LAUSANNE, Switzerland, Aug. 19 (UPI) -- Swiss researchers have successfully demonstrated for the first time that it is possible to control the speed of light in an optical fiber.
A team of researchers from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale in Lausanne, Switzerland, said the findings, published in Applied Physics Letters, could have implications ranging from optical computing to the fiber-optic telecommunications industry.
The researchers were able to slow light down and speed it up as well.
The phenomenon could have profound technological consequences in controlling the speed of light in a simple optical fiber, according Luc Thevenaz and his fellow researchers.
"This has the enormous advantage of being a simple, inexpensive procedure that works at any wavelength, notably at wavelengths used in telecommunications," said Thevenaz.
slashdot wrote:An anonymous reader writes "With off-the-shelf components, scientists have managed to speed up light beyond the 'universal' constant of c, or roughly 300 million meters/sec. This, and the previous ability to slow light down could shake up the telecom world, according to the story at Science Blog." Also, all those posters with 186,000 miles per second as a speed limit need to be amended. At least entropy is still around!
This reminds me of Futurama, "You can 't go faster than the speed of light!" "Yes, that's true, so we adjusted the speed of light to be much faster!"
EBC|Fucking Metal|Artist|Androgynous Sexfiend|Gozer Kvltist|
Listen to my music! http://www.soundclick.com/nihilanth "America is, now, the most powerful and economically prosperous nation in the country." - Master of Ossus
This reminds me of Futurama, "You can 't go faster than the speed of light!" "Yes, that's true, so we adjusted the speed of light to be much faster!"
Thought so too .
Photography Genius is always allowed some leeway, once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up.
To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.