A collision-computing system detects and amplifies the energy associated with a feature signal to determine occurrences or absence of events, such as ultrasonic and/or geophysical events, or to determine presence and/or concentrations of substances such as blood glucose, toxic chemicals, etc., in a noisy, high-clutter environment or sample. To this end, a conditioned feature, obtained by modulating a carrier kernel with a feature signal, is collided with a Zyoton—a waveform that without a collision can travel substantially unperturbed in a propagation medium over a specified distance. The conditioned feature and the Zyoton are particularly constructed to be co-dependent in terms of their respective dispersion velocities and the divergence of a waveform resulting from the collision. The collision operation can transfer at least a portion of the feature energy to the resulting waveform, and the transferred energy can be amplified in successive collisions for detecting/measuring events/substances.