by KFC, Technology Review
Physicists commandeer a beam of neutrinos to send a message through solid rock but at a painfully slow data rate. A couple of years ago, we looked at the possibility of using neutrinos to communicate with submarines. The problem with underwater comms is that only the lowest frequency electromagnetic waves penetrate water to any depth and these are only capable of data rates of around 50 bits per second. Neutrinos on the other hand pass more or less unhindered through anything. That makes them ideal for submarine communication, except for one thing. Neutrinos are somewhat reluctant to interact with matter and this makes them hard to measure. So any neutrino communications beam would have to be hugely powerful and any neutrino detector extremely big. Nevertheless, neutrinos raise the possibility of communication at data rates some three orders of magnitude higher than is currently possible with submarines.
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/27648/?p1=blogs
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