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.
BTW, I’m not convinced spending $40K on a dead tree media ad is the right thing to do. I’d suggest a slick contra-Gore video along the lines of the Diverging From the Truth theme I’ve suggested before – basically deconstructing Gore’s movie with the real science, especially Steve McIntyre’s work.
If a large group of private small plane pilots cooperated to track these down, they might have the best success–at least if the balloons are mostly in rural areas, where they’d stand out from the air.
Once the balloons are launched on December 5th, we have 9 days to find them.
“launched” may be misleading term for moored balloons.
And you only have one day to find them, since they are only on display for one day.
“Philip_B (14:28:29) :
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.”
The balloons are “moored”…so stationary.
I think it’s an excellent idea, Anthony. I also highly doubt that the locations will all be heavily populated areas. That would be sort of a no-brainer.
I’d be more than happy to take a ride up North of Boston, through New Hampshire’s coast, and on into Southern Maine on that day.
JimB
I could even put a banner on the RV: “WUWT Darpa Balloon Challenge team member. Visit http://www.wattsupwiththat.com for details”
🙂
JimB
Go for it! Unfortunately, I live in Canada so can’t help 🙁
Philip_B, I agree with you. I was surprised they were moored.
This isn’t the right place for this, but I can’t see a contact address to advise of suitable stories. In the Sunday Telegraph Christopher Booker writes an article entitled:
Gavin Schmidt: a correction
Dr Schmidt wants it known he has no connection with the GISS temperature record, writes Christopher Booker
He also writes
“Like others, it seems I was misled by the fact that twice in the past two years, when GISS has come under fire for publishing seriously inaccurate data, it was Dr Schmidt who acted as its public spokesman.”
The link is:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/6475667/Gavin-Schmidt-a-correction.html
I think Anthony can 100% guarantee victory if he asks for help from a couple of friendly blogs like Hot Air, American Thinker, Jawa Report, Ace of Spades.
All 4 of these blogs regularly link to WUWT, and I`m 100% sure they would be proud to help.
If you put up a place to report it I’ll dang sure report anything I see.
If the four blogs mentioned by GGM (15:39:04) sign on it will go viral and you’ll have thousands of spotters
Peter Dunford (15:21:16) :
This isn’t the right place for this, but I can’t see a contact address to advise of suitable stories.
Click on the “Tips and Notes to WUWT” tab.
Strategy ideas:
1. Ask WUWT readers to email their friends saying that they’re looking for a red weather balloon as part of a kind of scavenger hunt on Dec 5th. Attach some words of urgency to make them somewhat more willing to help you.
2. Pre-arrange a network of “verifiers” to check for the validity of the balloon locations. Since some of the WUWT posters suggested it against our competitors, we can expect bogus sighting reports at WUWT as well. I wouldn’t be surprised to receive a hundred or more reports.
If one comes down in me swamp, we be keeping it and we not be telling ARPA or DARPA, she be going straight into the pool room.
Stuff the internet, finders be keepers.
Bob Shapiro (16:16:22) :
Strategy ideas:
Excellent suggestions. WUWT should win networked strategizing of this problem hands down. IMHO
I am in agreement with Philip on this. Personally, although I could always use some cash myself, I would really like to see a point by point video rebuttal to An Inconvenient Truth. And I mean a detailed point by point. I am so incredibly sick of people that still believe that piece of garbage. Plus, with a well produced video, I am certain you could get some very good airtime with it and some real good media attention. I am sure you could get Glenn Beck to air excerpts. I believe it would be worth the production.
You have my support any which way you go …
I wonder how the Realclimate folks will approach the challenge? Perhaps they have a computer model which has already figured out where the balloons will be. Then they can claim that the locations of any actual sightings need to be “adjusted.”
🙂
The balloons will be moored (not free floating) for six hours. Think about the ones that automobile dealers have floating above their show rooms — visible from no more than a mile away (about three square miles per balloon). And there will be just ten spread around the continental US which covers (aprox.) 3.2 million square miles (Wikipedia). People can’t go looking for these things, they’ll have to trip over them.
The winner will likely be an ad hoc network of millions of individuals organized for the day via facebook, twitter or some other “social networking” product. How these people manage to get organized, report their findings and divide the prize will be the interesting part of the project.
If I was the DARPA person deciding where to moor the balloons I’d put some in high visibility, high traffic areas and others in a spot where only a “chance encounter” will find and report them.
brazil84 (17:06:29) :
I wonder how the Realclimate folks will approach the challenge? Perhaps they have a computer model which has already figured out where the balloons will be. Then they can claim that the locations of any actual sightings need to be “adjusted.”
NOM !
Yes, ideal setup to test a disinformation campaign – once a personal sighting is made and confirmed, dozens of messages could be put out which were close to the original but 1 arc minute off… not permanently effective but could delay a competitor just enough…
oh don’t scowl. If I’m thinking of this so is everybody else who sees one and who wants to win. There are going to be thousands of false positives, that’s probably going to be the hardest part of this. There will have to be a personal confirm from a trusted source on each sighting.
AnonyMoose (13:25:35) : “They’re not weather balloons unless they have weather instruments attached to them.”
Not quite true. “Weather” balloons are graded according to the weight they can lift. We used 10 gram balloons to determine the exact height of a ceiling. They were about 18 inches in diameter at release and carried no instrumentation. We knew the rate of assent and timed them with a stop watch until they disappeared into the ceiling.
I think 20 gram balloons were used for Pibals – with no instrumentation either. They were tracked with a theodolite to measure the winds.
The big honkers – 600 gram balloons I think – were used to carry radiosonde instruments aloft.
They were all “weather” balloons.
Darn! “Assent” should read “ascent.”
If you want to be really mean, you could moor a few of your own red weather balloons. If a team of pranksters were to put up 90 decoy balloons, the contest would become very difficult to win for anyone but the pranksters.
PS I’m not advocating that anyone put up decoys. I’m just speculating.
Consider that the locations might be inferred with the understanding of certain facts: 40th anniversary, 70 balloon launch locations in the US, date of launch, time of exposure, etd., etc.. Code breakers to the fore.
Here is data from the Federal Meteorological Handbook 1997 on the location of launch sites in the US: http://www.ofcm.gov/fmh3/text/append-c.html Probably not current, but if we know the lat/lon(from Google) of each of these launch points we are ahead of the game.
I reason that marshalling, loading, transporting and handling the equipment for launching, or in this case, tethering this type of balloon is more work than the average civil servant will willingly undertake, therefore most of them will be tethered at an existing launch facility. In any case, we should be able to eyeball every known launch facility
Once we have the sites pinpointed, it might be as simple as a phone call to ask if they have a balloon tethered. If you get the NWS guy instead of the DARPA guy, he might say yes.
Operational security in reporting is paramount. Many of our more devious colleagues have suggested methods and means to confuse and distract the competition. I applaud them all and look forward to seeing others.
Confusion to the enemy.
It appears that the most usual balloon used today is an 800 gram model capable of carrying a GPS/radiosonde aloft to about 23k. That’s nice to know but what we need to know is:
1. Will the tethered balloons carry sondes and if so, on what frequencies they transmit. Historically, this has been in the 1675-1685MHZ range at about 3 milliwatts. Modern sondes transmit GPS data.
2. At what height above the ground that the balloons will be tethered. (line of sight, possible sonde reception).
3. The size balloons to be used? NWS use 250-3000 gram balloons. An 800 gram balloon is about 6 feet in diameter at launch.
Can someone write a program to continuously monitor the social networking communities for balloon data? Google can do that, but probably not fast enough.
Confusion to the enemy