As always with these kinds of outlandish claims, the best explanation is almost always that the journalist with the arts major degree misunderstood a key phrase in long-winded technobabble, and ran with it.

I mean... come on, we of all people have all surely been involved in one of these. We explain some deeply technical thing to some salesperson, they hear one word they understand, and the gleefully run off like a dog with a bone telling everyone that we can compress any movie into a single kilobyte.

"No, no, that's just the torrent root hash!"

"So you are saying it can be compressed into a kilobyte!"

Etc...

Quantum magnetometers are real, they are crazy sensitive, and apparently there are some research programs into making a "tricorder"-like device that can detect a human heartbeat ten centimeters away. I.e.: you've got an unconscious pilot in full flight kit, exposed to the elements overnight, no detectable pulse but... wait! Hey! Perfect time to test that new doohicky the boys in the lab cooked up!

That gets turned into a press release by someone who doesn't know what a centimeter even is because they're a Yank that grew up knowing only Freedom Units, got 10 clicks confused with 10 cm and... wow! What a press release! The best ever!

Now the whole world is talking about how we can detect a pilot miles away with a signal that normally takes special conductive lube and low-resistance wires coupled to a highly sensitive amplifier to detect reliably.

Not to mention the obvious problem of having to filter out, oh, I don't know, the heartbeat of the person holding it. And everyone else nearby. Every desert animal. The electronics of the plane. The radio on your belt. Satellites. Every mobile phone in the vicinity. On and on.

None of that matters, because someone got an exclusive story.

Debunking the CIA's “magic” heartbeat sensor [video]