Why China Built an Antenna Bigger Than NYC

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Video written by Amy Muller
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[@ztl2505]

For the curious, the Northern Wisconsin/UP site was chosen because the bedrock in the region is particularly low conductivity.

[@marcbeebee6969]

Thx

[@Tinil0]

Also because there are no living humans in northern wisconsin/UP!

[@SUPER_ZOMBIE]

​@@Tinil0as a Wisconsinite I can confirm 😂

[@RedWingsninetyone]

​@@Tinil0that's why we like the UP

[@apachehelicopterah64]

nobody likes a “know it all”……

[@Sirikiller]

My take away from this video is that I refuse to believe Sam can grow a beard that requires him to shave

[@walaraubo]

Conceptually, pretty good video. My Emag prof supposed worked on Project Sanguine. When we learned about skin depth, the process you mentioned where signals attentuate the further down you go through water, our homework was to calculate the depth a VHF signal would go, and then calculate the required frequency to hit the depth they wanted for the actual Project Sanguine

[@walaraubo]

Only a little salty this didn’t make it onto Wendover, there’s a lot of fun emag stuff to discuss

[@newbie8051]

Ah, we derived this in our class too. It was fun (dreadful) solving equations for alpha and beta. If i remember it correctly, alpha was to determine by how much our signal attenuates and beta is to determine speed reduction of the wave.

[@marvindebot3264]

What;'s the frequency, Kenneth . . . er, Alex?

[@jonathandaffron1781]

Something for the next mistakes video. You showed a reindeer on screen when you were saying that those forests were now full of elk.

[@tcoren1]

also the frequency and wavelengths given for ELF were both wrong

[@JosephMesh]

Also, at 5:42, it reads "speak sofLTy"

[@Volodimar]

Also, plural of "antenna" is "antennae"? But I'm not sure since I'm not a native English speaker.

[@justin3346]

There actually isn’t very many Elk here in Wisconsin. They have been trying to repopulate the state with them tho. That field would more likely be filled with whitetail deer.

[@mattwalker5689]

We don’t have any at all up here in the UP.

[@williamgodin1110]

​@@mattwalker5689but the moose run loose

[@chucknorrispargeter177]

the comment i was just about to make lol

[@dannydaw59]

Were the Elk overhunted?

[@flickcentergaming680]

​@@dannydaw59yes. That's why you won't find elk east of the Missouri anymore. But reintroduction projects have been created in some places, as the above comment states.

[@algernopkrieger7710]

If the antenna is the size of a city, why don't we just move people into the antenna and help ease some of the housing issues

[@musicplus6306]

The housing issues there are that there are more houses that what people actually need

[@kantoantprime2302]

​@@musicplus6306just build on the antenna, boom housing crisis reverted, is he stupid?

[@MayTheSchwartzBeWithYou]

There are few if any homeless people in China.

[@ahis3233]

There are that there are

[@MayTheSchwartzBeWithYou]

​@@musicplus6306 I wouldn't even consider that an issue. Better to have backup houses than homeless people.

[@TheNovaChronicles]

It's crazy how secretive they kept this project as even many of the researchers who worked on it weren't told of its final location!

[@Gods_Real]

It wasn't secret and they destroyed the second largest one in Puerto Rico and should of kept it

[@Valothur]

where are my bricks

[@dougdougsnacks]

Brock

[@Anarchist-v7s]

He stole them...

[@zch7491]

China is a bricks country

[@Finkelfunk]

Sam, a 3Hz wave is actually not 10.000km in length, it's 100.000km. More precisely 99.931km. The wavelength λ is calculated using velocity divided by frequency. Given that electromagnetic waves travel at the speed of sound, that means we have ~300.000m/s / 3Hz, so you are off by a factor of 10 on this one. In fact, you are also off by a factor of 10 with 300Hz as well, that is pretty much dead on 1000km. I would like to be in the "HAI mistakes" video, thank you very much.

[@Nazuiko]

Is there a finkelfunk mistakes video too because 300,000m/s is the speed of Light, or at least, Planck's Constant (Only precise in a vacuum) Sound is closer to 725mph or ~324 m/s... ironically off by a factor of nearly 10^5

[@etiennemueller]

km/s

[@julten6969]

@@Nazuikolet him COOK

[@nishant54]

He said tens of thousands of kms not exactly 10 fool. 😂😂

[@pineapplerindm]

@@nishant54 he said *nearly* 10 which is close enough

[@jbird4478]

Unfortunately the US navy won't let me use their antenna to send messages to my mermaid girlfriend, so I have to keep waiting for her to surface, which so far hasn't happened yet.

[@stylesrj]

Maybe her overprotective father sent her to Canada and now goes to a different school so you wouldn't know her?

[@tcoren1]

1:13 this should be 1,000-100,000 kilometers, not 1,000-10,000 (or alternatively, the frequency should be 30-300 Hz rather than 3-300) Edit: according to wikipedia, it is 3-30Hz i.e. 10,000-100,000km, meaning both your given frequency and wavelength are wrong. No idea how that mistake was made

[@ninjaxxl7270]

I think they accidentally combined ELF and SLF wavelengths and frequencies and skipped ULF?

[@Diabhork]

I was wondering about ULF because he actually mentions it in the video, but it isn't seen on the graph@@ninjaxxl7270

[@maumue]

There's another error at 5:45, but it's just a typo, not numbers wrong by an order of magnitude.

[@tcoren1]

@@ninjaxxl7270 I guess we can say they accidently added 30-300Hz (1,000-10,000km) to it, with the incorrect range replacing the correct one for wavelength and being in addition to the correct one for frequency? It's a weird mistake to make, either way

[@tcoren1]

@@maumue 7 seconds later there's another mistake 1) there's only 1 comma in "36259,834 km^2" and 2) the actual number is 36,259.834 km^2 , so 3 orders of magnitude of an error

[@djchainz]

“Speak soFLty” @ 5:45 for Every Mistake VII

[@EebstertheGreat]

There actually is some scientific research into even longer wavelengths, with frequencies below 3 Hz, sometimes called "ultra low frequency" or "tremendously low frequency". They can be used to study the atmosphere and lithosphere, the magnetosphere, solar wind, and other things. They may also have astronomical value, because waves at this frequency may travel long distances through space. Those frequency ranges are particularly interesting to geophysicists, since they correspond to interactions between changes in the Earth's magnetic field (for seismic reasons) and the ionosphere. Although transmitting such long waves is very difficult, detecting them is apparently not as hard as I expected, and it can be done with reasonably small induction magnetometers. For instance, the LEMI-120 can measure magnetic field frequencies from 0.0001 Hz to 1000 Hz and is only 1.34 m long.

[@dustinbrueggemann1875]

Yeah, you only really care about having a resonant antenna when you're transmitting because all it effects is the efficiency. You can technically transmit any size wave with any size device, but it needs to have the actual electrical power to back that up. It's like screaming through a keyhole vs screaming in a drainage tunnel.

[@ZetaPyro]

I've visited the the VLF Transmitter Cutler up in Cutler, Maine. It's only VLF and not ELF so it's not 100's of miles long, but it's still a pretty cool site. Maine was chosen as the location since it's the closest point in the US to most parts of the North Atlantic.

[@zapfanzapfan]

I have a functional more than 100 years old 17 kHz transmitter an hour or so south of me. They fire it up once a year or so, Maine might get the signal.

[@Maxman013_]

Missed opportunity at 5:03 to say "mostly full of elk, not ELF"

[@marcellkovacs5452]

I was also expecting him to say that

[@BoG_City]

You did not just drop a Bowling for Soup reference did you 😂❤

[@DerVarg]

I fucking love that fact!

[@Mr_Mordaeus]

Rock on honorable ones 😎

[@jimsvideos7201]

If USN abandoned ELF it's because they have something better.

[@AlphaChinoz]

What is the USN?

[@Milenakos]

​@@AlphaChinozunited states navy (?)

[@AshrakAhmed]

US Navy@@AlphaChinoz

[@walaraubo]

Yeah they have a different operating frequency that doesn’t go as low but has a higher throughput, like LF

[@glockmat]

Deploying a buye to 100m below still is a comms method with much higher frequency and reasonably great stealth

[@johnladuke6475]

Cheapskate wouldn't get Amy a trip to a Chinese nuclear sub. Where's the hard-hitting investigative journalism we all expect from HAI?

[@jaredkennedy6576]

5:45 Soflty? I guess you need material for the annual video on mistakes lol.

[@irishjet2687]

5:44 "Speak s o f l t y" I'll see you in next year's mistake comp!

[@NischalKK]

This is basically the plot of three body problem except ~100 years later.

[@michaelromashov7853]

came looking for this comment lol

[@Rubrickety]

How could the writers miss “Elk instead of ELF”?? 😢

[@johnjones3364]

At 5:46 “softly” is spelled wrong! We’ll see if it shows up in the yearly mistakes video

[@saturnv2419]

Actually having a towed communication buoy does not affect stealth that much. The buoy could still be underwater, just carefully adjusted so that it is in the depth where it can transmit with normal long range communications.

[@bjoernusw5195]

The stealth affecting part of deploying a com buoy isn't deploying the bouy but actually using it for sending messages as anyone in range can detect the RF signal and measure from which direction it is coming without the need to actually understand the information the signal is carrying. So if multiple enemy installations can detect the signal of the com buoy, the enemy can just follow the heading from each of those installations and find the bouy around the location where those lines cross.

[@HenryLoenwind]

@@bjoernusw5195That can easily be circumvented by using a single-use delayed transmission buoy for sending. When it starts transmitting, you're already an hour away.

[@bjoernusw5195]

@@HenryLoenwind yes, but that wouldn't be a towed buoy

[@romulusnr]

5:05 You missed an "From ELF to ELK" joke there

[@BilTheGalacticHero]

The Navy shut down the ELF system because it was replaced with an enhanced VLF system. That's an important detail.

[@peterbarta1444]

Good grief, what happened to your background music? Couldn't make it through the video, too annoying!

[@SoulRipurr]

Great Bowling for Soup reference 👏

[@jimmyisawkward]

What about the Jim Creek ULF antenna that’s the size of an entire mountain valley? That thing goes around the entire world and communicates with submarines

[@TheHylianBatman]

I was just reading about ELF waves yesterday! Radio waves are so interesting to me.

[@AJTurnsLeft]

"sneaky stealthy submarines" goddamn it, thanks for the earworm

[@cycklist]

The Guardamar tower in Spain is a similar thing, and also the tallest tower in the EU.

[@jeanmkaufmann]

The warmest and most comfortable "camping" I have ever had was in a tipee. 🙂🇨🇦

[@brianchurchill1817]

Ya spelt “softly” wrong at 5:45. I wonder if this will make it into the yearly video of everything that they got wrong

[@Sampdelu]

This brings up something I have been thinking about. The switch from 4G to 5G was actually rather difficult because in order to give better speeds, the waves are smaller, and thus makes you lose signal more easily. I havent thought about it enough to look up the plan got 6G, but I wonder how they plan to mitigate that

[@dustinbrueggemann1875]

Dispersed antennas with low power and lots of aggressive channel management. Lots of repeaters as well. 6G coverage will be mostly restricted to high density urban environments where there will be enough devices to justify the bandwidth. Don't expect end user performance to be noticeably better than 5G at it's peak, but it will support more devices on the network performing at that speed simultaneously.

[@BlackMesa322]

Don’t know that much about 5G-NR, but for moving from Wi-Fi 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6) to 802.11be (Wi-Fi 7), the receiver complexity increases, as not only will you be supporting higher modulation (up to 4K QAM), you would be tackling higher freq ranges, and bandwidths (I think up to 320MHz. That said, there is still a significant overlap with the 5GHz spectrum allocated for 802.11ax. Better radios and their performance, and higher receiver complexity at the physical layer is most likely how you end up tackling this issue.

[@BrotherCheng]

FWIW 5G is a standard that covers a large range of frequencies. The high frequency millimeter wave (mmWave) stuff is only the shiniest part of 5G, but 5G rollout also includes the low and mid-band frequencies. A lot of phones (e.g. most iPhones) don't even support mmWave today. I think it's only designed to be used in dense urban environment and say stadiums/convention centers, but it's not going to be deployed everywhere.

[@Zedmons]

Something for the next mistakes video, when showing the three levels of the ocean with the submarine, you had the signs for “greater than” and “less than” 1000m depths backwards. Love the content, Sam!

[@Kevbot6000]

They seem correct to me? (X)3300ft = X is greater than 3300ft/1000m

[@CrockedSaturn]

1985 reference goes hard

[@Flameseekeer]

hahahaha

[@Azimuth10000]

If the wavelength was dependant on the size of the antenna, shouldn't the wave at 4:35 be oriented 90 degrees from what is displayed? The image displayed implies that amplitude is dependant on the size of the antenna.

[@stefansynths]

Antenna radiation patterns are complicated. Assuming it's a half-wave dipole antenna, the wavelength would be double the length of the antenna, and the signal would be strongest perpendicular to the antenna. So yeah, the graphic is wrong, but it's also kinda right.

[@marchlopez9934]

Extremely low frequency (ELF) waves, with a frequency of between 3 and 300 Herz, are the lowest band in the radio spectrum, and have the ability to travel through the ionosphere and pass through obstacles such as mountains and seawater without losing their signal. This makes them ideal for communication with submarines, which cannot use normal radio communications below the ocean's thermocline. Four countries, including the US, have built ELF communication systems. The US Navy's system was built during the Cold War and comprised two giant antennas that could transmit to any submarine in the world. The Clam Lake site was completed in 1985 and the Republic site four years later, with the two connected via underground cable to function as one giant 148 metre antenna. ELF waves transmit information extremely slowly, taking about 15 minutes to send just three characters. Submarines receive character codes but cannot transmit audio, making ELF signals sufficient for a "poke" but not a conversation.

[@Nthsey]

Anyone else catch that Bowling for Soup lyric? 3:32

[@Golddudes199]

best 7 minutes of my day so far

[@mikea5745]

You commented that 3 minutes after the video went live...

[@cooltwittertag]

​@@mikea5745he was waiting 4 minutes in anticipation

[@SplitScreamOFFICIAL]

That explains why they were sending Data collection balloons

[@vvilliam_eu]

that zoom in on the elk cracked me up xD

[@gerrypaolone6786]

Hey man! Is the hanson code expired? What an amazing product, thanks to share besides interesting info also great products

[@Leyrann]

3:41 I'm afraid Steel Panther did not yet exist in the 80s. They were, in fact, founded in the 2000s as a _parody_ on 80s glam metal.

[@soundpreacher]

Love the Bowling for Soup reference.

[@Pr0toPoTaT0]

This video is an ELI5 for a chinese antenna and i freaking love itttttt. And its music on MTV..... not ELFs to the sea lmao

[@TimMattison]

5m47s "speak soflty" Do I win a prize? Or am I just showing how annoying I am? Or maybe both? Cool video. ELF is insane.

[@samiraperi467]

Ants have ant-ennas.

[@jiskithehusky9094]

As a Yooper I can confirm that is a word we use

[@Brigs164]

From and live in the U.P. I'm so glad he pronounced Yooper correct 🙂

[@tweezerjam]

Much Love from Philly ❤🤟🏼

[@Neophlegm]

Oof that stock music all the way through was a bit rough

[@JamieBliss]

Thank you for knowing UP.

[@Daniel27600]

ULF - Giving me flashbacks to Manifest 😮

[@coffeebreak7668]

3:27 Ok so there's definitely something wrong with my mind, it's probably best if no one knows what I'm getting at.

[@theplayer4664]

5:42 "speak *soflty,* and carry a big stick, you'll go far" who else noticed this?

[@greenefieldmann3014]

KLF (kinda low frequency) isn't as modern as ELF, but it's justified and ancient.

[@crispoman]

The only way this comment could've been better would be if it had been posted at 8pm BST/3pm EDT, as in Beijing it'd have been 3 a.m. (eternal). Whilst wearing a muumuu, of course. Edit: D'oh, it's still BST.

[@randomnessrules4971]

It's the Sunn O))) radio station!

[@Souledex]

It tracks that Sam is a fan of Bowling for Soup

[@SphereBoxCube]

5:05 You missed the perfect opportunity to say "mostly full of elk instead of elf"

[@altasilvapuer]

@5:07 Dang. What a missed opportunity to say they're "full of elk, not ELF."

[@TobyTopF]

spelling mistake on theodore's second appearance "soflty" instead of "softly"

[@JeffMeisenhelder]

5:45 - Softly is misspelled.

[@jamesbarnes8396]

My favorite part of this video is seeing Harry’s try to rebrand away from their initial alt right branding by changing their name to Henson

[@yo.adrian]

I thought ELF waves were waves that Santa Claus rode when he's on vacation.

[@Hallgrenoid]

Inb4 watching - i bet it's a radio telescope.

[@Ian-nm4ty]

Did Ben write that Santa’s elf line? Sounds like a Ben line. If it wasn’t Ben and it was someone else, I do not apologize because that means you are Ben funny, which is a huge win for you

[@0xBE7A]

Nuclear submarines don’t generally cruise at 1000 km and ELF Antennas can only penetrate seawater up to a couple of hundred meters

[@erikcederb]

Love that "1985" song reference 😄

[@JamesTM]

The music in this was fun and all, but I found it so loud as to be distracting. I had to rewind a few times to catch stuff I'd missed. :( ... Unless the point was to sneakily increase total watch time. In which case, well done!

[@MathiasBacher]

According to my short calculation, the longest ELF wavelengths in the video should be c/3 = 100,000 km long, not 10,000 km.

[@forestc6014]

The brown note 😧

[@Nethershaw]

"Wonk" is my favorite new shorthand for attenuation. Who needs all those syllables?

[@xporzy]

lets go we got a yooper shout out

[@drjonbear7517]

Yes! Love a bit of BFS

[@wally81000]

"Sneaky Stealthy Submarines" t-shirt, please. I'll buy 10.

[@MrTurbo_]

well, can't they just use multi band elf for higher bandwidth?

[@georgesagan]

Is this a stealth promo for "The Three Body Problem"?

[@leswine1582]

nice editing

[@InvadersDie]

I think the engineers at henson don't know what an electric shaver can do

[@johnnychang4233]

Aren't ELF almost overlapping with sound waves as it's probably the hum sound that emits high voltage transformers and wires? Also is such an antenna the equivalent to a spread out electrostatic speaker?

[@jsquared1013]

ELF are electromagnetic waves, i.e. light/energy. Sound waves are physical vibrations in matter. Not the same.

[@johnnychang4233]

@@jsquared1013 But I heard that ultrasonic weapons can cause thermal effects.

[@emilsinclair4190]

​@@johnnychang4233? And. Still not the same.

[@badgergaucho99]

I love watching videos about waves. I love waving with my fwiends at the pawty. We get piss dwunk and do lots of dwugs off the backs of pwostitutes.

[@allenellisdewitt]

5:05 what Elk??

[@chintuarts6487]

Waves are hard to imagine

[@lopypop]

are ELF broadcasts encrypted? If not, what stops adversaries from intercepting all comms?

[@lonelyPorterCH]

I didn't even know waves could be that big^^

[@MrDasfried]

Lol this hensen razor thing is just a normal safety razor with old school blades. I have one myself they are pretty xool butyou don't need 'aerospace' ingeniering for that

[@jannuarytrash]

2:56 Crimea isn't a part of Russia.

[@thesailormercury2]

China: I have bigger antenna USA: (cough ) that what she said (coughing) China:so childish america.

[@יותםכהן-כ1ר]

5:52 the km^2 measurements are formatted incorrectly 36259,834 should be 36,259,834

[@daanwilmer]

Interesting video, but the sponsor bothers me. The talking points feature a razor where you only have to change the blades? That's how safety razors have worked for over a century! Basically the same design was used in World War 1!

[@EliotHochberg]

Seems to me you could get a lot more done with just a few characters if you had a translation codebook. In other words, you have a book with the most common things you need to communicate, and then you number them. The first 10 are the most often used Commands, and then the next 90 are some less frequent but still common commands. Obviously you can’t necessarily communicate go to an arbitrary spot, but you could certainly communicate the most common places that the submarines needed deploy, and of course the first and shortest message would be “in danger, flee.”

[@oriolopocholo]

Don't you think they maybe have already thought about that after 2 millennia of sailing?

[@EliotHochberg]

@@oriolopocholo well, I know that semaphore is essentially the same thing, so maybe that’s true. And I’m sure that there are other spy communication systems that work on a similar premise, but it’s still not a bad idea.

[@oriolopocholo]

@@EliotHochberg it's digital. everything is coded and compressed and encrypted.

[@EliotHochberg]

@@oriolopocholo I think you may have missed the point, which is that they are saying that because it’s such a low frequency, it takes 15 minutes to pump out one or two characters in binary. My point was that instead of waiting for 15 minutes to just get two characters, as the video implies,“u up?”, you would then take those couple of characters and have a code book where if the number 23 came in, 23 might mean “go to the northern Pacific rendezvous point, run silent and deep, wait for additional instructions, status Green” or something along those lines. So if they send the code 00, that could mean” danger, you are eminently going to be attacked“, and 01 might mean “cancel previous alert warning”

[@wilsonli5642]

If I'm remembering correctly from _Crimson Tide_ (and probably _Hunt for Red October_ also), that's already a part of USN practices. They get a 10-character code, and then they look up what the code means in their code book.

[@Jiggerjaw]

And tennis.

[@rileywags]

There is a massive one in washington state near darrington

[@brodynass3815]

Michigan mentioned 🗣🗣🗣❗️🗣❗️❗️

[@davidoh14]

3:34 Bowling for views there, HAI

[@joshix833]

"u up" is 4 characters

[@Qexilber]

Sam, 3Hz waves would be 100,000 km long (1 lightsecond divided by 3)

[@caseygecko]

5:05 HOW did y'all miss the opportunity to say "full of elk, instead of ELF"

[@mattcook6868]

Bowling for soup. Nice