I for one welcome our
0.00028 Å overlords.
100 terahertz WiFi sounds fun!
Just don't stand too close to the router, m'kay?
Boffins use nuclear radiation to send data wirelessly
Boffins from the UK's Lancaster University and the Jožef Stefan Institute in Slovenia have transmitted and received data wirelessly using nuclear radiation. The Register assumes that readers understand that the wireless tech used in phone networks, WiFi, Bluetooth, TV transmissions and the like employ electromagnetic radiation …
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Monday 15th November 2021 17:08 GMT Cuddles
Re: Can't help feeling
I think you're both right. The paper that is the main focus of the article, "Wireless information transfer with fast neutrons", is essentially a shutter lamp using neutrons produced by radioactive decay of Californium. But the second article mentioned, "Novel Surface-Mounted Neutron Generator" is about a very small accelerator-driven neutron generator that really does turn the radiation on and off (although it uses tritium as the target so there is still radioactive material involved, it's just producing the radiation of interest).
Basically, the first paper shows that you can use neutrons to carry information, and then cites the second paper in the discussion to suggest what would probably be a better way to think about producing an actual useful device.
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Monday 15th November 2021 17:07 GMT bombastic bob
Re: a small step
there is a well known (theoretical) nuclear reaction in which a moving neutron in the presence of a gravitational field has a probability of splitting into a proton, an electron, and 2 anti-neutrinos. This reaction conserves mass+energy, momentum, and particle/anti-particle balance, and for a very long time the anti-neutrinos were only theoretical.
In any case, the neutron communication beam would, in fact, end up decaying into anti-netrinos and free hydrogen-1 at some point.
icon, because, nuclear radiation, right?
unfortunately I do not know of any reaction that produces anti-matter proton+electron and neutrinos... at least not in THIS universe where matter (not anti-matter) won the "big bang" (theoretically). Maybe if it happens in the presence of ANTI-GRAVITY??
Oh, and to produce neutrons it may be a bit easier if you use an alpha emitter and boron. If done electrostatically (from an ionized beam of helium gas) it might actually be practical to modulate it with a signal. OK an adapted design of a travelling wave tube just popped into my head, morphed into a particle accelerator with a Boron-10 target. Mad Science!
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Monday 15th November 2021 13:17 GMT Loyal Commenter
Re: a small step
The generators might be possible to make small. You'd still need to be carrying around a tank with a couple of million litres of dry-cleaning fluid to detect them. Neutrinos might be more useful as a means of interplanetary communication, as they'll go right through anything in that happens to be in the way, such as another planet, in a way that radio waves do not.
Still not superluminary though, you'd need (hypothetical) tachyons for that, and those are definitely Star Trek material.
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Tuesday 16th November 2021 10:26 GMT Lotaresco
Re: a small step
"Oh, they do. There's several neutrino detectors, including one that (mistakenly) measured them going slightly FTL."
That has happened twice now, with two different detectors. The first time was with the INFN OPERA experiment, later attributed to a loose fibre optic cable. The second time was with the Fermilab MINOS experiment, which gave a mean neutrino speed of 1.000051c; the 99% confidence interval was 0.999976c to 1.000126c.
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Monday 15th November 2021 11:52 GMT amanfromMars 1
Re: one small step for a man, one Giant Quantum IT Leap for Future Mankind*
Followed by new TLA tech to eaves drop .... Denarius
Or for new TLA tech to be remotely led with an AI Following Servering Futures with Myriads of Derivative Product ‽ A Vast Treasure Trove of Immaculately Sourced Assets with Endless Practical Abilities Realising and EMPowering the Beta Direction of Present Visualised Realities for an Almighty Influence. UberPowerful Presence. ........ QuITe AWEsome Being.
* An Alien Derivative for Prime Novel NEUKlearer HyperRadioProACTivated Drive with Drivers of Immaculate SuperVision Led Narrative Presenting Key Virtual Machine ACTivity Instruction for Reality Productions from SuperVisionary Source ......Enabling Impeccable Provision of Heavenly Needs and Feeds and Seeds for Earthly Growth and COSMIC Community Authority Immunity Recognition.
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Monday 15th November 2021 13:37 GMT Lotaresco
Re: a small step
It was the third Doctor played by Jon Pertwee who reversed the polarity of the neutron flow.
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Wednesday 17th November 2021 09:20 GMT W.S.Gosset
Re: a small step
Ah ha! Well sleuthed, sir!
So we have: the third doctor is the second doctor played by Jon Pertwee.
But! We are forgetting something!
> It was the third Doctor played by Jon Pertwee
In the larger, Regeneration sense, of course, it was the first Doctor played by all the actors.
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Monday 15th November 2021 09:14 GMT amanfromMars 1
:-) Hello Worlds. What’s Not to Like in Live Operational Virtual Environmental Command&Control ‽
That was an interesting and encouraging and even an engagingly enticingly crafted read, Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor, which very nearly almost also opened up more fully for critical entangled mass entry and bedevilment and/or bewonderment and bewilderment, the great vaulted doors into and onto the Novel and Virgin Fields of NEUKlearer HyperRadioProACTive IT.
ElRegers and Stuxnet fans alike might appreciate knowing a lot more about any of those sorts of dynamically ACTive developments clearly underground and covert because if/when reports do not afford them the light of day and general knowledge are they rendered the possibility of being a deep and dark secret ripe for private and pirate trading ...... to friends and foe alike ?
The following response and reply to opinions expressed on https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2021/11/10/four-essential-rules-for-developing-revolutionary-networked-capabilities, commentary which wasn't displayed soon after reviewing despite it be so promised immediately after posting ....[Thank you. Your comment will be displayed soon after reviewing.] ...... advises one and all of current shenanigans and future events on both near home and far foreign horizons.
Tom, outside developers that will be needed to create the needed solutions will certainly not leave the industry to engage less risky early stage development environments if Uncle Sam does not recognise the potential in any proposed and novel great game changing system of global protection and/or national and internetional defence, they will simply transfer their attention and interests to engage and employ and enjoy the benefits to be savoured with what many might then perceive and realise be a very able foreign competition easily mistaken and/or pimped as a constant enemy. And some developers may even decide that second and third party help is not necessarily vital for rapid progress and thus will they proceed somewhat alone to produce a product which they can sell to any who want it for an extremely handsome sum.
Indeed, the proprietary intellectual property in some extremely sensitive developments is oft best known to only a very select and able few, given the damage and destruction that it can cause in the wrong hands/hearts and minds.
Here is a taste of that sort of a development which is currently available to any and all with an interest in its efficacy.
Colonel Brian Russell, the commander of the II Marine Expeditionary Force Information Group (II MEFIG) explained the ability for military personnel to "reprogram" equipment on the frontlines would ensure operational advantages. He said cyber Marines will help reshape the battlefield, indicating these elite groups of soldiers "could influence the local population, take out enemy networks, disrupt the enemy's kill chain, and much more. ........ "Whether you like it or not, or realize it or not, all of our Marines are involved in this information environment, and we need to prepare them for that reality......... https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/cyber-marines-will-win-war-tomorrow-digital-battlefield
That is all very well and applaudable, but it is however already not the current reality to be dealt with in order to ensure situational authority and operational superiority.
Others elsewhere, obviously foreign and alien to Uncle Sam Forces and Sources, have moved on into much more advanced fields with innate abilities and remote utilities and virtual machine facilities that program/reprogram personnel for front lines that guarantee operational advantage ensured to assuringly influence local population, take out enemy networks, disrupt the enemy's kill chain, and much more ..... whether you like it or not.
And such is not so much a new destructive battlefield, although it can easily be morphed into many of those if one knows what needs to be done, but rather more a novel creative playground.
Honest, I Kid U Not.
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Monday 15th November 2021 11:24 GMT Flak
Paper cups and strings
Congratulations to the team that achieved this.
Pure science is wonderful even if practical applications may not be immediately obvious.
Sometimes you do stuff just because you can! For simplicity, try paper cups and strings :-)
Megaphone - not to be shouty, but just because it is adjacent technology...
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Monday 15th November 2021 13:29 GMT Lotaresco
Re: Now if they could do this with neutrinos...
"The detector might require excess baggage charges though. Fermilab's current neutrino detector is a sphere continuing 800 tons of mineral oil and 1200+ photomultiplier tubes."
I'm scratching my head trying to work out which neutrino detector you are referring to. I'm aware of five neutrino detectors operated by Fermilab. Three of these are the detectors for the Short-Baseline Neutrino Program, being the Short-Baseline Near Detector, MicroBooNE, and ICARUS. These are all Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber designs filled with 270, 170, and 760 tonnes of liquid argon respectively. The detectors are cylindrical. No photomultiplier tubes. The NOvA programme has two rectangular detectors made of stacks of blocks filled with mineral oil. The far detector is 50x50ft by 200ft long. Each module is 50x50x6 feet. Again no photomultiplier tubes. The photon detectors are fibre optic with solid state avalanche photodiodes. The near detector has 300 tonnes of mineral oil, the far detector has 14,000 tonnes of oil.
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Wednesday 17th November 2021 03:56 GMT Chairman of the Bored
Re: Now if they could do this with neutrinos...
I'm referring to Fermilab'a MiniBooNE experiment. An old colleague worked on some of the high speed electronics for the PMTs-
https://www.fnal.gov/pub/science/experiments/intensity/miniboone.html
The microboone follow-on experiment is also extremely interesting.
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Monday 15th November 2021 12:39 GMT Bartholomew
Back of the envelope calculations (mostly using E=mv^2)
3% of Californium-252 produces neutrons through decay with energies between 0 and 13 MeV (13 MeV is a neutron travelling at about 35263780 meters/second or about ~11.8% the speed of light), with a mean of 2.3 MeV (14832730 m/s;~4.9%) and a most probable value of 1 MeV (9780413m/s ; ~3.3%). So fibre and satellites have absolutely nothing to fear from Californium-252 at least in terms of latency.
In the paper (figure 4) it took about 292 seconds to transfer the word "yes", that would be a baud rate 0.08 (with no error correction). I suspect that because of the nature of how scintillators work that the baud rate is not going to get any better.
Now if you had far more money than sense you could stick many neutron generators in parallel distributed over kilometres (miles) and possibly transfer data through the earth at some slightly more reasonable rate after calibration and collimation of the neutron beams. You would only need 750 neutron beams, using the rate above, for about 60 baud! These will probably cause a few satellites flying overhead problems unless the transmission and reception sites were placed inside mines under large volumes of water (which absorbs the kinetic energy of neutrons really well). But in terms of bytes transferred per unit of money spent, it would be an insanely poor return on investment. You could match fibre latency (~66% the speed of light) with neutrons generated with energy levels at about ~400MeV and at ~940MeV (99.99% the speed of light) air and satellite based latency. But at those kind of energy levels your detectors need to be physically much much larger so that the neutrons did not pass right through them undetected. Yes a chord going through the earth would be technically faster in terms of latency than following the circumference, but at an insane cost.
I applaud the ingenuity but I do not see any practical use for it, and yea I know that is exactly what was said many years ago about fricking lasers (And now even
MisterDoctor Evil can put them on sharks). -
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Monday 15th November 2021 20:34 GMT J. Cook
Re: Californium-252
Yes:
"The element is most dangerous if taken into the body. In addition, californium-249 and californium-251 can cause tissue damage externally, through gamma ray emission. Ionizing radiation emitted by californium on bone and in the liver can cause cancer."
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Monday 15th November 2021 18:45 GMT Ken Hagan
Re: How about a really large archive?
Good luck modulating an atom bomb. When you get it working, you will tell the rest of us how you did it, right?
(Yes, I know it was a joke, but I saw the chance to write "modulating an atom bomb" and couldn't resist. Do you think I am the first person ever to use that pgrase in a sentence?)
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Monday 15th November 2021 19:15 GMT Fruit and Nutcase
Data leak
"...hypothetically, design out issues of security and risk".
I expect Mordechai Guri at the Ben-Gurion University is right now working out a way of tapping into the fast neutron stream and grabbing the data
https://search.theregister.com/?q=%22Mordechai+Guri%22
icon: can we have an ionising radiation symbol?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
