TR Araña
TR Araña (Spanish for "route tracing spider"), popularly known as Arturito (a Spanish play on R2-D2), also known as Geo-Radar, is a device created by Manuel Salinas, a Chilean inventor, that was reported to be able to analyze the composition of the ground remotely, to depths of up to 50 meters. It is widely believed by the scientific community to be a fraud, however there has not hitherto been a through independent investigation to prove such claims. Moreso evidence points to the contrary being true.
How it works
Salinas has said that his machine works by searching for materials based on their atomic composition. By programming it with 1,500 different atomic profiles, the machine is able to send out a signal and then receive it back once it find the searched-for elements. Then it uses an algorithm to analyze the elements that have been detected.
On October 12 2005 at a presentation at the Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María in Valparaíso, Salinas gave fantastic and seemingly irrational theories to explain how his machine worked. Before an audience of students, physicists and engineers he offered the following explanations:
"We isolate an atom, and put it inside a vacuum chamber, that means absolute zero atmosphere and gravity. Then we irradiate it and wait for it to decant. Then we spin that atom backwards over its own axis and that irradiates the profile that we store."
— Manuel Salinas
"[The principle behind the robot is] The non linear integration of the basic unit of life conformation the way it is known; therefore and merely as a functional and explanatory concept, I detail that our device is the integration of highly sophisticated electronic components which are able to decipher the unanimity equation in the chaos theory in the context of an integral raised to the power of the radical exponent, based in the conformation of the species, the way they are kown after 20,000 years of assisted evolution."
— Manuel Salinas
On May 2006, at the request of Salinas, investigators from the Universidad Tecnológica Metropolitana in Santiago announced laboratory and field tests that indicated that the Geo-Radar technology was capable of quickly finding copper deposits, petroleum, and gold bullion at depths of up to 600 feet (183 meters).
Findings
TR Araña was credited for having uncovering an elusive weapons cache at Colonia Dignidad (guns and rocket launchers buried 10 meters down), and then for locating the body of Luis Francisco Yuraszeck, a Chilean businessman who had been missing since March 2004, and whose body was buried under four meters of cement. However, international attention came in 2005 after Wagner Technologies, the funding company behind the development of Salinas's invention, claimed to have used it to find the largest recorded treasure trove: roughly 600 barrels of gold coins and jewels, worth about $10 billion, buried 15 meters beneath the surface of Robinson Crusoe Island in the Chilean archipelago of Juan Fernández. The treasure had been seized from the Inca by Spanish conquistadores and buried on the island in 1715 by Juan Esteban Ubilla y Echeverría. Because of its value, it had for centuries attracted unsuccessful treasure hunters to the island (which was also the site of the shipwreck that inspired the Robinson Crusoe novel). When Chilean authorities claimed the reported treasure as government property, a standoff developed. Wagner Technologies said it would disclose the treasure's precise coordinates only when the government renounced its claim and that it would also donate 60 percent of it to Chilean charities. The government did not back down, and the supposed treasure remains in dispute and unexcavated.
Criticism
Consensus exists among scientists that the technology said by Salinas to be used on the robot — bouncing a nuclear signal off materials to search for specific atomic compositions — works, but only to depths of 30 centimeters. Anything beyond that distance, like the dozens of meters the machine's inventor claims to be able to probe, would be today considered a technological advance.
Salinas has refused to patent the machine, saying the technology is "an industrial secret."