IN A windowless laboratory in Milan, Luca Gamberale and Flavio Fontana admire a handful of sapphires. The crystals are part of an experiment designed to detect neutrinos, ghostly subatomic particles that stream from the sun in their countless trillions every second. But Gamberale and Fontana do not work for a university or government research lab – they work for Pirelli. So why is a company famous for its tyres and glamour calendars interested in neutrinos?
Gamberale and Fontana are not too concerned with the properties of these enigmatic particles. They’re simply trying to repeat an experiment carried out 20 years ago by researchers at the University of Maryland. That experiment suggested that neutrinos could form the basis of a novel communication system that would allow messages to be transmitted to the other side of the world without wires, cables or satellites.
Many physicists find it hard to believe that neutrinos could be harnessed for this purpose, because they are so tricky to spot. But if they could be tamed, neutrino telecommunications would do away with the costly and time-consuming business of launching and maintaining satellites, or building and laying thousands of kilometres of fibre-optic cables on the seabed. Pirelli is interested because it doesn’t just make tyres, it is also a world leader in fibre optics. It believes neutrino research could reap long-term rewards.
“The project belongs to what we call blue-sky research,” admits Fontana, who is head of Pirelli’s materials innovation group. “The topic is extremely controversial, but if it is successful the company will have a big technological breakthrough on its hands.”
It’s not difficult to see why Pirelli’s research is raising so many eyebrows. ...