“2001: A Space Odyssey” was a big deal during my growing-up years. First, the book; then the movie. The full circle of childhood imagination and space exploration. A cherry on top was our physics teacher’s assignment.
Back then, we didn’t have Amazon, but we had friends and neighbors. So, I went to school pushing a baby doll stroller filled with domino cubes. What in the world was this supposed to mean? My physics teacher was shocked, and my school buddies were entertained. Well, a stroller represents Earth, and dominoes are monoliths. Yeah, I had a lot of explaining to do.
Our planet is still a baby. There’s so much we don’t know about it. Thus, a stroller. Instead of monoliths in space, we should explore Earth’s hidden secrets. There are so many of them waiting to be unearthed. Yeah, I didn’t win. My “work” wasn’t sent to Arthur C. Clarke with our class’s letter of appreciation and admiration. When I think about it, I should’ve sent a letter to Stanley Kubrick praising his Moon landing “contribution,” and sing it as my physics teacher. But, I was busy avoiding my neighbors for borrowing stuff without their permission.
Years have gone by, many things have changed dramatically and drastically, but my feelings about exploration priorities were monolithically solid. Talking about the Moon, did you know that the Apollo 15 mission marks the official introduction of LiDAR technology to the masses?
Let There Be Light (Radar) – LiDAR
Just like so many great pieces of tech, we usually take for granted, this one had to go through military hands first. The next thing you know, we were using LiDAR to map the surface of the Moon. Yup, this technology has been around for quite some time. Old, but gold.
When Elon isn’t tweeting, he is complaining about LiDAR. It has something to do with the final price of self-driving cars. Long story short, SpaceX’s Dragon is still LiDAR’s BF. Like Trump and Musk used to be.
So, it was only a matter of time before someone figured out that LiDAR could work on the third stone from the Sun. And, that’s actually so much fun. The best thing about it, you don’t need a chainsaw; just the good old appetite for archaeology exploration and ancient forest preservation.
“A laser technology known as lidar — short for Light Detection and Ranging — beams tens of thousands of laser pulses per second from planes or helicopters at the ground below, penetrating through thick, deep forest canopy. That provides researchers with data to create three-dimensional maps by digitally removing the vegetation, revealing human-built structures underneath.”
There’s a long list of lost ancient cities that have been LiDARed. Here are some of my personal favorites. Let’s start with the legendary Lost City of the Monkey God (La Ciudad Blanca) in Honduras. Then, there’s “a huge Maya city has been discovered centuries after it disappeared under jungle canopy in Mexico. Archaeologists found pyramids, sports fields, causeways connecting districts and amphitheatres in the southeastern state of Campeche.
They uncovered the hidden complex – which they have called Valeriana – using Lidar, a type of laser survey that maps structures buried under vegetation. They believe it is second in density only to Calakmul, thought to be the largest Maya site in ancient Latin America.” There are lost Silk Road cities in Uzbekistan. “Some 14,000 settlement sites spanning eight millennia in 23,000 square kilometers of northeastern Syria.”
I’m going back and forth through countless lists. It’s so unfair, but you have to draw a line somewhere. I’ve always considered the Amazon rainforests as the GOAT of hidden lost civilizations, for a reason.
“Archeologists have discovered a vast and highly complex system of ancient cities dating back nearly 3,000 years in the Amazon rainforest. Complete with a complex network of farmland and roads, the discovery is the oldest and largest of its kind in the region. Located in Ecuador’s Upano Valley, the structures lie in the eastern foothills of the Andes mountains, according to a study published in the journal Science. After more than 20 years of research, the ancient urban centers were only discovered when the Ecuadorean government employed lidar technology.”
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then every frame of LiDAR recordings in the Amazon rainforests is worth a thousand years of our ancient history.
LiDAR Ain’t the Next PIXAR
The future of LiDAR is bright, but more here on Earth than in space. Yeah, our orientation is extraterrestrial, but we’re still predominantly practical. The aliens can wait, but the self-driving cars can’t.
I was totally unaware that Tesla doesn’t use LiDAR, which is arguably the “standard” for autonomous vehicles. So, what are they using?
Grok makes nice, realistic pictures, but you need more than cameras to drive you safely. There’s a great video about the cameras versus LiDAR in the EVs:
I ain’t no fool, I’m old school: Eyes on the road, hands on the wheel! But, if I had to choose, I’d go for LiDAR, or any kind of driving radar, without thinking or blinking. I’m still having a tough time believing this was, and still is, too expensive for our DOGE guy. If you think I’m exaggerating, just type “Elon Lidar” and see for yourself. That’s Elon being Elon. The rest (I’m not sure if they’re the majority) of the EV industry disagrees.
Whenever there are movements, LiDAR offers improvements. Think about robots and all possible applications of future robotics.
“Lidar can also be used to track people through different locations, including crowded spaces. Combined with other technologies such as face recognition or cell phone tracking, the technology could prove a powerful part of a tracking system.”
From aliens out there to the “aliens” over here. The full circle, but not a happy one. But, let’s wrap it up on a brighter note. I feel better following the news from Amazon than from our urban jungles.
