6 ms·
In case someone else is wondering, they modulated the neutron beam by pneumatically moving a polyethylene block in front of the Californium source which sits in
by danbruc 5y ago
In case someone else is wondering, they modulated the neutron beam by pneumatically moving a polyethylene block in front of the Californium source which sits inside a one cubic meter water tank and can be pneumatically moved close to one of the walls for activation. The data rate was about one bit every ten seconds.
- kingcharles 5y agoThat's about the same speed I get when I run out of "high speed" data on my mobile phone plan.
- yosito 5y agoSounds like a more radioactive version of smoke signals.
- version_five 5y agoAt this bitrate, and over short distances - maybe 1m, a rotating permanent magnet (or a powerful electromagnet) could also be competitive. It wouldn't work for anything with a high magnetic permeability (like iron) but for non magnetic metal or water a static field would penetrate at least a short distance, enough to go through a wall. (BTW, I've imagined that in the distant future, we'll have gravity wave generators and detectors that don't have the same constraints as EM based data transmissions. I don't know how realistic this is.
- fouronnes3 5y agoReminds me of that paper I read a long time ago, about how we could detect advanced alien civilizations by analysing pulsar signals. The hypothesis was that they would put massive devices in orbit of pulsars to modulate their high energy signals to use as ultra long range communication. Presumably pulsars would be the only strong enough carrier wave.
- version_five 5y agoNow I'm imagining a future where some modulated binary star merger is being used to stream episodes over Netflix. Hopefully we manage to find a way to miniaturize things.
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y agoImagine waiting hundreds of years for the new episode to reach your distant star system
- hasmanean 5y agoReally you only have to wait one week for each episode to reach you.
- hoten 5y agoWhat would the throughput be on something like that?
- aaaaaaaaaaab 5y agoBut we already have gravity wave generators. E.g. I’ve just generated some by waving my arm!
- Tepix 5y agoPlease prove it by measuring the resulting gravity wave :-p
- shawnz 5y agoI'm holding out for neutrino based communication: https://physicsworld.com/a/neutrino-based-communication-is-a-first/ https://physicsworld.com/a/neutrino-based-communication-is-a...
- 14 5y agoThe interesting bit I picked up from that article is “A neutrino could easily pass through 1000 light-years of lead, so an ocean would pose no problem whatsoever.” That is crazy no wonder they are so hard to detect.
- thedrbrian 5y agoThis will blow your mind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super-Kamiokande https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super-Kamiokande >Mounted on an inside superstructure are about 13,000 photomultiplier tubes that detect light from Cherenkov radiation. A neutrino interaction with the electrons or nuclei of water can produce an electron or positron that moves faster than the speed of light in water, which is slower than the speed of light in a vacuum. This creates a cone of Cherenkov radiation light, the optical equivalent to a sonic boom. The Cherenkov light is recorded by the photomultiplier tubes
- dghughes 5y ago> A neutrino interaction with the electrons or nuclei of water can produce an electron or positron that moves faster than the speed of light in water, which is slower than the speed of light in a vacuum. This is the important but I think confusing part for many people. The electron/positron is not moving "faster than light" (nothing can) it is moving faster "than the light" in that specific medium (water).
- tialaramex 5y agoIt is moving faster than light, but c, the "speed of light" constant, is only called that because it's the speed of light in a vacuum and water isn't a vacuum. The constant c is actually a fundamental constant of our universe relating spatial and temporal dimensions, which is why going faster isn't possible (that's time travel) but the velocity of photons in one medium or another is just an observable fact like the viscosity of a particular brand of jam.
- aardvarkr 5y agoA gravity wave occurs at the lowest of the lowest of low frequencies. In order to produce such a wave the object resonating would have to be many many miles long and be stronger than any material known to man as well as incredibly heavy. Think of a very long cable woven from a neutron star. That’s about what it would take :) The concept has of course been written about a fair bit on science fiction. The dark forest trilogy comes to mind and used a gravity wave generator built into the hull of a massive ship whose purpose was to alert alien life to the existence of the earth.
- hasmanean 5y agoA string made of collapsed matter. You could pluck it like a guitar and it would vibrate with gravity waves. As long as nothing else on earth was as dense as the string, the gravity waves would propagate easily through ordinary matter like sound waves through air.
- titanomachy 5y agoI was wondering, thank you! Surprised the article didn't bother with even a sentence to explain this.
- op00to 5y agoI figured it was something like a trombone mute. Not sure why that was the image I got of how they did it.
- nickpeterson 5y agoThis sounds like a line from the turbo encabulator.
- JadeNB 5y ago> This sounds like a line from the turbo encabulator. In case you're one of the lucky 10,000: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac7G7xOG2Ag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac7G7xOG2Ag
- soheil 5y agoDon't see why they can't improve it to use a piezoelectric material to modulate the neutron beam. That would achieve a far higher data rate.
- IshKebab 5y agoPresumably because the neutrons are only emitted sporadically.