Now send SMS using vodka - yeah, 'Vodka'!

Incredible as it may sound, but researchers at York University have sent world's first SMS using evaporated vodka. The text read - "O Canada" and the researchers are confident that the system they've developed can be used where the conventional wireless communication technology fails. Professor Andrew Eckford and his team did this interesting experiment in his lab in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. The 'Chemical Signal' - as they call it - was sent using the alcohol in vodka. The signal traveled 4 meters across the lab with the aid of a tabletop fan.


The signal was received by a special receiver which demodulated it and analysed for the rate of change of concentration of alcohol molecules. It figured out whether the concentration was decreasing or increasing. Controlling the concentration level of the alcohol molecules is the new technique the researchers have developed to encode their messages. A single spray represents bits and no spray is an indicator of zero bit.

Guess who's been using this technology before us, humans? The answer is animals. Bees use chemicals in pheromones to communicate with each other whenever they sense a threat to the hive. The technology, however is very new to humans.


In their paper titled "Tabletop Molecular Communication : Text messages through chemical signals", the authors describe their experiment in depth. The technology would be very useful for transmission of messages and data in challenging environments like tunnels, pipelines, underwater and within the body.

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