Next, build a machine that can face-slap sleeping recipients and say:
"WORD!"
Even if they don’t travel faster than light, neutrinos have one killer advantage over other physical layer transmission systems: you don’t need to lay fibre or wires to carry messages. Working at Fermilab, a research team from the North Carolina State University and the University of Rochester have sent one word – “neutrino …
Can neutrinos be generated in a beam? Are neutrino detectors directional? If not, aren't we stuck with a single transmitter and receiver pair for all neutrino communications? Hmm, I suppose you could use phased arrays for transmission and reception. That's going to be massive!
I think I'll stick to listening to the Neutrinos.
Yes and yes. If you start with a beam of particles that generate the neutrinos, they will form a beam. And (some) detectors are directional (most notably Super Kamiokande), working by spotting the Čerenkov radiation from the electron or muon generated by an incoming neutrino.
Why - sure.
Your could think of modulated gravity waves à la Larry Niven's "The Hole Man".
The "Neutrino Signal" was used by Stanislaw Lem in "His Master's Voice" (which buries Carl Sagan's 'Contact' under the threads of a T-34 btw.)
And for those who like to know things of no large real-world relevance: Didcha know that you can get Neutrino radiations burns from next-generation colliders? It's true!
http://accelconf.web.cern.ch/accelconf/p99/PAPERS/THP52.PDF
"Intense highly collimated neutrino beams are created from muon decays at high-energy muon colliders causing significant radiation problems even at very large distances from the collider ring. A newly developed weighted neutrino interaction generator permits detailed Monte Carlo simulations of the interactions of neutrinos (and of their progeny) to be performed using the MARS code. Dose distributions in a human tissue-equivalent phantom (TEP) are calculated
when irradiated with neutrino beams (100 MeV–10 TeV). Results are obtained for a bare TEP, one embedded in several shielding materials and for a TEP located at various distances behind a shield. The distance from the collider ring (up to 60 km) at which recommended annual dose limits can be met is calculated for 0.5, 1, 2, 3 and 4 TeV muon colliders. The possibility to mitigate the problem via beam wobbling is investigated."
Should solve a lot of problems with power too, just park your datacentre next door to the nearest nuclear power station*, voila, lots of power and a plentiful supply of neutrinos to send those 'Help it's a meltdown' SNMP traps at relativistic speeds through rock.
*alternatively, you could park a container sized nuke next to the datacentre..
I know that ping times will be excellent, given that they are possibly faster than light, and certainly faster than light going through a curved fibre optic cable. But what is the bit rate like? And what would the impact on the bitrate be as a result of interference from other neutrino transmitters?
...this had already been demonstrated by Telsa back in the 1800's. He invented wireless communication & also lit a light bulb without wires or cables, also was on the verge of creating a machine to read peoples thoughts. If these are all a result of him tapping into the Earth's neutrinos, then its been done! A shame scientists in 2012 are barely figuring what he'd mastered almost 100 years ago.
You do know that you can light a lightbulb without wires in almost any home in the UK, right? Just take said lightbulb and stick it in the microwave.
Given the nature of some of his work (Tesla coils and stuff like that) it's pretty likely that he just stumbled across a similar effect- a high frequency current induced in the wire filament.
He wasn't tapping into the Earth's neutrinos, he was just using the same bit of physics that lets you heat a Carbonara in 3 minutes from chilled and sit and watch pictures broadcast from a nearby tower.
They'll kill for a millisecond. Imagine what they'll do to skirt underneath the curve of the Earth.
In fact, we will only know that this has already been implemented when we wake up to find that some trading house now owns the entire Earth six times over.
Good luck selling this technology to the public once I leak the ugly fact that these "neutrinos" you write of are radioactive.
The press will thrash about yelling about Cherobyl Rays and Fukushima Computers and all grant monies will dry up faster than the Möhne reservoir after a visit by 617 Squadron.
I'll have my star trek communicator now thank you very much. Hold the power plant.
And yes, of course CERN is where alien porn collects. As Scott Adams suggested, aliens are here and they live in Switzerland. It's not too much to assume they would need some entertainment? Which alien can resist the combination of particle accelerators, pron and the good laugh about all these earthling scientists making those little particle problems oh so complicated? Heck, they had to invent "the grid" for it ;)
Not to mention the LHC provides a good cover for their own intergalactic transport and comms system.
So theoretically you could send a message straight through the Earth. That would in some sense make it "faster than light", since light would have to take the long way around. E.g. if you wanted to send a message from Los Angeles to London, it would be 5458 miles on the surface but only... um... 3900-ish miles as the neutrino flies, or about 0.02 seconds instead of 0.03. If only they could get the bandwidth up to par somehow that might have real applications.