Практика Shadowing: The CIA's new tech doesn't make sense - Изучайте разговорный английский по видео
Создание урока...
1
Could the CIA really track your heartbeat from kilometers away?
2
On April 3rd, 2026, Iranian forces shot down an American fighter plane just over Isfahan.
3
Inside were a pilot and a weapons system officer, and both ejected successfully.
4
The US forces located the pilot quickly and rescued him only seven hours after the crash, but they couldn't rescue the weapons system officer.
5
He landed elsewhere, deep within hostile territory, and worst of all, he was injured.
6
With the Iranian forces on his tail, the officer needed to hide quickly, so he disappeared into the mountains.
7
This launched the U.S and Iran into a race to find him.
8
Fortunately, the officer had a rescue beacon that could signal his location to the U.S.
9
The problem was that he not only had to step out of his hiding spot to transmit the signal, Iran could potentially intercept it and get to him first.
10
So he could only use the beacon sparingly.
11
With enemy forces getting closer every hour, how is the US going to pinpoint his location inside hundreds of square kilometers of the desert?
12
Comparable to hunting for a single grain of sand in the middle of a desert.
13
A blind sweep of the entire area could take days or even weeks.
14
But surprisingly, just 40 hours after the crash, the US announced the officer was rescued.
15
Still invisible to the enemy, but not to the CIA.
16
So how did they do it?
17
Well, according to a New York Post article, the CIA deployed a futuristic device to rescue him.
18
Reportedly, they were able to detect the magnetic field produced by his heartbeat from kilometers away.
19
Such a device would have to overcome the magnetic signatures from other soldiers, vehicles and animals in the region, let alone Earth's magnetic field.
20
It's like listening for a murmur in a crowd.
21
So, the technology was appropriately called Ghost Murmur.
22
Immediately this kicked off a media frenzy.
23
Ghost murmur.
24
This is science fiction.
25
Ghost murmur.
26
Did you hear about what the CIA tech that they have?
27
Called the ghost murmur.
28
Called the ghost murmur.
29
All of this sounds too good to be true
30
and there seem to be no other sources beyond this New York Post article.
31
So we dug deep to find out whether this supposed technology really exists and what its limits are.
32
I very rarely believe things I read in the New York Post.
33
I find it extremely difficult to believe.
34
Many of these researchers in the NV Diamond area are having to sign NDAs.
35
The fact that the CIA is involved in leveraging technology is consistent with their mission and their charter.
36
So, is ghost murmur fact or fiction?
37
There are two lines in this New York Post article that hint at what this device can be.
38
First, normally this signal is so weak that it can only be measured in a hospital setting, with sensors pressed nearly against the chest, the source said.
39
But advances in a field known as quantum magnetometry, specifically sensors built around microscopic defects in synthetic diamonds,
40
have apparently made it possible to detect these signals at dramatically greater distances.
41
We're gonna break this down bit by bit.
42
First, does the heart actually create detectable magnetic fields?
43
Second, what are these synthetic diamonds that could potentially detect them?
44
And third, is it all possible at these distances?
45
Let's start with the heart.
46
Now, if you type heart magnetic field into Google images, you will get a bunch of questionable looking graphs.
47
So is it a real thing?
48
Well, whenever current flows through a conductor, it generates a magnetic field around it.
49
And since our bodies run on electrical impulses traveling through neurons, our tissues and organs generate faint magnetic signals.
50
But because the heart muscles fire in a coordinated way, the magnetic field they produce is the strongest in the body.
51
It's around 50 to 100 picoteslas, 10 to 100 times more than the next strongest field produced by the brain.
52
But even then, this is still a million times weaker than Earth's magnetic field, so it's no surprise that we only detected the magnetic field of the heart in 1963.
53
It had to be done in a remote field, away from the magnetic noise produced by lab equipment, elevators and cars, and the setup had to be incredibly still still.
54
Even the slightest vibration of the detector would corrupt the measurement, not something that could work on a helicopter or a military drone.
55
But pretty soon magnetometers got better.
56
By the 1970s, we got superconducting quantum interference devices, or squids.
57
These magnetometers were incredibly sensitive, detecting fields as weak as a few femtotesla.
58
To no surprise, the US military quickly strapped these squids squids to planes and helicopters, and they tried to use them to detect large magnetic signatures like submarines in the ocean.
59
But the project never really picked up.
60
Nonetheless, squids also made it easier to detect the heart's magnetic field, but with a key caveat.
61
They typically need to be operated under very small, very tightly controlled conditions, often inside of shielded rooms.
62
They can't handle large dynamic range of background fields and electromagnetic interference.
63
The computer magnetometers offered solutions, but they also had their own drawbacks.
64
There were always issues with either shielding or sensitivity or dynamic range
65
that made them impractical for detecting heartbeats out in the field.
66
Until the 1990s, when physicists started looking into diamonds
67
that might eventually be able to sense magnetic fields while potentially getting around the drawbacks.
68
These new quantum magnetometers work at room temperature operation and that's what's really exciting about them.
69
They're also a solid state sensor which can be very practical for some applications
70
and can be made into like a more robust kind of sensor.
71
These are the diamonds mentioned in the New York Post article.
72
So how do they work?
73
Now the overall coverage of the story is actually very interesting.
74
Because this tech is supposedly classified, there's a lot of uncertainty about whether what's being reported is actually real.
75
And depending on which outlet you see first, you might arrive at completely different conclusions.
76
For example, if you saw this headline first, you might be really impressed with the technology, But this one you'd be a bit more skeptical.
77
And the last one might not even make you care about the tech.
78
So three headlines, three completely different conclusions.
79
And that's where today's sponsor, Ground News, comes in.
80
They're a website and an app designed to make reading the news easier and more data-driven.
81
Each day they round up stories from thousands of outlets all around the world
82
and give you a visual breakdown of the story, including its political leaning, factuality rating,
83
and even ownership, all backed by ratings from three independent media monitoring organizations.
84
In case of this ghost murmur story, you can see that it's been reported on by 65 sources, but the coverage is pretty lopsided, so if you only get your news from right-leaning outlets,
85
there's a chance you've seen the story, but if you only get it from the left, there's a chance you haven't.
86
And below that, you can also see the factuality rating and the ownerships of the sources.
87
They also have this blind spot feature, which highlights stories like the ghost murmur one that were underreported on by either side of the political spectrum.
88
Staying up to date and well-informed with accurate information has almost become a full-time job, and that's where Ground News' approach is so valuable.
89
They make reading the news more digestible and accessible, and you can see all of the information within moments, not hours.
90
So if you, like us at Veritasium, care about getting to the truth, you can go to ground.news.ve or scan this QR code, and our link will get you 40% off their vantage plan.
91
So I want to thank Ground News for sponsoring this part of the video, and now let's go figure out how those diamonds actually detect magnetic fields.
92
Well, for something to function as a magnetometer, it needs to respond to a magnetic field in a way that we can detect.
93
Now a pure diamond is just an ordered lattice of carbon atoms, so it doesn't react to magnetic fields in a meaningful way.
94
But this changes when you start adding defects to the lattice.
95
You can replace one of the carbon atoms in the lattice with, say, a nitrogen, and if you remove one of the carbons next to it completely, well that creates a vacancy.
96
This defect is called a nitrogen vacancy or an NV center.
97
And these NV centers become particularly useful when they trap two unpaired electrons.
98
That's because electrons have this intrinsic property called spin.
99
A simple and flawed analogy is
100
that spin is kind of like a tiny bar magnet that gives electrons their own magnetic signature, and it can point either up or down.
101
So, when an electron is exposed to an external magnetic field, this magnetic signature will either align itself with the field or against it.
102
Also note that particles that have no net spin will not respond to an external magnetic field.
103
Now, the two trapped electrons can arrange their spins in the following way.
104
They could both point up, which would give you a spin magnetic quantum number of 1.
105
They could both point down for a quantum number of minus one, or they could point in opposite directions for a quantum number of zero.
106
We'll denote this spin magnetic quantum number with MS, and it essentially acts as a bar magnet for the whole NV center.
107
And just like for individual electrons, this bar magnet is also sensitive to external magnetic fields.
108
So, now that we've created a diamond that responds to magnetic fields, the challenge which is, how do we measure this response to detect a heartbeat?
109
Okay, so I reached out to experts to try and figure this out, but basically out of the 20 or so emails that I sent, I only got a few responses,
110
but then I got an impromptu call from one of these experts who said
111
that many of these researchers in the NV Diamond area are having to sign NDAs.
112
This is getting a lot more interesting, but with how secretive everyone was being, I had to use publicly available research.
113
And I think the key idea is to figure out how diamonds respond to magnetic fields, you have to use light.
114
When you shine light at an atom, the atom can either absorb the light or ignore it.
115
An absorbed photon of light will excite an electron within the atom to a higher energy level.
116
You can think of these energy levels as discrete platforms that the electrons can jump between, just like in a video game.
117
All atoms of the same element, for example carbon, have the same energy levels when the atoms are far enough apart.
118
But when you bring them together, like inside a diamond lattice, their energy levels shift.
119
They come together to form a series of closely spaced energy levels or an energy band.
120
Now, an electron will only ever absorb a photon
121
if the photon has enough energy to move the electron across the gap to a higher band.
122
This gap between the last electron-occupied band and the first empty band above it is called the band gap.
123
In a pure diamond, it's big, it's around 5.5 electron volts, which means that only ultraviolet photons have enough energy to excite the electrons.
124
All lower energy light, including visible light, will mostly be ignored by the diamond and just pass through.
125
This is why a perfect pure diamond is transparent, it doesn't absorb any of the light.
126
But if you start adding defects, they disrupt that organized lattice.
127
The defects unlock different energy levels, secret platforms within this bandgap for nearby electrons to jump to.
128
A boron defect, for example, creates a low energy level at only 0.37 electron volts.
129
This is a platform that electrons can jump to by absorbing infrared or red light.
130
And with enough boron defects, a significant amount of red light gets absorbed this way.
131
The rest of the visible spectrum mostly makes it through so without this red, the diamond appears blue.
132
Similarly, a nitrogen vacancy defect unlocks other secret platforms
133
and these can help us detect how the NV Center responds to a magnetic field.
134
At first glance, it looks like the nitrogen vacancy generates a few unique levels
135
and these are exclusive to the two unpaired electrons trapped within the defect.
136
But if you look closer at, for example the lowest level, you'll notice that it actually contains three closely spaced but separate energy levels.
137
The second and third levels are actually at the same height but will draw them separately.
138
And the fact that there are three isn't a coincidence.
139
Remember, the NV Center can adopt one of three MS numbers.
140
Zero, minus one or one, depending on how the spins of the two electrons inside are arranged.
141
If you think of the two spins as bar magnets, the most relaxed, lowest energy way for them to sit is this, one pointing up and the other down.
142
This is analogous to the ms equals zero state, which is why it has the lowest energy.
143
Forcing both magnets to point down together, or up together, like the ms equals one or minus one states, requires more energy, they oppose you,
144
so these two states are at an equal, slightly higher energy sublevel.
145
These differences are tiny.
146
Jumping from the zero to the plus minus one levels requires only a small amount of energy.
147
A microwave photon of 10.4 centimeters will be enough.
148
Now these secret energy platforms of NV centers were mapped out by the 90s.
149
But for a long time no one thought to use them as magnetometers.
150
It was a decade before the light bulb went on for a bunch of us to think about them as sensors.
151
It takes a mindset switch to think differently and once you do you realize oh My goodness, this could be useful.
152
So let's apply a magnetic field to this diamond and see what happens.
153
If we slowly turn up the field strength, you'll see that the plus one and minus one levels are starting to shift.
154
To understand why, we can use a compass needle as an analogy.
155
Naturally, a compass needle will align itself with the magnetic field of the earth.
156
And this is the lowest energy relaxed state that the needle can be in.
157
And it's analogous to the behavior of the system in the MS equals minus one state, which is why its energy level drops slightly.
158
But if MS is one, the system flips.
159
This would be like taking an external magnet and applying it to this compass needle, flipping it 180 degrees.
160
And then if I'm careful in retracting this magnet, I can actually get the needle to stay in this place.
161
And this is the highest energy this needle can have, sitting in this unstable position.
162
Now if I tap it, it will actually go back.
163
It's possible, but it's a higher energy state.
164
So the ms equals 1 level slightly rises.
165
And if ms is 0, it doesn't react to the field, which is why this level hasn't changed.
166
Now, if you keep turning up the magnetic field strength, you'll notice that the levels get further and further apart.
167
This phenomenon is called Zeeman splitting.
168
It's described by a simple formula
169
that gives you a direct link between the energy split and the magnetic field strength field strength.
170
So, in the presence of a periodic magnetic field, like that generated by the heart, we would theoretically see a rhythmic separation of these lines.
171
And these two energy levels absorb light at two different microwave wavelengths, which change depending on the strength of the field.
172
So, what we can actually measure is which microwave wavelengths the diamond is absorbing.
173
When there's no magnetic field, the levels are fused and produce a a single absorption line at the wavelength of 10.4 cm.
174
But when there's an external magnetic field, they produce two separate absorption lines.
175
Now, we've simplified it a bit, but by measuring how spaced apart these lines are, you get the field strength.
176
This is how an NV diamond magnetometer works.
177
Was the diamond magnetometer ever used to detect a heartbeat?
178
So what has been done for sure, for certain, is detection of magnetic fields generated by neurons,
179
which is connected to the heartbeat question.
180
Neuron activity, to my knowledge, has been first seen in 2015.
181
Okay, well that's impressive.
182
So could it pick up a heartbeat from kilometers away?
183
Well, in 2022, researchers were able to pick up the magnetic field of a rat's heart
184
but it was done using a thoracotomy which means the rat's chest was open
185
and the diamond was less than two millimeters away from the heart.
186
Okay but the human heart produces a stronger magnetic field
187
and the tech the CIA might have deployed could be decades ahead of what is publicly known.
188
You're a former CIA operations officer and you've worked in in the Middle East, right?
189
So what was your first reaction to this news?
190
Well, the fact that the CIA's involved in leveraging technology is consistent with their mission and their charter.
191
But I defer to smarter people in engineering and science like yourself to figure out the exact technique that might be used.
192
But the processes, of course, are consistent with what we've done.
193
We can't say for sure whether the CIA has this tech, but we can use physics to estimate how sensitive it would need to be.
194
The strength of a magnetic field falls off with the cube of the distance from the source.
195
So if the magnetic field of the heart, when measured at the chest, is 50 picotesla, or 5 times 10 to the negative 11 tesla, well then just 100 meters away,
196
this falls off by a factor of a billion to 5 times 10 to the negative 20 tesla.
197
And at 50 to 100 kilometers, this could drop to as little as 10 to the negative 30 tesla.
198
The most sensitive measurement ever made at the frequencies
199
that the human heartbeat work at is at the 10 to the minus 15 tesla level.
200
And that's in a shielded room.
201
So you need a system that is 15 orders of magnitude more sensitive than the superconducting quantum interference devices.
202
And 18 orders of magnitude more sensitive than diamond NB sensors.
203
18 orders of magnitude is a lot.
204
Sounds quite unfeasible.
205
It's not like the hills of Iran are devoid of animal life.
206
They also have heartbeats and possibly larger hearts than humans.
207
There's also the magnetic field of the drone or the helicopter the device might be mounted on.
208
And finally, there's the fact
209
that a magnetic field of 10 to the negative 30 Tesla
210
is weaker than a magnetic field an electron will give you a meter away.
211
The New York Post is notoriously a very good place for amusing fiction.
212
On the day before we saw this article, we also saw an article about how they had a technology where it was a beeper.
213
The airman had sent out a beacon and that was one way that they were able to detect him.
214
And these are things that we know about already.
215
We also know that there may well have been other intelligence methods used, but this isn't really necessary.
216
And then that brings you to the point of like, why would they make this up?
217
I think New York Post is known to print a lot of stuff.
218
I'm not a real fan of the credibility of the press to report things, having seen reality and then seen what the press reports.
219
How about deception stories and false narratives published by not only the CIA but other agencies?
220
Is this often the case?
221
If you look historically, the idea of fooling your enemy, particularly when you have some vulnerability to protect, goes back thousands of years.
222
During World War II, German bombers frequently attacked Britain at night.
223
And to retaliate, the British would fly up to intercept
224
and somehow kept finding these bombers in the dark and would attack them.
225
Now UK officials told the press that the pilots were able to do this because they ate a lot of carrots, which was improving their vision at night.
226
But some experts believe
227
that this was actually a cover story meant to distract the Germans from the fact the British installed radars on their planes.
228
Is that where the idea that carrots give you good eyesight comes from?
229
I think so.
230
I think this is the original myth.
231
That is crazy.
232
Yeah.
233
But, okay, there's one thing that still bothers me.
234
If this is likely fake, then why is everyone saying no comment and declining to talk?
235
There must be something here, no?
236
Well, these NV centers and diamonds are also used for quantum computing.
237
But the more interesting, probably confidential way they could be used is as navigation devices.
238
The Earth's magnetic field creates a unique pattern all across the globe.
239
Then, you place an object into this map.
240
And if you know all of these perturbations and inhomogeneities, you can infer where you are without having any GPS reception anymore.
241
With the rise of GPS spoofing and jamming over the last couple of years, that could be incredibly powerful.
242
So, NV magnetometers do exist with these synthetic diamonds, and they do have potential military applications.
243
It's just that detecting heartbeats kilometers away probably isn't one of them.
244
I want to give a shout out to a great Scientific American article on this story by Denny Bouchard
245
that initially expressed skepticism in Ghost Murmur as a potential technology.
246
It's a great read and you should check it out.
📺 Тот же канал
C11
Something is jamming GPS over Europe. Here's what we found
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C11
The Absurd Engineering Behind the Internet
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C11
Why It Was Almost Impossible to Make the Blue LED
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C12
You've (Likely) Been Playing The Game Of Life Wrong
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B22
We're trying something new...
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
C120
How does light 'know' the shortest path?
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C11
Why does every mammal get 1 billion heartbeats in their life?
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C13
Why Cold Drinks Were Deadly Before 1914
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C14
Exposing The Flaw In Our Phone System
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C12
Our Greatest Delusion
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C13
The Most Controversial Problem in Philosophy
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B25
Why Boredom is Good For You
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B24
Why Are 96,000,000 Black Balls on This Reservoir?
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C13
We've Been Using The Wrong Science In Court For 50 years
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B24
Explaining Pi With Pizza
University Students
B214
5 Fun Physics Phenomena
Daily ConversationUniversity Students
C11
The Most Misunderstood Concept in Physics
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B11
Falling ladders - why does this happen?
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepHigh School Students
C110
How a slinky falls in slow motion #shorts
University StudentsWorking Adults
C13
We're 99.9% sure this pattern is true, but no one can prove it
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
✨ Рекомендуемое видео
C11
217 предложений
Ex-CIA Officer Explains The Shadowy World of Private Armies | John Kiriakou
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C12
530 предложений
Human Immortality 4K | Can Science Defeat Aging?
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B22
319 предложений
This 'Ugly' Jet Could Strike in Any Weather – And Nothing Could Replace It
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B21
47 предложений
How to find hidden clues at crime scenes Theodore E Yeshion
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C11
242 предложений
🎧 Luyện Nghe Tiếng Anh Level C1- TRÍ TUỆ NHÂN TẠO - | Listening English Podcast |🎯
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C11
380 предложений
A man hiked in the woods. Every brain cell got cooked.
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B217
89 предложений
How The CIA Hacked Russia
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C12
151 предложений
My thoughts on the first round of UFO files
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B24
148 предложений
MH370's LAST Hunt. MYSTERY FINALLY SOLVED.
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
B24
6 предложений
The Hidden Danger Of Bionic Vision 😨
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C171
15 предложений
We Won’t Explore the Galaxy...
IELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
Сценарий: Спасение за вражеской линией
Видео рассказывает о реальной ситуации, когда после сбивания американского самолета в Иране пилот-оператор оказался в глубоком тылу врага. С его спасением помогла, якобы, новая технология ЦРУ — "Призракный шепот", способная детектировать магнитное поле сердца на километрах. Диалог сочетает технические детали, эмоциональные моменты и размышления о научной реалистичности, что делает его отличным материалом для практики аудирования и произношения.
Полезные сочетания и выражения
- To eject successfully — успешно катапультироваться (важное выражение для описания аварийных ситуаций)
- Hostile territory — враждебная территория (стильное сочетание вместо простого "вражеская земля")
- Blind sweep — слепое обзорное обстрел (или поиск), используется в военной терминологии
- Media frenzy — медийная истерия (хорошо передаёт бурный интерес СМИ)
- Quantum magnetometry — квантовая магнитометрия (технический термин, актуальный в современных науках)
Ваше задание: Shadowing
Для практики shadowing английский выберите отрывок из видео длиной 30 секунд (лучше фрагмент с обсуждением технологии). Сначала прослушайте его несколько раз, запомните интонацию и ритм. Затем начните повторять за спикером сразу после его слов, стараясь совпадать по темпу и эмоциональной окраске. Это поможет улучшить ваше произношение и реакцию. Если вы учите английский с YouTube, такие упражнения — отличный способ адаптироваться к естественной речи. Проверяйте, как вы произносите "ghost murmur" или "magnetic field" — эти фразы часто встречаются в технических текстах. Не бойтесь ошибок: shadowspeak — это про практику, а не идеальность!
Грамматика в этом видео
Конструкции, которые говорящий использует чаще всего, с точными словами из видео:
| Конструкция | В видео |
|---|---|
| Условные предложения if + предложение, will/would + глагол — условие и его результат | if I tap it, it will actually |
| Пассивный залог be + причастие прошедшего времени — важно, что происходит, а не кто это делает | was injured · was rescued · is involved |
| Present Perfect have/has + причастие прошедшего времени — прошлое действие, важное сейчас | you've seen · we've created · hasn't changed |
| Придаточные определительные who / which + предложение — уточнение о человеке или предмете | sensor which can · challenge which is · volts, which means |
Что такое техника Shadowing?
Shadowing — это научно обоснованная техника изучения языка, изначально разработанная для подготовки профессиональных переводчиков и популяризированная полиглотом доктором Александром Аргуэльесом. Метод прост, но эффективен: вы слушаете аудио на английском от носителей языка и немедленно повторяете вслух — как тень, следующая за говорящим с задержкой в 1–2 секунды. В отличие от пассивного прослушивания или грамматических упражнений, Shadowing заставляет мозг и мышцы рта одновременно обрабатывать и воспроизводить реальные речевые паттерны. Исследования показывают, что это значительно улучшает точность произношения, интонацию, ритм, связную речь, понимание на слух и беглость речи — что делает его одним из самых эффективных методов для подготовки к IELTS Speaking и реального общения на английском.