Experts Use Bubbles to Store Information in Morse and Binary Code in Ice To Communicate in 'Very Cold Regions'

Scientists have taken inspiration from the environment to devise their latest method of communication. The formulated mode of communication stands apart due to its medium, according to IFL Science. Researchers have reportedly used bubbles to store encoded messages in ice, astonishing the world with the unique feat. Details regarding this method have been published in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science. For this methodology, scientists are using human-made bubbles to encode messages that are eventually stored in the ice. Bubbles get trapped in ice when water starts freezing, and dissolved gases get pushed out.

Researchers noted that bubbles take on the shape of an egg or a needle when caught in the ice. Experts used several items, such as a cold plate and water, to understand which conditions made what shapes. Results indicated that when freezing was fast, bubbles took on an egg shape, but when the process was slow, they appeared like a needle. This knowledge allowed researchers to create several layers in the ice. Some of these layers had no bubbles, some had egg-like bubbles, while others had needle-like bubbles. Since the process was facilitated by scientists, the bubbles were deemed to be made by humans.

For creating the message through bubbles, experts selected Morse and binary codes as their two approaches, according to Phys.org. The distinct features of the bubbles in 3-D chunks of ice were assigned specific characters in Morse and binary codes. The team then used a control plate to monitor the rate and direction of freezing to create the bubbles with the message they wanted to encode. They managed to formulate a slice of ice featuring air bubbles in the specific position and size that they wanted for the message. To read the message, researchers trained a computer to detect the position and size of the bubbles with their grey values. They took a photo of the ice slice and converted it to a greyscale. Then, they uploaded this greyscale for processing on the computer. 

Based on the greyscale values, the computer decoded the binary and the Morse code depicted by the bubbles. The team then translated the code into English letters and Arabic numerals. Furthermore, this exercise clarified that binary code was a better approach than Morse code, as the former was able to store ten times longer messages than the latter. It is not the first time stored information has been found in ice by experts. For decades, scientists have been analyzing bubbles in glacier ice to figure out the planet's climatic history. These bubbles act like relics, whose features often reveal to experts tales of the past. The team was stunned by the bubble's endurance and discovered a way to apply it to a modern requirement. 

Researchers believe that this alternative method of storing information is valuable, as our expanding frontiers may not align with present methods. "As our activities gradually expand to cold regions such as the poles, moon, and Mars, the production of document and telecommunication-based messages faces increasing challenges owing to the requirements for ink, power, and equipment, and the long-term preservation of paper and magnetic media for storing messages also becomes difficult," the researchers shared. Present technology only allows for some sentences to be stored in a standard ice cube, according to New Scientist.

Researchers believe that there is a lot of potential for improvement. Mechanical engineer and author Mengjie Song cites a crucial advantage of this method, allowing for messages to be stored and read in extreme environments, like the North and South Poles. The team also suggested using plastics instead of ice to formulate a longer message. However, some experts, like Qiang Tang from the University of Sydney, Australia, seem to have doubts about the effectiveness of this method. "It's a new way of representing a message and storing it in a new place, but from a cryptography or security perspective, I don't think it will be useful at all unless a polar bear may want to tell someone something," he shared.