This implies financial feasibility. It still takes a super collider on one end and a detection tank on the other. But one day it might be feasible. I would think a military warning system would be implemented before a financial aid.
Or a high speed link with all the submarines. It's really hard to communicate with a submarines hundreds of metres under water as radio waves don't go through that much water.
Direct transmission through the earth could be as much as a quarter second faster than around the circumference. A hypersonic missile can travel about a half of a kilometer in a quarter second. So, any application where a half kilometer or quarter second head start might make a difference. The only thing I can think of where the stakes are high enough and timing critical enough is nuclear deterrence. But as hypersonic missiles and planes get faster, there could be other advantages.
LEO orbit period is 90min, so it takes at least 40min for a missile to go halfway around the globe.
Going in straight line across the earth at the speed of light takes 42ms. Going around the earth at the speed of light takes 66ms. Let's be extremely pessimistic and double that estimate at 132ms. Going through the earth saved you 90ms in this best case.
You saved 90ms over 40min. A ratio of 0.0000375, or 0.00375%.
There is no way it makes any sense to spend billions to save 0.00375% in response time to an incoming missile.
Your analysis is valid as long as one of the following are true:
1) We learn to bend light around the surface of the earth (otherwise relays are needed, which add significant delay).
2) hypersonic missiles are required to a) go into LEO and b) go all the way around the earth to benefit from a quarter second head start
I still think military warning applications are much more likely than someone trying to do HFT on the NYSE from Australia. But, like I said from the beginning. Neither are feasible because they need a super collider and a massive tank detector.
We would see decisions being made that aren't physically possible with current technology. Also the number of people who would need to keep something like this a secret would be on par with that of a fake moon landing.
If their application of the technology were so secret that we couldn't tell it existed, then it wasn't worth whatever they paid.
Presumably it would be used in the case where a split-second decision is the difference between success and failure.
> If their application of the technology were so secret that we couldn't tell it existed, then it wasn't worth whatever they paid.
I would posit that, were a system like this feasible and already implemented by the military, we wouldn’t hear about this until the football has to be activated.
There is no single other decision as monumental and requiring of extremely precise timing. And it’s not a decision that is used very often or would be obvious if something “not physically possible” were done since it happens in secret. It’s pretty much the perfect usecase for such a technology.
That's fair. The original post was suggesting corporations were actively using it for lower trade latency. That seems very unlikely. But having the technology in our back pocket for military use? That's believable.
Though I think everyone secretly knows that, in the Mexican standoff that is a nuclear stalemate, if one side launches all their nukes, the best outcome for everyone is for the other side to just let it happen. This would afford any survivors the best chance at rebuilding. The important part is the threat of what you can do, not what you actually do.
> We would see decisions being made that aren’t physically possible with current technology.
Or we wouldn’t, because it would only be used where an alternative information cover story could be concocted or where the decision and action itself could be kept secret, to avoid exposing the capability.
