"A cave radio that allows you to beam data to the surface rather than visiting it in person can be extremely valuable. It could save the cave".Alexander Kendrick, 16, won the 2009 International Science Fair for inventing this cave-texting device. The award got the teen from Los Alamos, N.M., a new computer, a trip to Switzerland and $12,000.
A cave radio that allows you to beam data to the surface rather than visiting it in person can be extremely valuable. It could save the cave.
- Diana Northup
I wanted to find out why this thing was such a big deal. The next thing I knew, I was hanging from a rope in the bowels of the Earth and groaning under my breath.
I was with a team of cavers in Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico, heading 1,000 feet underground to test Kendrick's invention.
The device is something like a computer attached to a ham radio. It transmits data using low-frequency radio waves that can penetrate rock more easily than high-frequency transmissions, like those in FM broadcasts.
If this test succeeded, it would be the deepest known underground digital communication ever to take place in the United States.
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