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NASA X-Ray Tech Could Enable Superfast Communication In Deep Space (space.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Space.com: New technology could use X-rays to transmit data at high rates over vast distances in outer space, as well as enable communications with hypersonic vehicles during re-entry, when radio communications are impossible, NASA scientists say. The technology would combine multiple NASA projects currently in progress to demonstrate the feasibility of X-ray communications from outside the International Space Station. The radio waves used by mobile phones, Wi-Fi and, of course, radios, are one kind of light. Other forms of light can carry data as well; for instance, fiber-optic telecommunications rely on pulses of visible and near-infrared light. The effort to use another type of light, X-rays, for communication started with research on NASA's proposed Black Hole Imager. That mission is designed to analyze the edges of the supermassive black holes that previous research suggested exist at the centers of most, if not all, large galaxies. One potential strategy to enable the Black Hole Imager was to develop a constellation of precisely aligned spacecraft to collect X-rays emitted from the edges of those black holes. Keith Gendreau, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, thought of developing X-ray emitters that these spacecraft could use as navigational beacons to make sure they stayed in position relative to one another. The system would keep them aligned down to a precision of just 1 micron, or about one-hundredth the average width of a human hair. Gendreau then reasoned that by modulating or varying the strength or frequency of these X-ray transmissions on and off many times per second, these navigational beacons could also serve as a communication system. Such X-ray communication, or XCOM, might, in theory, permit gigabit-per-second data rates throughout the solar system, he said. One advantage that XCOM has compared to laser communication in deep space is that X-rays have shorter wavelengths than the visible or infrared light typically used in laser communication. Moreover, X-rays can penetrate obstacles that impede radio communication.
also usable as a weapon when you are really desperate
Sub space communications :)
The information won't get there any quicker; X-rays don't yet travel faster than light. Rather the technology will allow very high bitrates.
Still, it's good news that we will be able to browse pr0n in space.
I'm pretty sure that those superfast X-rays are no faster than the microwaves you use at home.
It's the best of all technologies. One could then control the total radiation amount and focus or diffuse it as per needs. This is the obvious technology to use for interplanetary links. When it is implemented it will cause minor issues for astronomers and as such they will have to send future telescopes further and further to the edges of our solar system. A focused x-ray laser would actually be very safe.
Like Marconi some crazy consortium will claim a first patent on the technology. And the patent office will confirm it and the courts will order Nasa to stop using Xradio until they pony up and pay the royalties to the patent holders. I would not at all be surprised if Tesla did not already patent a device to do something similar and someone smart in a Utah or West Texas patent extortion firm has not already cloned an old Tesla idea.
All that being said I wonder why someone has not tried that part of the spectrum in the Seti effort. We might just get some more WOW signals and a bit of a shock or at least start seeing cows in space and the like. Who knows we might see re-runs of I Love Lucy bounced back at us from some alien civilization in digital Xray broadcast format just to piss us off for not thinking about using super short high energy waves for digital communications sooner.
So it's a radio in the X-ray band?
Will this help us against Ethereal mind control, Sectoid cheese, and Muton rushes? Great chips ahoy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
> [x-ray satellites] also usable as a weapon when you are really desperate
Exactly that! The hungarian jewish physicist-psychopath Ede Teller, the real-life Dr. Strangelove, tried to get Reagan's USA to build battle satellites, which would have used the explosion of a nuclear bomb onboard to generate focused x-ray laser (gamma-laser) beams coming out of about one hundred pre-positioned iron rods, used to shoot down that many hypothetical incoming soviet ICBMs in a single salvo. The USA even cancelled its membership in the UN treaty against placing nuclear weapons in space to let the idea progress. Except the project collapsed after spending about 5 billion dollars on it, because the basic theory and tech was both faulty, as far as publicly known.
Anyhow, the Kremlin wasn't amused and started the development of supressed trajectory quasi-ballistic missiles, which never leave the x-ray protection offered by atmosphere. They also started to carve out a defunct volcano in the russian Far East, in order to plant a giant nuclear shaped charge inside, which can cause planetoclasm by breaking through the tectonic plate up to 100km deep, more or less like a man-made dinosaur asteroid impact. You may call it the ultimate "dead hand" insurance and the system is supposed to go live in 2020, after a long hiatus of work during the Yeltsin era and early Putin years. The official story is the site serves as a backup communications hub bunker and leadership survival shelter for the Russian Federation.
What _are_ they teaching in Schools these days...:
There is this thing called the Particle-Wave Duality. In this context, every Wave has a Photon, and every Photon has a Wave. It is much more practical with current Tech to deal with low Energy Waves, or high Energy Photons, but they are both still part of the same Duality. It is entirely possible, and sometimes downright irritating, to deal with Waves that Accompany higher Energy, (A couple of EV.), Photons, the bane of Digital Cameras, which leads to all sorts of aberrations.
But Photons that accompany low Energy Waves are much more difficult to detect, (In the region of 1 micro Electron Volt), and usually involves a fair amount of Liquid Helium. By the time that we get up to X-Rays, Photons are all that we count, because ~1nM wavelengths are pretty damn small. (But still important for such things as X-Ray Lithography.)
A Chart like this used to grace every Schoolroom Wall:
http://what-when-how.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/tmp26dc54.png
Radio is Photons is Light. So are Infrared, Ultraviolet, X- and Gamma Rays. As one old jokester once said: Fiat Lux.
The first message received was, "Don't let me leave, Murph!" in a douchey whine.
I'm more interested in the long range UPSKIRT potential on those alien hotties!
If you don't understand that photons are photons regardless of their wavelength and frequency then you do not belong here.
Nothing travels faster than bad news.
This system has been in development for quite a while. This info sheet is from 2007: https://gsfctechnology.gsfc.nasa.gov/TechSheets/XRAY_Goddard_Final.pdf
I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing. -- Thomas Jefferson
Obligatory XCOM Game reference: https://www.gog.com/game/xcom_ufo_defense
I'm willing to bet a lot of monies that at least some of the NASA personnel involved with this plan have played the XCOM games and were overjoyed at being able to find a way to work "XCOM" into something official.
... against Ortnoks and Sheevars. Floaters and Snakemen are obsolete.
Reading these Apocalyptic Total Destruction stories is amusing. The theory that winning the overarching conflict by destroying them, all the innocents, and yourself is, of course, entirely self-defeating. But to claim that even dictatorial Communists would actually build a weapon to destroy Earth stretches credulity.
Oh, wait. This is just a micro plot for a sad, miserable short story, truncated from the original planned novel when you ran out of words.
Dammit, I fell for that again. I hate that.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
There is this thing called the Particle-Wave Duality.
The definition of the electromagnetic spectrum has nothing to do with wave particle duality. You can quite clearly define the whole thing in terms of wavelength, and where the divisions are between different types of light mostly have to do with traditional production methods and what is visible to humans.
every Wave has a Photon
This is false. There are plenty of kinds of waves that do not involve photons, everything from gravity and sound waves to electrons. Not even every light wave has a photon, as many would be composed of a vast number of photons. You say that every wave is quantized, as things like sound waves have phonons for their finite minimum size.
Xrays do somewhat travel through water, maybe this could be used to communicate with a shallow submerged submarine too.
Nullius in verba
You seem to have missed "...In this context, ..." I tried to make the explanation as simple as possible, but if you want to drag Phonons or whatever in as well, go right ahead. But remember the original question: "When did radio frequncies become light?"
A long, but pretty good explanation of the history and various aspects of Duality can be found right here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave–particle_duality
I stand by my explanation. Light, (Photons), has both Particle-like and Wave-like properties. At the simplest level, a single Photon has these same properties. The Chart that I provided a link to, (You did check it out?), is pretty complete in explaining the Photon Energy levels, Wavelengths, and Frequencies for the Electromagnetic Spectrum, of which Visible Light is just a small part. But it is all Light.
"... You say that every wave is quantized..."
I made no such claim, although there are circumstances where this is true. Stop putting words in my mouth; you're scaring off the Rubes.
Moreover, X-rays can penetrate obstacles that impede radio communication.
As well as the ones that facilitate it -- otherwise known as reflectors and collimators. As long as X-rays are so very difficult to collimate, they're going to be hard to use for long-range communication. And as long as it's difficult to make emitters or detectors with very high bandwidth, they aren't going to be worth a lot for any high-speed communication.
Plus there's the whole radiation hazard thing. Not so relevant in space, but kind of a big deal here on DNA-factory-infested Earth.
It's all electromagnetic radiation, and it all consists of photons each carrying an energy proportional to its frequency. You must detect a certain minimum number of photons per bit of data for the message not to get smashed by Poisson noise, so moving up the spectrum from radio waves, it takes orders of magnitude more energy to send the same amount of data. The recent announcement that Pluto emits X-rays was based on a total of *seven* detected photons!
Thus I seriously doubt that any intelligence in the universe uses anything except radio waves for interstellar communication.
OK, I get the part about X-ray comms. What I don't get is the need to deploy an X-ray beacon for the satellites to navigate. After all, there are already natural sources that can be used. The technology for using these sources is credible enough that real money and real hardware is being developed for it.
man-made dinosaur asteroid impact. You may call it the ultimate "dead hand"
The Soviets did raise a ruckus of the x-ray laser idea, but they never did think the way necessary for creation of a suicide weapon. After all, they were the sane ones in the world, not the crazy Americans who were led by an actor.
In addition to communicating with spacecraft during atmospheric re-entry, X-ray transmissions could also be useful for communicating with high speed aircraft such as the (rumored) Aurora hypersonic spyplane or SR-72 hypersonic UAV.
I am quite aware of the history and actual mechanics of partivlr-wave duality, certainly having spent enough time in grad school and postdoc research with actual quantum mechanics experiments. I still say it is completely orthogonal to the idea of an electromagnetic spectrum. You act like mentioning phonons is gratuitous, although it was only in response to a simplification you made while I think mention of even just photons was gratuitous to the original issue.
The part you quoted at the end should have had the word "can" or "may" in the original word in, as in, "You may say all waves are quantized." But yhe statement that a wave is a photon is wrong even in the narrowest context of the original post.