Tag: cosmology

Neutrino Communication

Jolting the star with neutrinos could advance the pulsation by causing it to heat up and expand. Information could thus be shuttled around our galaxy’s network of 500 or so Cepheids – and out as far as the Virgo cluster of galaxies.

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Beams of neutrinos have been proposed as a vehicle for communications under unusual circumstances, such as direct point-to-point global communication, communication with submarines, secure communications and interstellar communication. We report on the performance of a low-rate communications link established using the NuMI beam line and the MINERvA detector at Fermilab. The link achieved a decoded data rate of 0.1 bits/sec with a bit error rate of 1% over a distance of 1.035 km, including 240 m of earth.

To make use of neutrinos an advanced civilization can use a gravitational lens as a focus and amplifier. The lens can be a neutron star or a black hole. Using wave optics one can calculate the advantage of gravitational lensing for amplification of a beam and along the optical axis it is exceptionally large. Even though the amplification is very large the diameter of the beam is quite small, less that 1 cm. This implies that a large constellation of neutrino transmitters would have to enclose the local neutron star or black hole to cover the sky. This means that such a beacon would have to be built by a Kardashev Type II civilization.

LHC

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a 27 kilometer long particle accelerator straddling the border of Switzerland and France, is nearly set to begin its first particle beam tests. CERN is preparing for its first small tests in early August, leading to a planned full-track test in September – and the first planned particle collisions before the end of the year. The final step before starting is the chilling of the entire collider to -271.25 C. Here is a collection of photographs from CERN, showing various stages of completion of the LHC and several of its larger experiments (some over 7 stories tall), over the past several years.

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