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ralphwiggum

Light stopped

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http://www.cnn.com/2003....ex.html

  [b said:
Quote[/b] ]AP) -- Physicists say they have brought light to a complete halt for a fraction of a second and then sent it on its way, an achievement that could someday help scientists develop powerful new computers.

The research differs from work published in 2001 that was hailed at the time as having brought light to standstill.

In that work, light pulses were technically "stored" briefly when individual particles of light, or photons, were taken up by atoms in a gas.

Harvard University researchers have now topped that feat by truly holding light and its energy in its tracks -- if only for a few hundred-thousandths of a second.

"We have succeeded in holding a light pulse still without taking all the energy away from it," said Mikhail D. Lukin, a Harvard physicist.

Harnessing light particles to store and process data could aid the still distant goal of so-called quantum computers, as well as methods for communicating information over long distances without risk of eavesdropping.

The research may also have applications for improving conventional fiber-optic communications and data processing techniques that use light as an information carrier. Lukin said the present research is just another step toward efforts to control light, but said additional work is needed to determine if it can aid these applications.

The findings appear in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

Stanford University physicist Stephen Harris said the new research is promising and represents an important scientific first.

Matthew Bigelow, a scientist at the University of Rochester involved in light research, called the new study "very clever" and something that may ultimately spur the development of superior light-based computers.

"I think it's moving us in the right direction," he said.

Kudos to researchers smile_o.gif

i have little knowledge about quantumn computing, but I like the fat that they managed to do something that is monumental.

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Wow...That sounds...Complex wow_o.gif

Maybe when they put it to use or explain in more detail how it could be used, I'd understand it better/be more interested

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Ah...the mysteries of Light wink_o.gif It's such a strange and complex thing.

What I would like to know is...how they came to the conclusions that they had stopped light for a brief period of time....and how the hell did they do it anyway? If anyone gets the isuue of Nature they are supposed to be releasing their findings in....please write up a few details. smile_o.gif

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  (RalphWiggum @ Dec. 12 2003,06:46) said:
"We have succeeded in holding a light pulse still without taking all the energy away from it," said Mikhail D. Lukin, a Harvard physicist.

"D", as in Dimitri? wow_o.gifblues.gifwow_o.gif

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My girlfriend's research is also in the field of light waves and micro computing. They can actually make light go around corners by making atom wide holes in some grid thingy stuff crazy_o.gif I dont get it completely too BUT if they do manage to a chip based on fotons in stead of current electrons i am told the speed improvement would be huge! smile_o.gif

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Pff. I make light stop everytime I look in the mirror. tounge_o.gif

Seriously, though, this is cool news. Quantum computing promises to be very useful, though 99.9999% of it is still theoretical now.

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I wonder what happened to all that energy? For light to move at light speed (duh tounge_o.gif ), then come to a complete halt, all that energy must have gone somewhere crazy_o.gif

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  (supah @ Dec. 12 2003,09:21) said:
My girlfriend's research is also in the field of light waves and micro computing. They can actually make light go around corners by making atom wide holes in some grid thingy stuff  crazy_o.gif  I dont get it completely too BUT if they do manage to a chip based on fotons in stead of current electrons i am told the speed improvement would be huge! smile_o.gif

That is not research, that is a highscool experiment tounge_o.gif

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  (Leveler @ Dec. 11 2003,13:17) said:
  (supah @ Dec. 12 2003,09:21) said:
My girlfriend's research is also in the field of light waves and micro computing. They can actually make light go around corners by making atom wide holes in some grid thingy stuff  crazy_o.gif  I dont get it completely too BUT if they do manage to a chip based on fotons in stead of current electrons i am told the speed improvement would be huge! smile_o.gif

That is not research, that is a highscool experiment  tounge_o.gif

I doubt that smile_o.gif I dont get half of the stuff they do. They can do loads of things with it smile_o.gif

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  (Leveler @ Dec. 12 2003,12:17) said:
  (supah @ Dec. 12 2003,09:21) said:
My girlfriend's research is also in the field of light waves and micro computing. They can actually make light go around corners by making atom wide holes in some grid thingy stuff  crazy_o.gif  I dont get it completely too BUT if they do manage to a chip based on fotons in stead of current electrons i am told the speed improvement would be huge! smile_o.gif

That is not research, that is a highscool experiment  tounge_o.gif

Hi all

Yep The Defraction Experiment BUT I think the single atom hole the gentleman is talking about is little more advanced than a high school defraction experiment with a slit in one piece of card and two in another.  wink_o.gif

Hey people how does it guess which way to go through the hole to apeare as a wave in one version but a particle in the other crazy_o.gifghostface.gif

Kind Regards walker

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  (supah @ Dec. 12 2003,19:21) said:
My girlfriend's research is also in the field of light waves and micro computing. They can actually make light go around corners by making atom wide holes in some grid thingy stuff  crazy_o.gif  I dont get it completely too BUT if they do manage to a chip based on fotons in stead of current electrons i am told the speed improvement would be huge! smile_o.gif

Through atoms? Atoms of what element/s? Inert gases? (I'm thinking lasers here)

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Huge speed improvement? Ok, how huge, is there some sort of predicted data on this? Doesn't sound like a huge speed improvement at first glance.

EDIT: My personal view on this is that sequential computing is a dead end approach. Chip designers may not know it, but as they are forced to add more and more instruction types to execute in one clock cycle, they are building a concurrent processor setup. Real progress can be made if more research is devoted to designing self configurable concurrent designs, rather that todays sequential processors with a fixed amount of microcode, which depends on endless repetitions to come to any sort of proper response.

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Hey i dont understand how and what either smile_o.gif Its supposed to be lots faster smile_o.gif Dont ask me how or why, i have sence enough to know when i dont know shit about something and just listen to the experts wink_o.gif

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The future is parallel computing, right. You can do that with quantum computers, because a byte consisting of qubits represents all 256 possible states as long as you don't check it's state.

Problem: write an algorithm to use this effect. biggrin_o.gif

Let's take a much smaller step: exchange electrons with photons. What we need is a NAND- or NOR-module which processes light input, because all logical operations (AND, OR, NOT, XOR) can performed with either NAND or NOR operations. The trick: you can use one processor for multiple signals at a time, because of the principle of superposition. That means you can have a multi-processor system in a single processor by sharing the circuits. Only use different wavelengths (i.e. colours).

Another advantage: less/no heat dissipation.

Search for "transphasor", although that's not the only possible concept for light processing components...

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