7 ms·
Would there be any good reason or theoretically practical way to use neutrinos for communication? Asking because in 3 Body Problem it’s seen as a “civilized” w
by idontwantthis 5y ago
Would there be any good reason or theoretically practical way to use neutrinos for communication?
Asking because in 3 Body Problem it’s seen as a “civilized” way to communicate compared to radio waves.
- hn_throwaway_99 5y agoNeutrinos are produced by radioactive decay, and they interact very weakly with ordinary matter, making them extremely difficult to detect. Seems like the exact opposite qualities of something you'd want to use for communication.
- WitCanStain 5y agoIf there were a way to reliably detect neutrinos in sufficient quantities they'd be ideal since you could send messages through the earth and at near light speed, I suppose.
- contravariant 5y agoDo neutrino's have a wavelength? If not then there'd be one channel and almost no way to prevent crosstalk.
- R0b0t1 5y agoJust generate inordinate amounts of neutrinos. Doable for something akin to a undersea cable. If we could focus the output of the reaction then I see this being feasible, otherwise maybe not.
- hungryforcodes 5y agoAs opposed to how we communicate now globally?
- zodiac 5y agoCommunication via EM waves travel around the earth, not through it. (eg radio waves, fibre optic cables, satellite...)
- hungryforcodes 5y agoBut it's at pretty near the speed of light and how would there be an advantage to doing it the way the GP says?
- zodiac 5y agoLet the radius of the earth be R. Say you want to send a message from the north pole to the south pole. If you use radio waves that travel around the earth, the shortest distance they can travel is πR ≈ 20,000km. If you use neutrinos that travel through the earth, the shortest distance is 2R ≈ 12,700km. So the advantage is about 7,300km (or in time units, 25ms ≈ 7,300km / (the speed of light))
- hungryforcodes 5y agoFair enough, your calculation seems valid. But my point still stands -- are we going to build enormous LHCs all over the world to get a (maximum) 24 millisecond advantage in global communications via neutrinos?!
- ithkuil 5y agoI assume the story is "if we find a magic new tech that is otherwise similar to our existing tech in terms of cost effectiveness, size, bandwidth, reliability, etc, and it also could pass straight through earth, then we could shave off 25ms and that would be useful"
- zodiac 5y ago> If there were a way to reliably detect neutrinos in sufficient quantities they'd be ideal since you could send messages through the earth and at near light speed, I suppose. > As opposed to how we communicate now globally? From this interaction I thought you'd missed the point that "send messages through the earth" is something we're currently not doing. Of course you're right that the "if there were a way to reliably detect neutrinos" is doing a lot of work.
- dclowd9901 5y agoThis is important because… line of sight has somehow stymied us? I feel like quantum entangled communication would be a better direction to head. Not that they’re mutually exclusive development paths.
- thatcherc 5y ago(un?)fortunately quantum entanglement cannot be used to send information any faster than classical communications. Entanglement is a good way to share bits for encrypting secrets, but you still need to be send entangled photons over a <c channel like a fiber optic or microwave cable.
- dmitrybrant 5y agoWhile neutrinos are not very difficult to generate, they are extremely, astoundingly difficult to detect. Unless we discover a new type of matter that interacts more strongly with neutrinos, we're stuck with cavern-sized detectors that can detect single-digit numbers of neutrinos (out of many trillions), unreliably.
- mrfusion 5y agoI guess if we found a way to provide say a trillion times more neutrinos than normal we could detect that more easily.
- YakBizzarro 5y agoyour "opponent" is the sun that is bombarding us with tons of neutrinos. your SNR would be probably bad
- retrac 5y agoThe same problem is faced by optical communication during the day with the sensors exposed to sunlight. SNR can be increased a fair bit with even slight directionality. If sensitivity of detection is one day high enough, I think it would be theoretically possible to obtain directional information about neutrinos, by building a whole network of sensors and synthesizing an aperture.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- DrBazza 5y agoThe 'good reason' to use them for communication, if it were practical, is that they interact so weakly, you don't have to worry about pesky things like planets or stars getting in the way of your signal (though gravity is still a thing).
- themodelplumber 5y agoI've wondered the same about gravitons. Notwithstanding the need for likely-huge sensing equipment for the first N years of development...
- LegitShady 5y agoIt's not yet clear if gravitons exist at all.
- Koshkin 5y agoI have a hard time imagining a particle associated with the curvature of spacetime.
- LegitShady 5y agothe inability of current science to square relativity and its predictions of space-time with quantum mechanics is exactly the reason why we aren't sure, and one of the biggest open questions in physics. I mean it could all be strings, or quantum gravity, or Wolfram's crazy graph theory automatons, or maybe something else entirely. We don't know.
- dr_dshiv 5y agoI had a really hard time imagining a particle associated with mass (Higgs boson)
- LegitShady 5y agonote that the Higgs is not responsible for all mass as is understood by a layperson. The Higgs field gives mass to subatomic particles but it doesn't translate directly into the mass of objects as we know them. The mass of the three quarks (one up quark and two down quarks) making up a neutron is only about 1% of the mass of a neutron. The rest of the mass comes from strong nuclear force interactions via gluons which are themselves massless.
- Koshkin 5y ago
- jahnu 5y agoWe can collect enough over hundred of days to make a picture of the sun*. Bear in mind the absolutely unimaginable quantities of neutrinos the sun is producing every femtosecond just in our direction and we can barely detect them with a giant apparatus. https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap980605.html https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap980605.html
- ForHackernews 5y agoThere have been (theoretical) proposals to use them to communicate with submarines: http://www.physics.ucla.edu/~hauser/neutrino_communication_paper/siljah_mod.htm http://www.physics.ucla.edu/~hauser/neutrino_communication_p... > Neutrinos have many properties that would make them superior even to the extremely low radio frequencies. Because neutrinos are nearly unaffected by matter, a neutrino beam could traverse directly through the earth from the transmission site to the submarine. A directional beam would allow confidential information to be passed only to the intended recipient. Neutrino communications would also be totally jam-proof. As an additional benefit, a neutrino message could be received in the deepest of waters, leaving a submarine less vulnerable to enemy attacks.
- godelski 5y agoThere's also research into using neutrinos as probes to detect things in the earth (oil, mineral deposits, etc). Different materials have different neutron absorption rate. Obviously this is pretty hard to pull off and expensive, but possible.