How To Encode 2.05 Bits Per Photon, By Using Twisted Light

Thorfinn.au writes Researchers at the University of Rochester and their collaborators have developed a way to transfer 2.05 bits per photon by using "twisted light." [Abstract here.]This remarkable achievement is possible because the researchers used the orbital angular momentum of the photons to encode information, rather than the more commonly used polarization of light. The new approach doubles the 1 bit per photon that is possible with current systems that rely on light polarization and could help increase the efficiency of quantum cryptography systems.

Comments

I can't be the only one wondering

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you have a fraction of a bit?

Re:I can't be the only one wondering

[Anonymous Coward]

205 bits per 100 photons.

Re:I can't be the only one wondering

[sribe]

Well, suppose that with each photon you can transmit 1 of 3 values: 0, 1, or 2. How many bits per photon would that be?

So, yes, you may well have been the only one wondering ;-)

Re:I can't be the only one wondering

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on, 41 per 20 is so much simpler.

Re:I can't be the only one wondering

[Etherwalk]

Nobody with basic math skills is wondering that. How can you have 1.5 children per household?

One of them is a Cheshire child.

Re:I can't be the only one wondering

[RightwingNutjob]

Oh come on. You could have said Shroedinger's child and gotten modded way funnier.

Re:I can't be the only one wondering

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, suppose that with each photon you can transmit 1 of 3 values: 0, 1, or 2. How many bits per photon would that be?

So, yes, you may well have been the only one wondering ;-)

Two.
To get a fraction, it would be factoring in overhead check bits.

Re:I can't be the only one wondering

[Anonymous Coward]

Not all the data is contained within 1 photo. It is spread across many.

For example in order to understand the words I wrote you had to read the whole sentence. Data is spread out across the whole container in addition to the sub parts.

Re:I can't be the only one wondering

[Anonymous Coward]

To trasmit two bits per photon, each photon would need to store one of *four* values:

00 : 0
01 : 1
10 : 2
11 : 3

Re:I can't be the only one wondering

[peragrin]

But the Cheshire cat and SchrÃdinger's cat is one and the same.

What is the difference between a dead cat and one that is invisible to your detection methods

Re:I can't be the only one wondering

[Anonymous Coward]

In order to encode a 32-bit number you'd need 21 of these 3-value bits.
32/21 = 1.5 bits per photon.

Re:I can't be the only one wondering

[Etherwalk]

Oh come on. You could have said Shroedinger's child and gotten modded way funnier.

A dose of literature in the slashdot bits, every now and again, isn't a terrible thing.

Re:I can't be the only one wondering

[Anonymous Coward]

But it was asked to transmit 1 of 3 values: 0, 1, or 2.

The "11 : 3" in your list is not needed.

That's where the fraction comes into play.

Re:I can't be the only one wondering

[Anonymous Coward]

For a more everyday example, consider that the result of rolling a regular six-sided dice encodes 2.58 bits (lg(6)).
Two dice encodes 5.17 bits, ie twice as many.

Re:I can't be the only one wondering

[ArcadeMan]

And 42 would be so much funnier.

Re:I can't be the only one wondering

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, and to transmit a non-integer number of bits, each photon encodes a non-power-of-two number of values, which was the point of the GP's example, in answer to the question "how do have a fraction of a bit?".

Re:I can't be the only one wondering

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm still waiting for a stereo amplifier that uses a single vacuum tube, with electrons with a left-hand spin for the left channel, and the reverse for the right.

I'll leave it to someone else to make a digital product based on the same device.

Beware that most tubes, in an effort to speed production and cut costs, were made with a combination of cathode coating and base metal sleeve that is prone to deteriorating if heated but run with no cathode current for long periods (either due to being biased off, or the anode supply being absent). During manufacturer they had to go through a two-stage cathode baking activation process. The tubes sold for computer use really were different, but were not inferior for analog uses.
Contrast that with so-called "digital" television antennas.

If the ISS had a relatively flat outside surface in the dark viewable through a window, it would be different to have it coated with a phosphor and scan that c.r.t. style to display pictures, bit with no glass casing.
A replacement for planes trailing banners? Yikes. Nevermind.

Re:I can't be the only one wondering

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine that a result of event is either A, B or C with equal probabilities. Then you receive a message with an answer. How many bits of information did you receive? There, a fractional number of bits.

In general, "information" is a continuous variable, and using bits (base 2) is in fact not as convenient as using nepits (base e).

Re:I can't be the only one wondering

[rossdee]

"How can you have 1.5 children per household?"

Shared custody, happens quite a bit these days.

Re:I can't be the only one wondering

[dwywit]

I'm wondering how the conventional logic at either end of the process would manage to cope with three values. Can hardware be designed to work with more than on/off one/zero logic, i.e. perhaps one reaction for zero volts, another reaction for 2 volts, and a third reaction for 4 volts.

Of course, I am not a hardware designer.

Re:I can't be the only one wondering

[Tablizer]

Dwarfs

Re:I can't be the only one wondering

[sribe]

I'm wondering how the conventional logic at either end of the process would manage to cope with three values. Can hardware be designed to work with more than on/off one/zero logic, i.e. perhaps one reaction for zero volts, another reaction for 2 volts, and a third reaction for 4 volts.

Dude, analog modems have been coding multiple bits per transition for DECADES, using both amplitude and phase to encode multiple values per transition. As do cable modems, DSL, and so on. Just about every transmission encoding method for the past 30 years...

In the example of 3 values, you get 0, 1 or 2. Then on the next transition, multiply by 3 and add 0, 1, or 2. And so on. That's simplified, because in fact there's typically more states than values, and mapping of states -> values involves techniques to mitigate the effects of interference.

Re:I can't be the only one wondering

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Inflation.

Re:I can't be the only one wondering

[Anonymous Coward]

How can you have 1.5 children per household

Unsuccessfully deliberating child custody issues in the court of Judge Solomon, for one. Not pretty.

Re:I can't be the only one wondering

[Paradise Pete]

Not all the data is contained within 1 photo. It is spread across many.

Only when you have more than 1,000 words.

Re:I can't be the only one wondering

[DougPaulson]

@Anonymous Coward: "How do you have a fraction of a bit?"

I dunno, I do know my brain hurts :)

"Here we describe a proof-of-principle experiment that indicates the feasibility of high-dimensional QKD based on the transverse structure of the light field allowing for the transfer of more than 1 bit per photon."

Re: I can't be the only one wondering

[bitflusher]

Yes but 3 kids before a divorce is less common. Divorced households l hold 0.5 to 1 children.

Re:I can't be the only one wondering

[hcs_$reboot]

not sure for the first half, but (data >> 0.5) & 0.5 gets the 2nd half

Re:I can't be the only one wondering

[Anonymous Coward]

you might not be a hardware designer but perhaps you have used an ancient gaming device called "analog joystick".

or have seen a digital thermometer?

Re:I can't be the only one wondering

[Anonymous Coward]

> In order to encode a 32-bit number you'd need 21 of these 3-value bits.
> 32/21 = 1.5 bits per photon.

32/21 is approximately 1.52. What you are trying to say is log 3 / log 2 which is approximately 1.58, in case anyone thought this had anything to do with 3/2.
A "3 value "Binary digIT" should probably be called a trit.

Re:I can't be the only one wondering

[sjames]

The same way a sound card does it. Each sample yields a value (for example) from 0 to 255 encoded in binary.

Or, for example, an 8 line GPIO can be encoded into a single byte.

For a less neat example, perhaps a sample can be one of 3 levels, 00, 01, or 10. Those can be packed into a byte and quickly translated, either through a combination of masking adding and multiplying into an accumulator or a table lookup where some table indices would indicate illegal states. You could call it binary coded base 3, analogous to binary coded decimal.

Re:I can't be the only one wondering

[Psicopatico]

Use Imperial bits instead of Metric bits and you're done.

Re:I can't be the only one wondering

[Anonymous Coward]

> log 3 / log 2
Yes, thank you. It's been too long. I knew it wasn't just 3/2, but I couldn't remember what exactly the equation was.

Re:I can't be the only one wondering

[Anonymous Coward]

You're still getting a fractional bit value in a photon, so the question stands.

Re:I can't be the only one wondering

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy: The invisible one is smiling at your foolishness.

Re:I can't be the only one wondering

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, suppose that with each photon you can transmit 1 of 3 values: 0, 1, or 2. How many bits per photon would that be?

So, yes, you may well have been the only one wondering ;-)

Two.
To get a fraction, it would be factoring in overhead check bits.

But that would result in a value 2 not greater.

Re:I can't be the only one wondering

[colinwb]

A 1958 Soviet Union computer used ternary logic.

And according to this and this Donald Knuth thinks that sometime "flip-flop" will be replaced by "flip-flap-flop". Also this.

Telecom use?

[JDeane]

Is this something you can shove down a fiber optic line?

Seems like that would be awesome for telecom stuff if it would work.

Re:Telecom use?

[Anonymous Coward]

Infinite-capacity wireless vortex beams carry 2.5 terabits per second

American and Israeli researchers have used twisted vortex beams to transmit data at 2.5 terabits per second. As far as we can discern, this is the fastest wireless network ever created — by some margin. This technique is likely to be used in the next few years to vastly increase the throughput of both wireless and fiber-optic networks.

These twisted signals use orbital angular momentum (OAM) to cram much more data into a single stream. In current state-of-the-art transmission protocols (WiFi, LTE, COFDM), we only modulate the spin angular momentum (SAM) of radio waves, not the OAM. If you picture the Earth, SAM is our planet spinning on its axis, while OAM is our movement around the Sun. Basically, the breakthrough here is that researchers have created a wireless network protocol that uses both OAM and SAM.

New Optical Fiber Puts a Twist on Data Transmission
“For several decades since optical fibers were deployed, the conventional assumption has been that OAM-carrying beams are inherently unstable in fibers,” said BU engineering professor Siddharth Ramachandran, who designed the new fiber. “Our discovery of design classes in which they are stable has profound implications for a variety of scientific and technological fields that have exploited the unique properties of OAM-carrying light, including the use of such beams for enhancing data capacity in fibers.”

The strategy by Ramachandran, Willner and colleagues, OAM mode-division multiplexing, combines both approaches. They packed several colors into each mode and used multiple modes. Unlike in conventional fibers, OAM modes in these specially designed fibers can carry data streams across an optical fiber while remaining separate at the receiving end.

Ramachandran’s OAM fiber had four modes (an optical fiber typically has two), and he and Willner showed that for each OAM mode, they could transmit 400 Gb/s in just a single wavelength of light — or 1.6 Tb/s across 10 wavelengths — over the course of 0.68 miles (1.1 km).

Re:Telecom use?

[ArcadeMan]

American and Israeli researchers have used twisted vortex beams to transmit data at 2.5 terabits per second.

Egon Spengler: There's something very important I forgot to tell you.
Peter Venkman: What?
Spengler: Don't cross the streams.
Venkman: Why?
Spengler: It would be bad.
Venkman: I'm fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing. What do you mean, "bad"?
Spengler: Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.
Ray Stantz: Total protonic reversal!
Venkman: Right. That's bad. Okay. All right. Important safety tip. Thanks, Egon.

e and on a related topic the lameness filter sucks

[Iamthecheese]

What I'm wondering is whether the limit is 2.71828 or so.

Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I only one who finds the concept of using twisted beams of light to encode information overwhelmingly obvious?

Re:Hmm

[RightwingNutjob]

No, but only in the sense that bending space to travel faster than light is "overwhelmingly obvious"

Re:Hmm

[ShanghaiBill]

Am I only one who finds the concept of using twisted beams of light to encode information overwhelmingly obvious?

You may have thought of it, but they did it. Ideas are a dime a dozen. Implementing them is harder.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

My question was whether anyone else found it obvious. Typically when I discuss such things with others they do not agree.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

"Ideas are a dime a dozen. "

Well, that's kind of my point.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly you are one of those people who, when you know something, label it as "obvious" when others discuss it. Which actually means you only know obvious things.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know anything, it's simply something I find to be an inescapable thought. I know nearly nothing about the physics of photons.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

rekt

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

AC, if you think you know things that are not obvious, I hate to tell you but there's a good chance you're just delusional.

I'll put it another way, "I know only that I know nothing"

Have fun, neoconservatards.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

I did not even hear about twisted beams of light during studying physics. And 4 years ago I saw two professors at a conference disagreeing on if this is a property of single photons or an effect only existing in a beam of light consisting of many photons. So I would say nothing is obvious about the ability to encode information in that.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

The butthurt is strong in this one.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Just trying to help some people who seem to be blind.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting, but I'm not referring to what is taught in physics curricula, but rather the characteristic structure of dreams and imagination. There are a lot of interesting similarities wouldn't you say?

Research.

[Anonymous Coward]

The use of the word research is correct in that they were "re searching" and found something that had already been done before. I didn't read anything new. I'm glad that people use the word research in published papers.

Re:e and on a related topic the lameness filter su

[Etherwalk]

What I'm wondering is whether the limit is 2.71828 or so.

e is just the highest anyone can count, because if you start reciting it you will never get to 3.

How To Encode 4 Bits Per Photon, By Using Colors

[Anonymous Coward]

An Anonymous Coward at Slashdot have developed a way of transfer 4 bits per photon by using "different colors". This remarkable achievement is possible because the anonymous coward used the wavelength of the photons to encode information, rather than the more commonly used polarization of light. During transmission Alice sends a photon of one of 16 predefined wavelengths (colors) and using a prism Bob detects the color and thus obtains 4 bits of information. The new approach quadruples the 1 bit per photon that is possible with current systems that rely on light polarization and could help increase the efficiency of quantum cryptography systems.

Oh Come On!

[Irate Engineer]

Anybody else read this and think, "Oh come on ... the physicists are just getting silly and making up shit now."

I'm still waiting for somebody to synthesize this whole field and make it halfway possible to visualize.

Re:Oh Come On!

[Kjella]

I'm still waiting for somebody to synthesize this whole field and make it halfway possible to visualize.

You'll probably be waiting a very long time. Reality doesn't make the math easy, for example if you want to describe water flowing down a stream good luck on all the non-linearity in the eddies and currents. Or the way turbulence acts in air resistance, it's messy. There's no real reason to think it'll get easier on the particle/wave level, in fact it ends up working in even more messed up ways you wouldn't imagine on the macro scale. But hey you can hope, I'd advise against holding your breath while you wait though.

Re:Oh Come On!

[Irate Engineer]

Fluid turbulence is actually well understood and very easy to visualize. Yes, direct simulation of turbulence is very computationally expensive, but good mathematical models for the effect of turbulence in flows have been around for a while and are used in CFD modeling in many industries.

I can actually see turbulence; if I just go down to the river or look up at the sky, there it is. It's complex, but it obeys simple rules and you can actually develop a physical intuition about turbulence.

Not so with quantum physics, at least not yet. I think part of the problem is people rarely get to see the actual experiments that illustrate where quantum physics and Newtonian physics part company. A picture book that illustrates the weirdness physically, maybe some experimental data, would be a help. I recently read a book called "A Quantum Moment" by Crease and Goldhaber; it wasn't bad where it was describing the history of quantum theory, and it actually contains some math, but it just gives up in some sections and starts getting really airy-fairy and weird.

I can encode 4 bits per photon

[Anonymous Coward]

I can easily encode four bits per photon. All I need is 16 different spatially separated receivers. If I send a photon to the first receiver I sent a 0000, if I send it to the second I sent 0001, and so on.

Onty 2.04

[Anonymous Coward]

I only got 2.04 bits per photon. No Yipppeee!

The .5 child

[tepples]

How can you have 1.5 children per household?

2 children in one household and 1 in another. Even so, I wonder how it felt for photographer Kevin Michael Connolly or acrobat Jennifer Bricker or Jeanie Tomaini or plenty of others to grow up as the .5 child.

8 bit per photon on my desktop: spectrum analyzer

[viking80]

I have a small setup on my desktop that encodes 8 bit per photon. It is called a spectrum analyzer together with a laser. It could probably encode a lot more if it was optimized for that, but lacks the sensitivity.

Re: 8 bit per photon on my desktop: spectrum analy

[Anonymous Coward]

Err... a spectrum analyzer won't do anything with 1 photon. Nor will a optical power meter...

Re: 8 bit per photon on my desktop: spectrum analy

[Baloroth]

That's great, but totally worthless for quantum cryptography. Quantum cryptography relies on quantum properties of the photons (spin/polarization/orbital angular momentum), so that someone in the middle who makes a measurement will disturb the system. Using spectral encoding or modulation or any one of a dozen other ways of encoding data will result in a much higher data rate than the one given in TFA, but almost all of those are worthless for quantum cryptography.

Re:Should sexist opensource developers be removed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Should sexist opensource developers have their projects censored or removed?

Recently an opensource game release story was removed due to the game developer's open sexism(0) and harrasment(1) of women in tech.

A story posted by the editor of the popular Phoronix linux news site about a release of an Open Source videogame was later manually removed(2). The reason cited was the game developer's unacceptable views on social issues such as gender equality (3).

The release story was titled "Xonotic-Forked ChaosEsqueAnthology Sees New Release - Phoronix" and can be accessed via the google cache(4).

With the recent inclusion of a code of conduct(5) for those wishing to contribute to the Linux Kernel some questions now need to be asked and answered about the inclusion of code from people who are known to engage in or promote socially unacceptable attitudes or harrasments of those whom the free-software movement would prefer to attract in their place:

* Are the social or political views of an author of free software relevant to that software's inherent quality?
* Should the beliefs of an opensource developer weigh when when evaluating whether a piece of opensource software is worthy of any publicity or public notice?
* Should men with unpopular or "forbidden" views be excised from the opensource movement and "not allowed" to contribute, in a manner similar to that which is done in employment?
* Has the free/opensource software movement changed in these respects since its founding? If so is this a positive change?
* Should there be gatekeepers to opensource that decide who may and who may not contribute. Should abusive developers be "blackballed" to maintain proper social order and controls?

and

* What are the consequences of not doing this

Citations:
(0) Past related incident: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1310
(1) http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/...
(2) Removed story URL: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.p...
(3) http://www.phoronix.com/forums...
"Fortunately, the article has been removed now."
"Thanks everybody for speaking up."
(4) https://webcache.googleusercon...
(5) Linux "Code of Conflict"

I am am American. Freedom includes the right to be stupid or to say stupid things.

You do not like the game because it is sexist? Do not play it and give it a bad review.

The Internet and the Smartphone

[Anonymous Coward]

Are the only 2 significant technological developments of the last 30 years.

Re:The Internet and the Smartphone

[jaklode]

Don't forget the Mac!

Re:The Internet and the Smartphone

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, because it keeps all the hipsters out of trouble while others are working with real computers.

Re: 8 bit per photon on my desktop: spectrum analy

[mysidia]

Quantum crypto. Isn't of much use to the industry.... compared to say....... getting 100 Terabits of second worth of data down a single fiber optic cable.

Re:How To Encode 4 Bits Per Photon, By Using Color

[Anonymous Coward]

Another Anonymous Coward on Slashdot might be getting a _whoosh!_ response soon after he responds to your comment by stating that he once had the same thought and realized after a few minutes of googling that as he had forgotten from high school physics class, different wavelengths travel at different speeds. Granted, the slightly different speeds are of course very predictable, but challenging to make a useful transmission of related parallel data with. That being said, there are also "channels" on today's in-use fiber lines.

Re:Should sexist opensource developers be removed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Should sexist opensource developers have their projects censored or removed?

No. Freedom of speech should be paramount. There is no "right" not to be offended.

Re:Should sexist opensource developers be removed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some day the solution will be to assign an allowance of stupid acts to each person at birth. If you exceed your lifetime allowance you are recycled to make better use of all those atoms.

Re: 8 bit per photon on my desktop: spectrum analy

[Anonymous Coward]

I was thinking the same - this seems more useful for increasing the bandwidth of perfectly normal transfers. On the other hand, it's probably a lot of complexity for a mere doubling - we've had higher increases with less complicated techniques.

Re:e and on a related topic the lameness filter su

[mrbester]

I'm still stuck reciting 2... being able to get to e is a pipe dream

Re:How To Encode 4 Bits Per Photon, By Using Color

[dinfinity]

GP is still right, though. The wavelength encodes which channel the photon is on and is thus information contained in a single photon.

Apparently about 160 channels is today's upper limit for fiber: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...
That's 8 bits, right there.

Re:How To Encode 4 Bits Per Photon, By Using Color

[Anonymous Coward]

Joking aside, don't all photons go at the same speed, ie the speed of light in vacuum (or whatever transmission medium is being used)?
So each photon does encode a great deal of information in its energy, or equivalently its frequency, "wavelength", or (spectral) colour.

Not even new

[Khyber]

We've had OAMM encoding and transmission of data for a while, usually coupled with quadrature amplitude modulation.

I've heard of slashdot being slow, but by at least THREE YEARS? That's got to be a new record.

Maybe you guys should start reading Nature Photonics.

Re: 8 bit per photon on my desktop: spectrum analy

[Baloroth]

Quantum crypto. Isn't of much use to the industry.... compared to say....... getting 100 Terabits of second worth of data down a single fiber optic cable.

Bulk data transmission and quantum crypto have somewhat different target industries (though anyone using quantum cryptography is probably using it to secure high-speed fiber lines). Quantum crypto is used (as in used, right now, today) for quantum key distribution in environments that need/want extremely high security so they can communicate extremely securely over regular (but fast) channels.

DSN has been at 2.5 bits/photon for decades

[hyc]

The Deep Space Network has been transmitting 2.5 bits per photon for the past 30+ years. http://what-when-how.com/space...

How do these researchers not know that already?

Re:DSN has been at 2.5 bits/photon for decades

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you, I didn't expect to learn anything among all these trolls and vampires.

Re:How To Encode 4 Bits Per Photon, By Using Color

[Anonymous Coward]

In many media there's a frequency-dependence to the speed (different indices of refraction for different colors); this is what's happening when a prism fans light out into a spectrum.

"I know nothing but it's obvious anyway"

[Anonymous Coward]

"I know nearly nothing about the physics of photons."

Clearly. That's why you think this is obvious, because you haven't the slightest idea what they're talking about.

That's not so bad; in recent years plenty of people who HAVE studied some physics have been very sure that the OAM topic at hand is just polarization, which is so wrong it hurts (and actually is pretty bad in itself).

What's really bad is that you know you know nothing, as you stated, but you still think that highly technical topics are obvious, when they are not. THAT is arrogantly foolish.

Re:"I know nothing but it's obvious anyway"

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, I think the IDEA is obvious. In that I have been physically overwhelmed by it.

I never tried to put any physicists in their place, and I'm glad there is research being done in this area.

I have spent the better part of the last 10 years of my life actively researching the topic, so don't presume to talk to me about what I meant to say.

There was someone, somewhere, at one time, to whom the idea of making a wheel to roll things around was obvious. Not just one person, but it was probably obvious to many, at the same time. This always precedes advancement. I think you are projecting a little bit of arrogance yourself, but it's not for me to say.

Re:"I know nothing but it's obvious anyway"

[Anonymous Coward]

What's really bad is that you're projecting all this on me without the slightest clue what I'm talking about.

Or that someone deleted my other reply.

"I are smarter than physics professionals"

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be so proud of yourself that you can spot two identical phrases, showing you are smarter than rocket scientists.

The NEW news is not the "2 bits per photon" part, it's the "BY USING TWISTED LIGHT" part.

2 bits per photon is achievable by sending 1 photon at any of 4 predefined frequencies, and as such, has been done for an entire century, includingby teenage ham radio enthusiasts.

The mere existence of twisted (not polarized) light was only established something like 2 decades ago, and turning that pure physics into engineering in commercial products has, as usual, been a slow and difficult process.

Moral: if something seems too obvious for NASA or other groups of incredibly educated people to have entirely missed, every single one of them, then they didn't, and you are the ignorant one. Don't be so arrogant.

Re:"I are smarter than physics professionals"

[Anonymous Coward]

It's still an interesting link. I know a lot of incredibly educated people and none of them are able to even begin to speak definitively on these matters.

Funny that there's no shortage of slashdot trolls who can.

someone help with the terminology?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can someone differentiate between the terms polarization, angular momentum, and spin? Specifically, why aren't all of these talking about the same thing? What I mean is: if light is polarized, it is spinning at some frequency on the axis of those poles and would have some angular momentum that keeps it spinning around. So, I'm not sure how to read this, since I can't quite parse the differences.