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.
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.
Slow down the speed of a Steve Ballmer-thrown chair.
Research Paper Title:
How to Slow the Speed of Light Using Common Household Items.
by Angus MacGyver, Ph. D.
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.
It allows you to build chips using light, at speeds for which we can reasonably design things, and interface them with things at small fractions of C. The benefit to the optical chip is power and heat, which means you can pack more chips in, which means you can make a faster computer.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Every Pratchett fan knows that light slows down if you apply a strong Magical field...
Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it's wrong. No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.
- Reaper Man
Now IBM can run at 1/300 speed of light for the "normal" mode and at the speed of light for the "turbo" mode!
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
The higher the dispersion, the lower the practical bandwidth of the device.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Step 1: Pass light through any medium which is not a complete vacuum.
That's it!
Actually, the sound-barrier analogy is misleading. For the speed of sound, people KNEW that things could exceed that speed long before we got planes to do it. The issue was one of technology: could we build a plane to withstand the stress?
For the speed of light issue, it's a different. If you believe Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity, you just can't exceed that speed. At least not if you start below light speed and remain in this universe. There's a very clear physical law that prohibits this, not a concern about technology being up to the task.
Of course, the law might be wrong. Or there may be ways of side-stepping it. In fact, I'm giving a whole planetarium talk this very evening on that very issue.