Slashdot Mirror
Laser Clock Generates One Trillion BPS
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"
but I bet it still manages to fuck up daylight savings time.
Imagine trying to dance to 1 trillion bps! I guess you could just take a lot of speed and vibrate all night.
Then you can't bloody well read it, can you?
I have a clock that by definition is more accurate.
It consists of a cesium atom.
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."
That would be one BILLION bps.
One TRILLION would be 1,000,000,000,000,000.
There are enough good teams from Florida!
UCF is an excellent school. I'm really impressed everytime I hear something about the students/teachers it's good. That being said OU has the highest percentage of Merit Scholor's (sp? since I'm not one!) of a Public University in the country! Although with $15k/year scholorship cash and costs at only 3k/semester for classes & books, I wish I were, then my student loans would be nonexistant!
There's a link of for this story on the NY times at the bottom of the page.
I figure i'd post it here for reference:
And here it is.
that that is is that that is not is not
Penis.
Penis, penis.
Penis, penis? Penis. Penis...
Penis, penis, penis! Penis!! Penis?!
Penis!? Penis!!??!!??
Peeeeenis... Peeeeeeeeeeeenis...
Penis?
...Penises.
This comment was originally posted on slashdot and is listed here: http://www.xdroop.com/content/1010311095.html
I work with a bunch of geeks. And that's okay. They do their thing and I do mine. Most of the time I'm happy for them, that they get joy and happiness out of playing with electronics. Admittedly I disagree with a lot of their thoughts about life. People used to believe that the Earth was the center of the universe, then it was the sun, but now we all know that the computer is the focal point of the universe, projecting its cathode ray goodness on our souls. You can't eat, sleep, breathe, live or run a business without one, or so we're told.
But if there's one thing I have no tolerance for, it's the geek phenomenon known as slashdot.org, the sorriest case for content on the web I've ever seen pawned off and gleefully accepted by the masses.
When I look at magazines, newspapers, or any other source of information, I judge them on three items: usefulness/uniqueness of content, quality of that content, and the depth of coverage regarding that content.
Slashdot has none of these things. And yet people try to convince me that the people who run that website are working hard at it.
Say what?
That's right - when Andover.net filed its IPO, making the editors of Slashdot instant wannabe millionaires, someone in the office said "Those guys put in a lot of hard work, and they deserve the success."
Now, I write code for a living, and I work hard at it, so I have a good idea of how slashdot operates. I guarantee you that the entire website is little more than leftover code from college projects and other unrelated work. At the very best, it is ill-conceived and poorly developed, which explains in part why the interface is so miserably awful, and the site is unbelievably slow.
Let's theorize what goes on in the average day of the slashdot editors:
10:42 AM - get out of bed.
10:45 AM - first Dr Pepper of the day.
10:46 AM - unglue keyboard from desk, check stock market.
10:56 AM - find a few interesting tech stories on the web. This is easy, since users send them to us all the time.
11:04 AM - post said stories to slashdot, disregarding spelling and journalistic impartiality.
11:08 AM - start playing Quake 3 (or whatever the game of the moment is).
3:15 AM - go to sleep.
If I'm wrong about anything, it's that they get up even later than that. And I couldn't figure out what time that order the pizza for dinner. But they have pepperoni on them.
Content - The content of slashdot is, admittedly, targeted towards geeks. But apparently not very smart ones. Regardless of the target audience, the content is never challenging - it never pushes the reader to think. Have we become a society where the last place you really exercise your brain is in grammar school? The average news article on slashdot is little more than a snippet from some tech rag about a new product that everyone loves, usually with an editorial comment tossed in telling everyone how they should feel about it.
I can get that same crap anywhere else. The TV tells me what to think, newspapers and magazines back them up, and slashdot does the same exact thing and is somehow worshipped as a haven for free thinking.
Quality - Why not try out that spellchecker? One word for you slashdot folks: dictionary. Try one on for size. Work on your spelling and grammar, and once those improve I'll attack the quality of your writing.
Consider this - Jon Katz is the best writer on slashdot. If you're familiar with his work, then you might appreciate that, or you might realize how lousy the writing must be if that's the case.
Katz has written some decent articles for slashdot (In particular, his Hellmouth series). But he's too wrapped up in the medium to see what he writes about. He's too busy dropping buzzwords that define his writing more than his actual content.
But the truly amazing thing about him is - almost everyone who reads slashdot hates Katz. They loathe him. The self-proclaimed geeks who read slashdot don't want to be challenged by his writing. There are people who attack every article he writes, regardless of the content.
Depth - unless its the updated release schedule for the new linux kernel or a new game, you're not going to get much repeat coverage on slashdot. And you're not likely to extract much from an article unless you already knew a certain amount of information about the topic. Once again, the exception might be Katz, who writes multi-part articles, but mostly that's because he's a hopeless wheezebag.
The thing that really scares me is that all sorts of little slashdots are popping up all over the web, popular sources of sludge pawned off on the accepting readers, and we readily accept is all as verse. Is this what 200 years of the Industrial Revolution primed us for? 50 years of television? Or was it something else? In my short lifetime I've watched the quality of information sources decline to a point where coverage is simplistic enough that it could be fictionalized and no one would notice the difference. While people ignore the WTO or slaughters in Burundi, Angola, Cambodia, anywhere else to devote coverage to wonder drugs, the newest Internet craze, the Hollywood minute, or any other sort of "News you can use."
And now, in a time when information should be even more readily available, so much of it is crap that finding the gems is rarely worth the shit you need to shovel. The sort of crap you find at slashdot instead of insightful knowledge about this increasingly impersonal, computerized world that we all blithely accept and even embrace.
And that is why slashdot sucks. That website isn't encouraging any free thought, any independent thinking, and certainly not any dissenting viewpoints on the information age. And we all accept it, even 'credible' websites like Wired frequently link to slashdot as their source of expert information and news updates.
If you're not directly connected to the information you want, you're not likely to find anything of depth nowadays. And if you have that sort of connection, then why do you need the web in the first place?
As if cars, skyscrapers, television, mini malls, supermarkets, drugs, war, and McRainForest (brought to you by the Big Mac!) weren't enough, now we have to venture out on the web with millions of other people, and not once challenge out horizons or open our minds.
Willow John
I mean, I know this is cruel and all, but I saw the professor's picture, and the first thing I thought of was that sticker on the side of the laser...
DO NOT LOOK INTO LASER WITH REMAINING GOOD EYE.
I'm sorry! I even went to UCF for a while!
slashdot editors getting more and more reluctant to do stuff, they should make a stand.
sir bard
How do they know it's a TRILLION BPS? We all know that Floridan's can't count worth shit...
... I can also add that UCF has consistently won among the top three places on many of the ACM programming contests and is one of the best schools to attend in spite of my imperfect CS record (which was only due to lack of diligence on my part :).
:), Dr. Frederick and Dr. Dutton for helping me channel my energies toward the right places....
:). You will always be in my mind in spite of the fact of your physical absence....
Here I'd (selfishly take this moment to) like to take a chance to thank some people for having the heart to understand someone like me (and I was not stupid or bad - just lazy/undisciplined) - Dr. Bass, Dr. Hagan, and Dr. Richardson of the physics department, Dr. Shah and Dr. Orooji of the CS department for also understanding and being forgiving, Dr. Parsons of the CS department for having the strictness and skill to teach us all why we should love Scheme and not C++
College has undoubtedbly been one of the most learning experiences for me, both academically, and culturally (ethically and otherwise). Jim Ennis, Mark Olkiewiz - I 'love' you both in spite of anything you may think of me.
And last, but not least - Doug Mowry - may God be with you and your family, and thank you for being like a second father and making UCF seem like a warm place to a foreign student... To this day I will not forget you, ever the diplomat with a warm heart... (if that's possible for diplomats
There are many other people I'd like to thank - but too many to list. UCF rulez!
'A lie if repeated often enough, becomes the truth.' - Goebbels
When reading up on the atomic clock on this site, I read mention aobut the mercury ion clock which would be, when finished, 1000 times more accurate than the standard caesium atomic clock: http://whyfiles.org/078time/2.html
More competition for the new laser-clock, but at 1008 Billion signals per second, I see a major advantage in his laser-research.
Peter Delfyett's area of focus is "increasing the speed of fiber-optic systems" because, according to his research, in the current fibre-optic system:
"beams from several separate lasers, each costing about $1,000, send light wavelengths at the same speed at the same time down the line and the total speed is calculated by multiplying the number of wavelengths by their pulse rates."
Delfyette's current area of research led him to use a "mode-lock laser". This is used to "control the timing and the number of wavelengths that are simultaneously generated"
If you can't see where I'm going with this, think about fibre-optic communications, particularly Fibre-Optic Broadband. This new system can generate 1008 Billion signals per second, each signal having the ability to carry one digital bit, and all this from just one laser, instead of many expensive, bulky convergance lasers. The implications of Peter's new laser-research include the fact that if you had a single fibre-optic fibre for broadband internet access, it would give you a maximum download speed of 120162.9638671875 Megabytes per second, unless I'm mistaken which I could be because my mathematics isn't the best. At any rate, it's much faster than today's fibre-optic broadband connections. Also, since the fibre-optic lines themselves need not be changed, only new laser-systems installed, this technology could be implemented into all current major fibre-optic networks.
I can see Peter's research coming in very handy in the future of land-based communications.
I work for a group that uses and researches mode-locked lasers for a different purpose, and there seem to be a few inaccuracies and misconceptions floating around.
Mode locked lasers have been around since at least 1970, and are widely used for laser and communications research and telecom applications. It's a technology that's getting better as people like Delfyett iron out the substantial kinks, but it's hardly a new technique.
Talking about the size of these things, let's trace a source or two. UCF News release: "smaller than the head of a pin." NY Times: "that potentially could nestle on the head of a pin." Really, the individual optical components (Mach-Zehnder modulator, fiber, electronic oscillator, waveplates, filters, polarization control, isolators, etc.) reqired for a mode locked laser are each at least a few cubic centimeters. With good packaging, you might get a mode locked laser into a lunchbox, but no way as small as a pinhead. That's not to say thirty years down the road they won't have figured out how to put all of these components onto a chip and make it tiny, but it's not happening any time in the next ten years without a serious revolution in optics miniturization.
Mode locked lasers utility as a clock is limited to very fast things, as they're not good clocks for long periods of time. The numerical measure that is quoted for clock accuracy (-140 dBc/Hz, for those of you that follow the stuff) isn't good for time periods longer than 0.1 microseconds. Go below 1-10 MHz (more than 1 - 0.1 microseconds worth of time) or so, and the inaccuracy goes up exponentially for any mode locked laser. Now, that's a thousand clock ticks for a GHz processor, so it's fine for chip clocks. Just don't try timing anything that takes a millisecond.
Compare this to atomic clocks, which get worse over these short time scales, but much, much better over any human time scale. There are physics-based reasons for this, mostly involving the temperature, vibration, and other nusiance noises applied to a few very simple atoms suspended in a shielded vacum trap vs the stability of a bunch of optical components in a box that constantly have optical and electrical power flowing through them.
This is why NIST is looking at linking the two types of clock, not replacing one with the other.
BMagneton
"After seeing this, the scientists are still looking frantically through the motherboard manual that controls the light to find out what exactly the POST code is for one trillion beats in a second"
And if nothing better comes out of this, at least we know we can hook the driver circuit up to a speaker to scare the hell out of any insect in a 4 mile radius.
We now have confirmed reports from an informed Orange County minister that Ethel is still an active communist.
Eat your heart out, Moby!