Linky

Okay, this technology has me a bit lost, honestly

Fascinating.

raises eyebrow

It's simple, the thing absorbs the laser's wavelength the same way a dust cloud absorbs the light from the center of the galaxy that we can't see or black pavement absorbs some wavelengths and gets too hot to walk on in bare feet. Different things absorb light at different wavelengths and they just had to get something to absorb stuff at a concentrated wavelength.

Or is there something else you don't understand?

Great, now someone is going to invent an anti-anti-laser, and then an anti-anti-anti-laser and before you know it we're in the middle of a laser arms race. Thanks a lot, you "scientists"!

Not a weapon, or a defense against weapons. It's essentially a laser resistor- useful as a switching device in a laser-based computer.

More like a laser transistor, if it can be used as a switching device.

You're working on THIS?! You still havent gotten me my jetpack, science!! I WAS PROMISED JETPACKS AND FLYING CARS!!!

Next, anticheese.

Hey, it's not Science's fault you can't afford a jetpack or flying car.

No, its Science fault that I cant get a jetpack that wont burn my legs off!

You can if you have $75k burning a hole in your pocket.

Right now I'm not sure exactly what component of a computer they'd be replacing with these that couldn't be accomplished better with a crossbar latch of memristors.

Hmmmm... how long til I can get a sleek one, like the one the Rocketeer has?

When your legs start extruding asbestos.

:/ See, what did I tell ya? No awesome jetpacks, no flying cars that arent shiity and unyieldy, no superpower suits, nothing. THE 60s LIED TO ME!!

Will you just shut up? Going all I Want My Jetpack just makes you look like a damn fool.

If you want to complain about fictional technologies we don't have yet, feel free to complain about not having a form of removable storage which stores several large hard drives' worth of data in far less space. I want something which is to a Blu Ray Disc what a CD was to a floppy disk.

As for the actual article, that was interesting. The idea of light guiding light has been around for a fair while now (easily 20 years). Looks like we're one step closer to making it a reality.

edited 20th Feb '11 9:26:48 AM by Roxor

Next, anticheese.

~Highfives~

Now then, I would like to congratulate these scientists, with the official awesome badge.

Why?

BECAUSE WE ARE THAT MUCH CLOSER TO LIGHTSABERS BABY!

You mean, memristor storage? Then again, what are you complaining about? Flash storage can store libraries in the size of coins.

edited 20th Feb '11 9:56:39 AM by Yej

Ah, okay. It's an optical computing component. I can see how it works, more or less — it's a tuned cavity. I'm still iffy on how useful optical computer tech is going to be, in the near future, though it's certainly a better match for quantum computing than is spintronics.

Optical computing is for long distance computing, that's what I hear. It's noisier but over the long distances, the effects of power loss shift things back into its favour.

I don't like that the anti-laser dissipates the light energy as heat. Makes you wonder how much hotter the next-gen computers would be. =/

Depends on how much energy is in the light pulses they use. Considering what little energy LE Ds use, that could wind up being less than current semi-conductors.

Fair enough.