IF YOU shine a laser on the floor, where does the light go? With the right preparation, some of it might pop out at the other side of the world - an effect that could be exploited to transmit secret messages through the ground.
That is the conclusion of Andreas Ringwald at the German Electron Synchrotron (DESY) in Hamburg, and colleagues, who have explored the possibility of hypothetical particles called "hidden photons" (http://arxiv.org/abs/0903.5300). "If such particles exist, then we can use them to communicate," says Ringwald. "It's very simple."
Hidden photons are a class of particles predicted by so-called supersymmetric extensions to the standard model of particle physics. Unlike normal photons, hidden photons could have a tiny mass and would be invisible because they would not interact with the charged particles in conventional matter. This means hidden photons would flit through even the densest materials unaffected.
The only place to spot them is in a vacuum, where they should sometimes "oscillate" into normal photons. There are already experiments searching for this effect: the idea is to shine a laser at a wall in a vacuum and see if any of the photons make it through to the other side by transforming into their hidden counterparts and back again. According to Ringwald's group, if these experiments succeed it should be possible to scale up the apparatus so that the hidden photons become signal carriers and the "wall" becomes any stretch of ground or water.
That is the conclusion of Andreas Ringwald at the German Electron Synchrotron (DESY) in Hamburg, and colleagues, who have explored the possibility of hypothetical particles called "hidden photons" (http://arxiv.org/abs/0903.5300). "If such particles exist, then we can use them to communicate," says Ringwald. "It's very simple."
Hidden photons are a class of particles predicted by so-called supersymmetric extensions to the standard model of particle physics. Unlike normal photons, hidden photons could have a tiny mass and would be invisible because they would not interact with the charged particles in conventional matter. This means hidden photons would flit through even the densest materials unaffected.
The only place to spot them is in a vacuum, where they should sometimes "oscillate" into normal photons. There are already experiments searching for this effect: the idea is to shine a laser at a wall in a vacuum and see if any of the photons make it through to the other side by transforming into their hidden counterparts and back again. According to Ringwald's group, if these experiments succeed it should be possible to scale up the apparatus so that the hidden photons become signal carriers and the "wall" becomes any stretch of ground or water.
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