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Nano-Scale Optical Co-Axial Cables Announced
toybuilder writes "Reuters reports that scientists have published their work on nano-scale optical coax in the most recent issue of Applied Physics Letters. The coax cable is only about 300nm wide, and is able to transmit optical signals using a carbon center conductor, transmitting light at about 90% the speed of light."
The coax cable is only about 300nm wide,...
How do you plug it in?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
The coax cable is only about 300nm wide, and is able to transmit optical signals using a carbon center conductor, transmitting light at about 90% the speed of light.
methinks the speed of light is whatever speed the light travels at.
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Right, because the slashdot poster definitely understands the details of the physics publication in a peer-reviewed physics journal, written by experts in the field, and can clearly question its validity in the three seconds it takes to read a slashdot summary.
Here's an idea, instead of immediately trying to show how smart you are by posting minutes after an article goes up just to say "this is dumb", have a little faith in the scientific publication process and actually read the (original, peer-reviewed) article before you jump to conclusions.
It was my understanding that electric fields propagate through copper at about 1/3 C.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
The thinner the fiber, the less the digital light pulses are spread (due to reflections on the fiber shell) per unit distance, the more information can be sent through per unit time.
Thinner means more bandwidth.
Rybczynski, J.; Kempa, K.; Herczynski, A.; Wang, Y.; Naughton, M. J.; Ren, Z. F.; Huang, Z. P.; Cai, D.; Giersig, M. "Subwavelength waveguide for visible light" Applied Physics Letters 2007, 90, (2), 021104. (doi: 10.1063/1.2430400).
The paper is here, although only subscribers can read the fulltext. The abstract says this:
These are extremely small structures and this leads to an interaction between the light (which is an electromagnetic wave of course) that is essentially identical to when radiofrequency EM radiation propagates down a normal (macroscopic) coax cable. Specifically, in the introduction they say:
Then they go through the details. Their device uses a multiwall carbon-nanotube (MWCNT) as the center conductor (it is a 'metallic' CNT). The MWCNT is embedded in aluminum oxide, which acts as the optically transparent 'dielectric'. The outer wrapping electrode is made of chromium.
The mere creation of these nano-sized devices is quite an accomplishment. The fact that they've demonstrated successful transmission of light through these sub-wavelength sized devices is even more impressive. I can imagine a wide range of applications in nano-scale imaging (imagine a massive array of NSOMs), lithography, or even optical computing.
Yes, I DO have faith in the peer review process. It's far from perfect, but it's not as bad as you make it out to be. The thing you need to know is, a lot of physicists, and scientists in general (myself included) can be really anally retentive bastards. I one got blasted for fifteen minutes over my use of the phrase "high reynolds number" when the colleague in question believed "moderate" was the appropriate adjective and "high" was misleading. These are the types of errors that get physicists steaming, and with good reason - physics is perhaps the most rigorous of the sciences, and you have to be damn careful about how you word things. People will complain, loudly, about very minor issues. Many scientists strive for absolute perfection, and fixate on the negatives in an attempt to make the process better. There's nothing wrong with this, but it's useful to keep in mind when you form opinions about the peer review process based on your friends' complaints.
When people bitch about physics journals, in my experience it's been mainly for two common reasons:
1.) Drawing large, over-arching conclusions without enough evidence to support it. This is in no way saying the bulk of the work is invalid, just that the authors got a little greedy when writing the conclusions.
2.) Disagreement with the underlying assumptions that make up the paper. This one is trickier, but again it doesn't immediately invalidate the work, just questions how relevant the results are.
In either case, the peer review process, by people well-versed in the field, is a whole HELL of a lot more trustworthy than the slashdot peanut-gallery. The OP was full of crap, and others have gone into great detail to explain why he/she is full of crap. I was merely pointing out that the knee-jerk slashdot "post early, post often" karma whoring competitions lead to a whole lot of dumbass assertions without any firm understanding of the actual facts of the discussion.