Slashdot Mirror
Storing Light In Chips
Roland Piquepaille writes "Recently, researchers have "stopped light" by storing light pulses in hot or extremely cold gases (check these former stories on Slashdot or at BBC News Online). Now, scientists from Stanford University have devised a method to store light pulses under ordinary conditions. In Light-storing chip charted, Technology Research News says this opens the way for all-optical communications switches, quantum computers and quantum communications devices. The researchers plan to demonstrate this technique by trapping microwave signals within a year. They think that a prototype which works at optical frequencies could be made in two to five years. This overview contains more details and references."
Storing microwaves within a year isn't very hard. I mean a year is huge!
When can we step back into the past and correct someone else's mistakes?
Anything in parenthesis may (not) be ignored.
So soon the computer industry will see the same marketing as for soft drinks...
I can picture the billboards: Buy a computer with a Pentium Light(tm) inside
And to this date, nobody actually *tried* tying buttered toast to a cat's back, for the hovering-cat effect!
Dude, check out my light harddrive.
..Opens case, goes blind and loses content of computer
Sig it.
...The silmarils!
you may find the Higgs in this signature.
Actually, I did once. It didn't work. :(
--Leo
I have been storing light in my fridge for years. Even when it's dark outside and I check, it is still there...
Maybe the toast would just force it's buttered side to the floor, squishing the cat.
I know I've heard this spin several times before on optical processors, and just about every new advancement touts such claims. So I ask when WILL we see 'the way' as actually being "opened???"
Of course this reply opens the way for people to flame me silly. And that IS a fact!
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
When I read the first line in your comment, it looked like "Storing Light In ChipMunks" - I wondered what would happen when they were hibernating in Winter; would they glow or turn dark.
She then picked the oozy furball up, stood on a chair and dumped him.
He spun around a bit and landed on his feet. The buttered toast ws still attached, but was now on his belly, butterside down.
No perpetual motion, but proof that cats always land on their feet, and buttered toast always lands buttered side down.
SCIENCE!
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.