“It’s just so ‘out there,’ like science fiction,” Professor Andrea Goldsmith said. “What exciting ways could we use this to enable communication that is impossible today? That’s what I would want someone to walk away thinking about.”
This machine is not the first of its kind, having a predecessor which, rather surprisingly, used vodka. Its creator, post-doctoral student, Nariman Farsad, built the system at York University in Canada. Now, as a member of the Wireless Systems Lab at Stanford, he has developed a faster version that communicates through pulses of glass cleaner and vinegar.
Like many systems, chemical communication relies on a binary code to relay messages. But instead of zeros and ones, it sends pulses of acid (vinegar) or base (glass cleaner). The researchers type their desired message in a computer. The computer then sends a signal to a machine that pumps out the corresponding ‘bits’ of chemicals, which are sent through plastic tubes to a small container with a pH sensor. Changes in pH are then relayed to a computer that deciphers the encoded message.
Farsad chose these specific chemicals because they are easy to obtain and they cancel each other out at the receiving end of the system. In his vodka messaging machine, the signal would build up to the point that the receiving end was too saturated with vodka to receive more messages.
One of the next challenges is figuring out how to separate the signal from the noise at the end of the transmission.
Chemical messaging is wireless and affordable, and it could work without electronics, says Farsad. That means it could function in places where typical electromagnetic communications systems struggle, such as under water or in places containing high quantities of metal.
The researchers are currently looking into how chemical communication could advance nanotechnology. Chemical-based data exchange could be self-powered, travelling throughout the body harmlessly – and undetectable by outside devices.
Fantastic possibilities they’ve already discussed include leaving secret messages, having robots communicate with trails of liquid text, or being able to fall back on chemical communication in the extremely unlikely scenario that our electric grid is knocked out by a terrorist attack. Time to stock up on vinegar and glass cleaner!
