Can we communicate using the structure of the vacuum? BROKER/Alamy

The vacuum isn’t empty. Even where there is no matter and no radiation, there is structure – and we may be able to use the structure of the vacuum itself to send and receive messages.

No matter how empty space gets, the fundamental laws of physics dictate that it is always teeming with energy from the quantum fluctuations of various fields, like the electric and magnetic fields. “Empty space is something dynamical,” says Achim Kempf at the Perimeter Institute in Canada. “It’s not really empty. Space and time are …