Researchers send text message using chemicals

We take it for granted that modern communication systems — everything from smartphones to the internet — use electronics to send and receive messages, but what if that weren’t the case? A group of researchers from Stanford are exploring an alternate system that uses chemicals instead of electricity as the base unit of communication, and have even managed to send a text message with it.

At heart, Stanford’s set-up is structurally similar to modern-day electronics, but instead, of using electric signals to send instructions, it uses chemicals. The 1s and 0s of binary communication are just replaced with pulses of vinegar (an acid) and glass cleaner (a base) sent through plastic tubes. A traditional computer is used to converted researchers’ instructions into this chemical format, and a pH sensor on the receiving end converts the pulse of liquid back to traditional binary.

But, you’re asking, if the system depends traditional electronics to interpret the chemical signals, what’s the point of using them in the first place?

Chemical systems like this could be useful if the electric grid is knocked out

The answer isn’t obvious now, but there are many potential applications for a fully-developed chemical communication system in the future. For a start, they could be used in places where traditional electromagnetic systems have difficulty communication — under water, for example, or in places with lots of metal. They could also be useful in the human body, where high-frequency signals can damage organs, or, in the event that the electric grid is knocked out.

"It’s just so ‘out there,’ like science fiction," said Andrea Goldsmith, professor of electrical engineering at Stanford, in a press statement. "What are all the exciting ways that we could use this to enable communication that is impossible today? That’s what I would want someone to walk away thinking about."

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