, right? It's It's uh It's helpful.

[00:20:35]>> Yeah.

[00:20:36]Yeah.

[00:20:37]Maybe more funding as well for this kind of thing. We have a very uh we have a very what should we say, military-sympathetic, military-supporting administration in at the moment, so maybe if you can push a bit of hype on these quantum sensors, maybe uh more money for it. So, uh well, the people that are working on them are are definitely always keen to keep them in top of the news. I mean, the real use of this exact technology, that what it's really being tested for at the moment is for uh GPS-denied navigation, mainly.

[00:21:06]>> Um the argument that you can generate maps of uh magnetic anomalies using satellites, probably, or maybe other lower surveying techniques. Um and then uh if you can't use GNSS or GPS, uh you basically, as you fly along, you're detecting all of these fluctuations and variations in the magnetic field, and you look at your map and you go, "The only trajectory I could have gone along at my speed for the last 10 minutes that had that particular pattern of fluctuations is this path right here, so I must be there."

[00:21:42]And we've been doing that for donkey's years with with various other technologies, sonar and underwater and stuff like that. So, magnetic map matching is um something that's that some companies are currently pushing um quite hard. The issue with it with it is that its accuracy is pretty variable and nowhere near as good as GNSS, so the typical accuracy of of any instantaneous position fix using magnetic anomaly detection will be like 50 to 150 m.

[00:22:11]Um And I think I could push a few bar magnets into the ground and ruin your map.

[00:22:16]So, I mean, uh certainly, there's a question, maybe not small little bar magnets, but there might be a question if people wanted to start jamming these things, if they could do with coil Helmholtz coils and and electromagnets. And if you thought a drone was uh navigating using um magnetic anomalies, perhaps you fly another drone nearby with a coil that's generating magnetic fluctuations, so Yeah.

[00:22:43]This It's constantly a cat and mouse game. It's keeping us all employed.

[00:22:48]There we go.

[00:22:49]Ramsey, thank you very much for for going through that with us. I think, as you said, most scientists, most technologists, most people who work in sensor sensor fusion are pretty skeptical of this story, right?

[00:23:00]So, it was a It was a clickbait story, went out by a lot of the big science technology channels, but uh find it kind of hard to believe.

[00:23:09]Okay. And this was uh myth busted this time round. I want to know what you think, because you're the scholars of enlightenment that I do this for. So, please take a moment, if you wish, to let me know down in the comments section. And if you like this video, please consider leaving a like, subscribing, setting up notifications, and sharing this video more widely. I can't tell you how much these simple actions help me out, and how much I'd appreciate it. Thanks for watching.

[00:23:44]Thanks for being scientific.

[00:23:46]Thanks for being bad.