This contest from DARPA caught my eye because it involves weather balloons, the Internet, and social networking. WUWT is poised to help due to our reach, and because we have lots of keen eyed surfacestations.org volunteers with GPS and cameras.
This prize would be enough money to put a full page ad about climate in a major media outlet. Or, all balloon locators could equally split the winnings with me as facilitator. All you have to do is locate the weather balloons and get the lat/lon to me. The idea of this contest is to use social networking to locate them and win. Once the balloons are launched on December 5th, we have 9 days to find them. I think there’s a good chance WUWT readers can pull this off pretty quickly.
The way to do this (without tipping off competitors) is to post a notice in comments, saying you have a located one, and leave an email address where you can be contacted.
If WUWT readers think this is a good idea, I’ll register the website and we’ll give it a go. I also welcome strategies. My only question (which doesn’t seem to be delineated in the announcement) is how is DARPA going to label real balloons from regular red ones commonly available and used for promotions? I’ve sent them a query.
Here are the details:
From the rules:
The challenge is to locate ten moored red weather balloons located at ten fixed locations in the continental United States. Balloons will be in readily accessible locations, visible from nearby roadways and accompanied by DARPA representatives. All balloons are scheduled to go on display at all locations at 10:00AM (ET) until approximately 4:00 PM (local time) on Saturday, December 5, 2009. Should weather or technical difficulties arise with the launch, the display will be delayed until Sunday, December 6 or later, depending on conditions. If, for any reason, the balloon is displayed in one location then moved to a second location, either location will be accepted. Entrants are required to register and submit entries on the event website. Latitudes and longitudes are entered in degree-minute-second (DDD-MM-SS) format as explained on the website Coordinates must be entered with an error of less than one arc-minute to be accepted. In the event that one or more balloons is never displayed, this fact will be noted on the event website and the rules adjusted accordingly.
DARPA ANNOUNCES NEW CHALLENGE COMPETITION
The DARPA Network Challenge Will Explore How Broad-Scope Problems Can Be Solved Using Internet-based Technologies.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) today announced the DARPA Network Challenge to mark the 40th anniversary of the Internet. The competition requires participants to discover the exact position of 10 large, red weather balloons that DARPA will place in undisclosed locations across the continental United States. The first person to identify the location of all the balloons will win a $40,000 cash prize. The balloons will be positioned on December 5, 2009.
“It is fitting for DARPA to announce this competition on the anniversary of the day that the first message was sent over the ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet,” said Dr. Regina E. Dugan, who made the announcement at a conference celebrating the anniversary. “In the 40 years since this breakthrough, the Internet has become an integral part of society and the global economy. The DARPA Network Challenge explores the unprecedented ability of the Internet to bring people together to solve tough problems.”
The DARPA Network Challenge is open to individuals of all ages, reflecting DARPA’s interest in attracting students to pursue careers in the areas of science and technology, including emerging specialties in the social sciences. Open to participants worldwide, the Challenge enables collaboration across borders, mobilizing individuals and groups to address difficult problems aided by the Internet.
This is the latest example of DARPA’s interest in reaching nontraditional sources of ideas and talent. The Grand Challenge competitions were started in 2004 to foster the development of autonomous robotic vehicle technology for use on the battlefield. The competition model for stimulating technological development enabled significant strides that will someday keep our men and women in uniform out of harm’s way.
“The DARPA Network Challenge taps into the same fresh thinking that made the earlier competitions a success,” said Dr. Norman Whitaker, who led DARPA’s most recent Challenge. “Future innovation depends on the upcoming generation of technologists who are discovering new, collaborative ways to approach problems that were not dreamt of 40 years ago.”
The 10 balloons will be placed in publicly accessible locations in the continental United States and will be on display for one day (December 5th) during daylight hours. The first participant to identify the latitude and longitude of all 10 balloons will receive the cash prize.
Event details can be found at www.darpa.mil/networkchallenge and updates on Twitter.com/DARPA_News.
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Sounds like a go to me. If one lands on Catalina Island, you’ll be the first to know, Anthony.
Maybe they could make the balloons UFO shaped and claim there is a 6-year old boy on board. They would get lots of attention that way.
I can’t help on this one, as they are fixed in the USA. But if one gets loose and it makes it’s way here to Portugal, I’ll let you know!
😉
Ecotretas
I will try to help. Will the reports be on a public thread? My recommendation is that the reports be kept private. Two reasons, one so that email addresses remain hidden and other teams can’t snoop to try to find info. Perhaps a balloon sighting report box. It sends a message to a protected thread that only administrators can read. I say go for it. I think you could win it. Make sure that you come up with a way to distribute any winnings before the date of the contest. That way you can make that part of the TOS when someone submits a report and you can minimize the sour grapes. (Yes I am a lawyer). The simplest would be to require that anyone submitting grants any rights to you as the administrator and any winnings to be distributed as you see fit. Basically a waiver of any rights to the prize for the individual submitters. This avoids the sticky wicket of multiple reports of the same site. You could use message time stamps, but that will always raise suspicion. I seriously believe that you should include a waiver of any rights to the prize money for submissions. In addition you should clearly state what any prize money would be spent on. I personally think that is the best way to go on this.
Ten balloons. Hum.
Seattle, LA, Chicago, New York, Miami, Houston, Phoenix, Denver, Boston, Charlotte.
What do I win? 😉
Seriously, the plan “The 10 balloons will be placed in publicly accessible locations in the continental United States and will be on display for one day (December 5th) during daylight hours.” seems like it would be fundamentally impossible if there was any intent to truly hide the balloons.
I had another thought too. Make sure to include a tutorial on how to obtain lat/lon from google maps or another mapping program. Even if someone doesn’t have a GPS with them, getting an address will allow you or someone else to derive the lat/lon of the baloon. What is the tolerance for the exact position?
REPLY: 1 arc MINUTE
Sounds like an interesting experiment. It would certainly be useful for both DARPA and who every wins the prize, so I say go for it.
This is an objective test of how effective things like the Amber Alert system might be to assist in locating some unknown object/person using distributed resources through the internet.
Larry
Anthony,
Please tell me why you don’t push your posters to sign “The Instrument of Repudiation”.
Lord Moncton made a call to sign this when he was at Glenn Beck but until know everything is quite in the skeptic Blog Scene. Is there a rat somewhere or is it simply overlooked?
Read and Sign Instrument of Repudiation
Important Notice for America’s Future
The draft Treaty of Copenhagen, to be signed in mid-December 2009, would create an unelected world government with direct power over all financial and trading markets, and direct power to intervene over the heads of elected governments in the economic and environmental affairs of all nations that sign the Treaty. The word “government” actually appears in the Treaty as the first of three purposes of a huge, new, supranational bureaucratic entity that will have the power to require wealthier nations to redistribute up to 2% of their annual gross domestic product to third-world countries in imagined reparation for imaginary “climate debt” – and all this just as final scientific proof that CO2 has a tiny and harmless warming effect is available. Please sign the Instrument of Repudiation, and urge at least five of your friends to sign it too, and urge each of them to find five more to sign it. The Instrument will be tabled during the Copenhagen Conference this December.
So sign now, and save America’s freedom, democracy, and prosperity.
http://www.webcommentary.com/signrep.php
REPLY: I tested this out myself, and there appears to be no method of preventing bogus names to be added to it, nor any mention of post signing verification. Thus, while the intent is good, the execution will likely render it worthless. – Anthony
Any change on seeing a balloon in Europe?
I read the rules as requiring a location within 1 arc-minute. Big difference from 1 arc-second.
REPLY: Yep, I misquoted. You are correct. Fixed -A
One arc second is around 100 feet. If the report isn’t with a GPS fix, it’ll need to be a very accurate description.
REPLY: arc-minute, my mistake -A
OT, but needs wide-scale broadcating.
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2009/11/australian-government-allegedly.html
“According to an Australian economist, Clive Spash, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) has been attempting to prevent him from publishing a paper critical of carbon trading which had already been accepted for publication.”
“CSIRO spokesman Huw Morgan said the publication of Dr Spash’s paper was an internal matter and was being reviewed by the chief executive’s office.
However, he said that under the agency’s charter scientists were forbidden from commenting on matters of government or opposition policy.”
Sound like a great idea.
Is it possible to generate plausible places to look? Like airports – or government owned buildings? Seems haphazard to just drive around looking.
Well…… If one drifts all the way to Australia, I’ll keeps me eye out!
…. Good luck. WUWT team America should win this, hands down easy;-)
This prize would be enough money to put a full page ad…
I think it’s a great idea!
I think there’s a good chance WUWT readers can pull this off pretty quickly.
Brilliant!
Unless one is located somewhere in the NE Oregon evirons,can’t be of much help after the first sticking snow…
J.Hansford (12:42:27) :
Good luck. WUWT team America should win this, hands down easy;-)
That would seem to be the case since, as Anthony points out, there is already the SurfaceStation network. That, with other readers, could do it! I can’t imagine of another blog or group that would have that type of network already functioning.
They’re not weather balloons unless they have weather instruments attached to them.
And for those with fractional GPS, it looks like three fractional digits should be enough. Would you believe that “Minute of arc” gets its own Wikipedia article?
Good idea. Pity I cant help. Go WUWT readers in America
If one drift to Sweden I will keep my eys out for it.
Good luck WUWT team!
/Sven
Anthony
Recommend clarifying if this is one arc-minute error in each of latitude and longitude, or if this is an error of one arc-minute in radius from the prescribed location.
1 arc minute = 1 nautical mile (60 nautical miles per degree)
As this is in the continental US, I presume the arc minute equivalent of the nautical mile refers to the original U.S. Nautical Mile.
Adoption of the International Nautical Mile, National Bureau of Standards Technical News Bulletin of August 1954.
The current definition of the international nautical mile:
A. Thompson and B. N. Taylor NIST Guide for the use of the International System of Units
Ron de Haan (11:34:29) :
“REPLY: I tested this out myself, and there appears to be no method of preventing bogus names to be added to it, nor any mention of post signing verification. Thus, while the intent is good, the execution will likely render it worthless. – Anthony”
Anthony, please, two points
1. I have addressed the problem to Mockton and really hope this can be solved because this is important.
2. I have made a posting at the Hockey Stick Article and found ta second posting under my name which was not made by me.
Is it possible you give me the details of those postings so I can undertake action.
If possible send it to the e-mail address in this message.
Thank you very much.
Ron de Haan (05:29:18) : (NOT SENT BY ME)
There is another hockey stick but it is inverted.
it’s the price of carbon credits.
I hope it stays that way.
BTW I love your blog!
The DARPA Network Challenge explores the unprecedented ability of the Internet to bring people together to solve tough problems.”
Doesn’t seem a particularly tough challenge to me. If it was me I would release the balloons and then use networks to track them thru the air in real time and then find them when they come back to earth.
Might be a problem if 2 teams arrive at the same time to recover a balloon. Otherwise, can I have the reality TV rights?
Good luck Anthony. I’m confident you’ll win.
Hmm … well, this contest is different than the ‘amber alert,’ distributed resources type thing. Because it’s cooperation mixed with competition. So, we should probably: a) monitor tweets for “red ballon” (or whatever hash-mark tag emerges) AND; b) tweet/post some false positives, to undermine the competition.
WUWT readers can validate each sighting via the comments, and others can even double-check the lat long coordinates. I don’t think we have to worry about secrecy … speed is more important, IMO.
My recommendation: a small prize goes to each reader on WUWT who reports an accurate lat long first – say $2,500 – and WUWT gets the rest to support this website.
Anthony, want to generate a false list of about 10 or so false positives, with city and lat long coordinates? Then WUWT readers can collectively post them on different sites quickly and in large quantity. Post the data the day of the contest, first thing, to minimize the chance that someone will sniff ’em out. Maybe even stagger them throughout the day, something like that?
Thoughts?
The intent of this competition as I read it, is not necessarily to have a army of spotters (which certainly wouldn’t hurt), but to be using the internet to ferret out individual reports of individual balloons, until you’ve used the ‘net to locate them all. Having spotters will reduce the number to locate, but there’ll still be some that will have to be found on the web (searching facebook, Myspace etc.) If they’re only up one day, the evidence is mostly going to be derived rather than empirical, I suspect.
Therefore disinformation reports on a readily accessible website might be a useful ruse… Just sayin’… 🙂