At best you could gain a 24.5ms advantage (through the earth to other side @ 12,800km versus around it at pi*6,400km).Actually quite significant in HFT terms.<p>But: sady this is completely impossible. The weak force is not called the weak force for no reason. Neutrinos hardly interact with matter at all - that's why they can stream through 12,800 km of solid iron almost unimpeded. You would need a detector the size of the solar system in order to collect any meaningful data volume in real-time.
Already implemented by the Rochester guys (well the messaging part, not the HFT part)<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3705953" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3705953</a><p>Its an interesting application of the potential.
Have people forgottten satellites? You don't have to go along the Earth's crust, you know!<p>A low orbit satellite with height above surface <= r * (0.5 * theta * cosec (theta /2) - 1)<p>where r = radius of earth and theta = angle subtended by the arc between NY and London at the earth's center<p>will always transmit signals faster than a transatlantic cable. With actual values, the height comes out to be around 510 kms.
I remember a brief discussion of this on HN from about a year ago: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2425228" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2425228</a>
That's a really interesting idea. Does anyone know how much money you could make with HFT if you were able to communicate through the earth instead of around it?<p>If the profit potential is high enough, maybe this is a good way to fund research?