[HN Gopher] CERN researchers have observed and generated high-en...
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CERN researchers have observed and generated high-energy neutrino
radiation
Author : Brajeshwar
Score : 177 points
Date : 2023-03-25 16:13 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (bigthink.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (bigthink.com)
| jl6 wrote:
| If we can both generate and detect neutrinos, we have the basis
| for a communication device that can operate on a point-to-point
| basis between any two locations. If Europe wants to send a secret
| message to Australia, it can point its transmitter towards the
| ground, and fire the beam through the interior of the Earth. It
| is very unlikely that there will be anybody in between to
| intercept the signal.
|
| There may be more practical alternatives of course...
| jeffwass wrote:
| This was studied decades ago. IIRC the effective bit rate, at
| least with the detector tech at that time, was insanely slow,
| like a few bytes per hour (or maybe even per day).
| capableweb wrote:
| As long as the latency isn't also hours/a day, it could still
| be useful, even if just one byte, as you could communicate
| what that byte means out-of-band. So catastrophe-detection
| systems could use it as an example.
| russdill wrote:
| If a byte takes 15 minutes, your latency is the time of
| flight plus 15 minutes.
| SaberTail wrote:
| If anyone does it, it will be financial firms putting them
| under stock exchanges to get milliseconds of advantage over
| anyone following the curvature of the earth.
| daveguy wrote:
| This implies financial feasibility. It still takes a super
| collider on one end and a detection tank on the other. But
| one day it might be feasible. I would think a military
| warning system would be implemented before a financial aid.
| crubier wrote:
| What value would the military get from knowing a piece of
| information a few milliseconds faster?
| daveguy wrote:
| Direct transmission through the earth could be as much as
| a quarter second faster than around the circumference. A
| hypersonic missile can travel about a half of a kilometer
| in a quarter second. So, any application where a half
| kilometer or quarter second head start might make a
| difference. The only thing I can think of where the
| stakes are high enough and timing critical enough is
| nuclear deterrence. But as hypersonic missiles and planes
| get faster, there could be other advantages.
| crubier wrote:
| LEO orbit period is 90min, so it takes at least 40min for
| a missile to go halfway around the globe.
|
| Going in straight line across the earth at the speed of
| light takes 42ms. Going around the earth at the speed of
| light takes 66ms. Let's be extremely pessimistic and
| double that estimate at 132ms. Going through the earth
| saved you 90ms in this best case.
|
| You saved 90ms over 40min. A ratio of 0.0000375, or
| 0.00375%.
|
| There is no way it makes any sense to spend billions to
| save 0.00375% in response time to an incoming missile.
| copymoro wrote:
| the shadows are so dark (or the secrecy so
| official?)....that for all we are able to know, they
| already done it.
| teawrecks wrote:
| We would see decisions being made that aren't physically
| possible with current technology. Also the number of
| people who would need to keep something like this a
| secret would be on par with that of a fake moon landing.
|
| If their application of the technology were so secret
| that we couldn't tell it existed, then it wasn't worth
| whatever they paid.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > We would see decisions being made that aren't
| physically possible with current technology.
|
| Or we wouldn't, because it would only be used where an
| alternative information cover story could be concocted or
| where the decision and action itself could be kept
| secret, to avoid exposing the capability.
| serf wrote:
| >We would see decisions being made that aren't physically
| possible with current technology.
|
| i'm not aware enough of what any world government is
| doing at any given time to confidently assert that so
| easily.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| Presumably it would be used in the case where a split-
| second decision is the difference between success and
| failure.
|
| > If their application of the technology were so secret
| that we couldn't tell it existed, then it wasn't worth
| whatever they paid.
|
| I would posit that, were a system like this feasible and
| already implemented by the military, we wouldn't hear
| about this until the football has to be activated.
|
| There is no single other decision as monumental and
| requiring of extremely precise timing. And it's not a
| decision that is used very often or would be obvious if
| something "not physically possible" were done since it
| happens in secret. It's pretty much the perfect usecase
| for such a technology.
| codetrotter wrote:
| What is the football?
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_football
| zapdrive wrote:
| Or a high speed link with all the submarines. It's really
| hard to communicate with a submarines hundreds of metres
| under water as radio waves don't go through that much
| water.
| mabbo wrote:
| > I would think a military warning system would be
| implemented before a financial aid.
|
| In this world? Eeeh, I doubt it.
| uf00lme wrote:
| From my understanding most exchanges put in artificial limits
| now to ensure anyone with mega bucks for infrastructure are
| equal
| foota wrote:
| I think this is on the last mile, but doesn't apply outside
| of that. E.g., the length of cord in the exchange is the
| same, but outside of that it's your infrastructure.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Your understanding is false. That's exactly how HRT, Jane,
| Jump, Millennium make so much money
| klysm wrote:
| Just need to have a satellite orbiting behind
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > If we can both generate and detect neutrinos, we have the
| basis for a communication device that can operate on a point-
| to-point basis between any two locations.
|
| AIUI, you'll need a _much_ bigger detector farther from the
| beam location, and the bandwidth is going to suck at any range,
| but, sure, the odds that someone sticks a neutrino detector in
| the path is pretty low.
| dguest wrote:
| Direct link to the source:
| https://indico.in2p3.fr/event/29681/contributions/122474/att...
| hammock wrote:
| Neutrino bomb incoming? Where can I read about proposed weapons
| using neutrinos?
| Scarblac wrote:
| https://what-if.xkcd.com/73/
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| Great line in this one:
|
| _[...]The physicist who mentioned this problem to me told me
| his rule of thumb for estimating supernova-related numbers:
| However big you think supernovae are, they 're bigger than
| that.
|
| Here's a question to give you a sense of scale:
|
| Which of the following would be brighter, in terms of the
| amount of energy delivered to your retina: 1.
| A supernova, seen from as far away as the Sun is from the
| Earth, or 2. The detonation of a hydrogen bomb
| pressed against your eyeball?
|
| Applying the physicist rule of thumb suggests that the
| supernova is brighter. And indeed, it is ... by nine orders
| of magnitude._
| hammock wrote:
| Direct dosage isn't the only possibility though. Could be
| used to start a nuclear chain reaction, for example.
|
| We could also find a novel way to unlock the amount of energy
| required for direct lethal dosage, analogous to how we
| figured out how to split atoms
| [deleted]
| temp0826 wrote:
| Start a power plant meltdown or detonate an enemy's weapon
| stockpiles...from anywhere?
| kadoban wrote:
| Is there even a theoretical way that this could happen?
| Seems essentially impossible. The whole thing with
| neutrinos is they just _don't_ interact with anything
| except _extremely_ rarely.
| ithkuil wrote:
| Neutralink
| deadbeat1200s wrote:
| This is an awesome update. It was only in 2018 that a high energy
| neutrino was detected by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory (funny
| name lol) that was traced back to its source, a blazar. This was
| a active galaxy with a supermassive black hole at its center.
| That was the first time ever that scientists had identified the
| source of a high energy neutrino, and now scientists generated a
| whole new avenue of research in astrophysics with this. :)
| friendlyasparag wrote:
| IceCube also likes to name their events after Sesame Street
| characters, so you'd get things like Bert and Ernie events. Not
| sure if they still do since you eventually run out of
| characters.
| ouid wrote:
| its possible you havent been keeping up with sesame street,
| because no they won't.
| hguant wrote:
| > IceCube Neutrino Observatory (funny name lol)
|
| It's also an incredibly descriptive and literal name - the
| observatory is a cubic kilometer of photosensitive detectors
| frozen in ice at the south pole. When a neutrino interacts with
| the ice, it produces cherenkov radiation, which can be detected
| and sent up the chain to a server to classify what was actually
| detected.
| cubefox wrote:
| I think that the unusual thing was that they identified
| _extragalactic_ neutrinos.
| sonofaragorn wrote:
| The energy of the IceCube neutrinos is 2 to 4 orders of
| magnitude higher than the ones detected by this experiment. But
| this is still cool because it's the highest energy neutrinos
| detected from man-made sources.
|
| See slide 13 here:
| https://indico.in2p3.fr/event/29681/contributions/122474/att...
| rsynnott wrote:
| > they have observed and _generated in the laboratory_
|
| [Insert mandatory Three Body Problem reference here]
| Gooblebrai wrote:
| To be honest, I've read the first and second books and not
| entirely sure what you mean.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| There's a scene at the end of the second book where the
| aliens offer to build a neutrino communication device for
| humans but the humans opt for one that uses gravity waves
| instead. It's a very brief reference, I don't know why the
| parent would have brought it up.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Yeah, I was misremembering; I thought they actually did end
| up using high energy neutrinos.
| oblak wrote:
| I am finishing up the third one and also have no idea.
|
| Many people have thought about neutrino comms
| OnlyRepliesToBS wrote:
| [dead]
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