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Laser Clock Generates One Trillion BPS

Posted by timothy on from the get-there-on-time dept.

FunkyELF writes "Professor of optics, electrical and computer engineering and physics Peter Delfyett, Jr., of the School of Optics CREOL, has developed a laser-driven clock that is smaller than the head of a pin, with applications in computers as well as general timekeeping. One of many fascinating things going on at The University of Central Florida"

2 of 33 comments (clear)

  1. UCF's contributions... by BoxJockey · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This is way more impressive than the last contribution made by (former) UCF Students... The Blair Witch Project

    --
    "UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things."
  2. Re:How do they know it's a TRILLION BPS? by martyn+s · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Well, a million is 1,000,000 x 1000^0
    a billion is is 1,000,000 x 1000^1
    and a trillion is 1,000,000 x 1000^2

    So a trillion is the third in the series of 1,000,000 x 1000^n.

    Listen, I love the metric system, and as an American, I wish we'd adopt it officially. But I don't see how your nomenclature for numbers is any better. What do *you* call 10^12? A million million? Sorry, I like our system better. Or even if you call it a thousand billion, it still doesn't fit.

    Our number system puts a comma after every three digits, starting from the right side. So if you see a number that starts off like this: 100,000,000.... You'll know it's a hundred something, whether it's a hundred million, billion, trillion or quadrillion. If you're going to call 1,000,000,000,000 (10^12) "A thousand billion", instead of "one [n-illion]" then you confuse the whole system.