DoubleZero (@doublezero): Beyond Electromagnetic Communication: Exploring the Next Physics of Connectivity

Beyond Electromagnetic Communication: Exploring the Next Physics of Connectivity The DoubleZero Science Research Initiative opens a public call for research into physics-based communication methods, beginning with neutrinos, on ResearchHub. DoubleZero Foundation, the organization dedicated to the advancement, security, decentralization, and adoption of the DoubleZero protocol, today announced the launch of its Science Research Initiative and its first public call for research: Beyond Electromagnetic Communication, a $100K funding opportunity for exotic communication methods, hosted on the open-science platform @ResearchHub. This initiative shares the mission behind everything @doublezero builds: increase bandwidth, reduce latency. Today's fastest networks, premium fiber and microwave relays, are bound to the surface of the Earth and must carry signals around its curvature. Particles like neutrinos are not. A neutrino beam can travel a straight chord through the surface of the planet rather than around it, covering less distance and arriving sooner, not by exceeding the speed of light, but by taking a shorter path at close to it. Between widely separated points on the globe, that geometric shortcut is worth tens of milliseconds. For distributed systems, global settlement, and internet capital markets, tens of milliseconds are decisive. The science is real. In 2012, a team at Fermilab sent the first digital message ever carried by a neutrino beam, the word “Neutrino,” through 240 meters of solid rock. In 2023, small dedicated detectors at the Large Hadron Collider made the first direct observations of collider neutrinos. The sources exist, and the detection principle is proven. What no one has yet done is turn that toolkit toward communication. Beyond Electromagnetic Communication exists to open that work to funding, in public, by anyone who wants to see it happen. What the Call Covers Beyond Electromagnetic Communication invites proposals across three tracks: Neutrino communication, including detector design, beam generation, and experiments at hadron colliders that can be extended into communications demonstrations; Other exotic modalities such as muons and other penetrating particles; And the systems, theory, and feasibility work that underpins both. The test for any proposal is simple: the work should credibly advance bandwidth, latency, or both, against the best conventional networks available today. The call is structured as an umbrella. The broader vision sits at the top of the page, and specific, fundable proposals from research teams sit beneath it, each open to public review and community crowdfunding. The Foundation is running the initiative and the first open call for proposals is hosted on ResearchHub. Open by Design Everything about the initiative runs in the open. Proposals are public. Reviews are public. Progress is shared as it happens. Selected work is pre-registered, and data generated through funded research is shared in open-access repositories. The initiative is built around community support rather than a single funder. Foundations, companies, and individual patrons who share an interest in fundamental physics, frontier instrumentation, or ultra-low-latency, high-bandwidth communication can contribute to the pool and be publicly recognized as part of the collaboration How to Participate Researchers can read the full call and submit proposals at Beyond Electromagnetic Communication - Exploring the Next Physics of Connectivity. PhD students, postdocs, independent researchers, and faculty are all eligible, and collaborative, interdisciplinary teams are encouraged. Anyone can follow the science, review proposals, and contribute funding directly through the platform. Closed research, however well funded, produces closed results. Open science produces a commons. This is the same logic that built DoubleZero: take infrastructure that incumbents kept private and expensive, and make it open, permissionless, and shared.