Slashdot Mirror
IBM Slows the Speed of Light
dptalia writes "According to an article on ZDNet, IBM has come up with a way to slow light to 1/300 of its normal speed. While this has been done in laboratories before, IBM has found out how to do this using standard materials, which opens the possibility of mass production. This means that the dream of having optical based CPUs may be closer than previously thought." From the article: "When the optical conversion might start to occur is a matter of speculation. Luxtera has said it will start to commercially produce products in 2007. The computer industry, however, tends to move slowly when it comes to major overhauls of computer architecture. Several components will have to be developed before photons can replace electrons inside computers. A paper providing details on the chip will run in Nature on Wednesday."
This is not new, my city has been slowing down light for years, particularly red lights they can't seem to apply the same technology to yellow or green lights though.
Research Paper Title:
How to Slow the Speed of Light Using Common Household Items.
I read
I'm waiting for the day when we can raise the speed of light so we can go faster. Futurama predicted it'd be in 2508, but I'm hoping we get there sooner.
That is the best-written synopsis I have seen in a while. And posted by ZONK no less!
Please sign petition to restore sanity to our banking system!!!
http://financialpetition.org/
I have to change the speed of light from a const to a variable now?
Millions of teenagers will love it if light gets slowed that much. It could give them time to zip up their pants when their mom walks in the room wondering what she heard coming from the computer.
I bet they are slowing it down to leave room for overclocking! :P
gtkaml.org
Slow down the speed of a Steve Ballmer-thrown chair.
Well... I guess this is one way to achieve faster than light travel. Guess it's easyer to just use the old car but slow everything else down. ;)
I'd rather they figure out how to speed up switching. You wouldn't need to slow light down then.
TANSTAAFL
IBM? Hrm. I'm a little surprised -- who else would've expected Microsoft to be the industry leader in making things go slower?
I'm looking for an optical processor that can do math at point 5 lightspeed. I expect this will be of particular assistance in my thesis project of calculating how fast a certain type of falcon can run. In the past, when trying to figure this out, I've had to hold the bird with a pair of grippers that would keep slipping out of my hands, and by the time I'd be done, I would have gone through maybe nine or ten pairs.
With a faster processor, I hope to do the Kestrel run in less than 12 forceps.
Curious, since I read about this yesterday...
Maybe the light was slowed down so much, that I moved faster that C, and went backwards in time.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
First IBM starts offering Solaris as an OS choice. Now they've slowed the speed of light.
Who else is waiting for a skinny guy on a pale horse to ride across the sky?
The light will go into ultra-violet and possibly plaid!
Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
The bad news is that the speed of light is now roughly 18 miles per hour.
IBM has actually found two more ways to slow the speed of light:
Subject photons to their software development process.
Put photons through the government procurement process.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
Now IBM can run at 1/300 speed of light for the "normal" mode and at the speed of light for the "turbo" mode!
countdown to the "Speed of light performance myths", "temporal over clocking", and bootleg computer makers using the lightbulbs from easy bake ovens as processors.
I have been wondering why I don't seem to be ageing as fast, these past months. Now, Slashdot informs me that IBM has slowed down the speed of light, and this is all beginning to make sense!
That "time is relative" comment. Boy! Truer words were never said. Waiting for the next slashdot story - the hours go by like minutes, as I hit F-5, over and over again! Then, when called into my manager's office - to discuss my productivity "problem" - just the opposite.
Just wonderin'. Do all you guys like cheese?
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
A paper providing details on the chip will run in Nature on Wednesday
I was thinking nevermind how the new chips run in nature, I want to know how well they'll run locked up in my server room.
Chips of the wild! Coming soon to a safari near you!
That'll slow'em down.
I guess this also means the tollbooth trick didn't work the way it did in Rock Ridge...
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."