Posted on 03/15/2012 6:48:40 AM PDT by HenryArmitage
Scientists have for the first time sent a message using a beam of neutrinos, through 240 meters of solid stone.
The team's not telling us how long the message - which said, simply, 'Neutrino', took to arrive.
"Using neutrinos, it would be possible to communicate between any two points on Earth without using satellites or cables," says Dan Stancil, professor of electrical and computer engineering at North Carolina State University.
"Neutrino communication systems would be much more complicated than today's systems, but may have important strategic uses."
The most intriguing thing about using neutrinos to communicate is that they can penetrate almost anything they encounter. This could be a particularly useful feature for submarines, for example, or for sending messages in space, allowing them to travel straight through a planet.
Because of their neutral electric charge and almost non-existent mass, neutrinos aren't affected by magnetism or gravity, so can travel almost unimpeded.
The experiment was carried out at Fermilab, using its particle accelerator and a multi-ton detector called MINERvA, located in a cavern 100 meters underground.
The message consisted of the word 'Neutrino' in binary format. The neutrinos needed to be fired in large groups, because they're so hard to spot that, even with a multi-ton detector, only about one in ten billion is detected.
After the neutrinos were detected, a computer on the other end translated the binary code back into English.
"Of course, our current technology takes massive amounts of high-tech equipment to communicate a message using neutrinos, so this isn't practical now," says University of Rochester physics professor Kevin McFarland.
"But the first step toward someday using neutrinos for communication in a practical application is a demonstration using today's technology."
A feather and a bowling ball will fall at the same rate in a vacuum. So will a neutrino.
I think there is some argument with that. Some theories state a Neutrino is massless and travels at the speed of light in a vaccum. I don’t think Neutrinos ‘fall’ in the same sense as a feather or a bowling ball. Maybe I just have reached the limit of my understanding of this. I think we can at least both agree that there needs to be more research on the neutrino before anything can be stated with confidence.
Never mind, even light is subject to gravity. I don’t know what I was thinking.
That's nothing. Just last night, I said something to my 17-year old son, and he acted like he actually heard it!
>> “U.S. taxpayers paid for this research, it should be expressed in yards, feet and inches. Get the UN and its standards out of the United States.” <<
.
Or simply decimal US Survey feet, but Amen!
Sounds to me like an antenna transmission system with a beamwidth too small to be practically useful. Aperture size, gain and directivity rules wouldn’t apply here...
It would seem to me a damned difficult thing to point or receive....
But with a beam, you can send the message as a coded modulated signal that only the intended redeiver can recognize. Beats a RR track every time. :o)
This is already obsolete- It can be blocked by beams of anti-neutinos.
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