Signals from noise: stochastic resonance pays off

Imagine that you are trying to receive a faint radio message being broadcast by a friend at some frequency unknown to you. After several minutes of careful scanning, you begin to lose hope of detecting the transmitted message above the random static: what should you do? Surely, the last thing you would try is to add more static to you receiver! Yet that is precisely what scientists who study the phenomenon known as stochastic resonance might suggest: under appropriate circumstances, the addition of random noise can actually improve the chances of signal detection. Now, Peter McClintock and colleagues at Lancaster University have demonstrated that stochastic resonance occurs in a far broader range of situations than previously recognised (Lancaster University preprint).