Has a friend of yours ever hacked your Facebook account? Imagine now that it wasn’t your friend. What if someone you’d never met before, someone from across the world hacked your Facebook account? If your Facebook account getting hacked doesn’t scare you, maybe this will: what if it was your car key that was hacked? Your cell-phone? How about your bank account?
Every one of these have specific identification codes that are becoming easier for hackers to break as programmer knowledge of different protective systems grows. Luckily for us, scientists at Lancaster University may have designed a system — an unbreakable vault so to speak — that will thwart hackers from ever gaining access again. The new protection model is based on the cardiorespiratory coupling function found in nature. This function allows for time-based communications between a pair of dynamic systems.
Here’s the basic idea: The sender’s communication is encrypted, meaning that it is sent in a code that only allows a specific receiver to view it, as a time-variant coupling function between two dynamic systems. The decrypting receivers, also dynamic coupling functions, then decipher the complex functions them.
This system is based off the dynamic communication observed between the heart and lungs in the naturally occurring cardiorespiratory coupling function. In this method, the sender has a virtually infinite set of encryptions that it can send, allowing for an practically impenetrable system. This method is highly adaptable making it easy to install in all communication systems. Furthermore, this system allows for the transmission and reception of multiple signals at once.
This is not the first time that nature has inspired an astounding breakthrough in science. Engineers in Toronto have increased the energy of wind turbines by 20% by designing turbine blades based off the structure of whale fins. Architect Mike Pearce constructed the Eastgate Center, a building in Harare, Zimbabwe, based on the thermo regulation seen in African termite mounds. This greatly decreased the building’s energy consumption and mitigated the need for heating and cooling systems.
Through the analysis of the wavelength interference seen in butterfly wings, engineers at Qualcomm have developed systems that can generate vivid colors visible under all lighting conditions. Thus, there is no doubt that nature has greater and more efficient designs than we could ever produce. Considering it had a 4 billion year head-start, this shouldn’t be surprising.
