Engineers have successfully transferred digitally encoded information wirelessly using nuclear radiation instead of conventional technology. The researchers measured the spontaneous emission of fast neutrons from californium-252, a radioactive isotope produced in nuclear reactors. Several examples of information, i.e., a word, the alphabet and a random number selected blindly, were encoded serially into the modulation of the neutron field and the output decoded on a laptop which recovered the encoded information on screen. Fast neutrons have an advantage over conventional electromagnetic waves, which are significantly weakened by transmission through materials including metals.
