Slashdot Mirror
Instant Messaging With Neutrinos
An anonymous reader writes "A group of scientists has for the first time sent a message using a beam of neutrinos – nearly massless particles that travel at almost the speed of light. The message was sent through 240 meters of stone and said simply, 'Neutrino.' From the article: 'Many have theorized about the possible uses of neutrinos in communication because of one particularly valuable property: they can penetrate almost anything they encounter. If this technology could be applied to submarines, for instance, then they could conceivably communicate over long distances through water, which is difficult, if not impossible, with present technology. And if we wanted to communicate with something in outer space that was on the far side of a moon or a planet, our message could travel straight through without impediment.'"
Pretty early on in the piece to be slashdotted. Pulled for some reason?
Using the holy grail of OSes...
Since the link in the summary gives a 404, here's what appears to be the same article direct from the school's website:
http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=4022
The title of the article is a verbatim match to the URL in the summary, so I'm pretty sure it's the same article.
I, for one, think that anything with the potential for better internet access X feet below the water is an excellent idea.
Should SETI switch to monitoring neutrino transmissions now?
The first person who figures out how to do this reliably will make a huge profit. There are already undersea cables which exist for the sole purpose of reducing latency between NY and UK stock exchanges. Neutrinos going _through_ the earth (arriving at the Nikkei for instance) would have a significantly shorter time of flight and would give traders a massive advantage.
I imagine you have to have one helluva lot of neutrinos being pushed out for any detector to even catch a small fraction of them.
I actually went to RTFA (and some of the links provided by others) but this is the exact problem I was thinking of. The reason neutrinos penetrate stuff so well is they barely interact with anything. The fact they barely interact with anything makes them hard to detect. Even places like the LHC need to generate assloads of neutrinos to see them.
Barring some radical new neutrino detector technology, I don't see this taking off.
I am not that good in Physics, so I'll post my questions here:
I heard that photons don't collide with other photons, that's why two beams can cross path and still behave as though they were travelling without any hindrance
Will Neutrinos behave like photons? Or will Neutrinos collide with other Neutrinos?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !