4 ms·

At 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

At 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 ago
Reminds 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 ago
  Now 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 ago
    Imagine waiting hundreds of years for the new episode to reach your distant star system
    - hasmanean 5y ago
      Really you only have to wait one week for each episode to reach you.
- hoten 5y ago
  What would the throughput be on something like that?
aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago
But we already have gravity wave generators. E.g. I’ve just generated some by waving my arm!
- Tepix 5y ago
  Please prove it by measuring the resulting gravity wave :-p
shawnz 5y ago
I'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 ago
  The 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 ago
    This 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 ago
        It 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 ago
A 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 ago
  A 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.

fouronnes3 5y ago

Reminds 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 ago
Now 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 ago
  Imagine waiting hundreds of years for the new episode to reach your distant star system
  - hasmanean 5y ago
    Really you only have to wait one week for each episode to reach you.
hoten 5y ago
What would the throughput be on something like that?

aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago

But we already have gravity wave generators. E.g. I’ve just generated some by waving my arm!

Tepix 5y ago
Please prove it by measuring the resulting gravity wave :-p

shawnz 5y ago

I'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 ago
The 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 ago
  This 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 ago
      It 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 ago

A 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 ago
A 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.