MINERvA Detector. Image: Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory |
Scientists
have for decades contemplated communicating via neutrinos when other
methods won’t do. For the first time, physicists and engineers have
successfully transmitted a message through 240 m of rock using these
ghost-like particles.
“It’s
beginning to look more feasible,” said Dan Stancil, professor of
electrical and computer engineering at North Carolina State University,
who had proposed the recent neutrino communication test. He collaborated
with scientists of the MINERvA collaboration at DOE’s Fermi National
Accelerator Laboratory, who use a 170-ton particle detector and a
powerful, pulsed accelerator beam to produce neutrinos and measure their
interactions with matter. Based on Stancil’s proposal, scientists were
able to manipulate the pulsed beam and turn it for a couple of hours
into a neutrino telegraph. “It’s impressive that the accelerator is
flexible enough to do this,” said Fermilab physicist Debbie Harris,
co-spokesperson of the MINERvA experiment.
For
the actual test, scientists transmitted the word “neutrino.” The
MINERvA detector decoded the message at 99 percent accuracy after just
two repetitions of the signal. But until physicists create more intense
neutrino beams or build better neutrino detectors, the goal of using
neutrinos to communicate with people under the sea or outside Earth’s
orbit will remain out of reach.
Demonstration of Communication using Neutrinos
Source: Oak Ridge National Laboratory
