FREAKING HELL! Speed of light broken by European scientists.
- Thread starter K.I.L.E.R
- Start date
_xxx_ said:I think he rather meant it along the terms of permanent storage, like stopping the light and storing data in 3D or such
Easy, like so
There have been several of these experiments now. This is always completely misworded and misunderstood by the press.
Basically the effect has been more or less understood and predicted since 1910 or so, its a completely classical effect involving wave mechanics. (You might remember some vague recollections from intro EM about group velocity vs phase velocity.. same general concept)
The important thing to remember, you can't transfer a 'signal' faster than the speed of light. If someone ever did manage to do that, we'd be able to contact ourselves in the past and kill our grandparents =) Otoh the weird quantum mechanical nonlocal aspect of physics can and do travel faster than c, Einstein somewhat humurously called this 'spooky action at a distance'.
Theres a bit of a song and dance about exactly what constitutes a signal. Basically you want to be able to send a *pulse* like a square wave that constitutes bits of information. The physicists can and do recreate this pulse, but *only* ibso or post facto when they know what to expect. There can never be a delta to the signal.
Basically the effect has been more or less understood and predicted since 1910 or so, its a completely classical effect involving wave mechanics. (You might remember some vague recollections from intro EM about group velocity vs phase velocity.. same general concept)
The important thing to remember, you can't transfer a 'signal' faster than the speed of light. If someone ever did manage to do that, we'd be able to contact ourselves in the past and kill our grandparents =) Otoh the weird quantum mechanical nonlocal aspect of physics can and do travel faster than c, Einstein somewhat humurously called this 'spooky action at a distance'.
Theres a bit of a song and dance about exactly what constitutes a signal. Basically you want to be able to send a *pulse* like a square wave that constitutes bits of information. The physicists can and do recreate this pulse, but *only* ibso or post facto when they know what to expect. There can never be a delta to the signal.
_xxx_ said:I think he rather meant it along the terms of permanent storage, like stopping the light and storing data in 3D or such
There's two kinds of possible storage options in a basic scenario:
First of all, information is usually encoded in the light polarization or its phase.
A) You want to store a well-defined and measured state; use a optical loop and measure the state via Zeno effect. That keeps it from decaying in another state due to the properties of the fibre cable. There still has to be amplification of course.
B) You want to store a state that hasn't been measured. This is what you would call quantum memory. Storing that in an optical loop is pretty tricky and requires a lot of experimental skill. The properities of the optical cable induce more or less a passive measurement with gradually destroy the state, in other words the unmeasure state is collapsing into a measured state.
Anyway, this is just the basic setup...
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