Olivia Goldhill
Have you ever wondered why we don’t use light to
transmit messages? Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light,
but while we use light to carry signals along fiber optic cables, we use
electrons to process sound and information in our phones and computers.
The reason has always been because light particles–photons—are
extremely difficult to manipulate, whereas electrons can be manipulated
relatively easily.
But now a group of Harvard physicists has taken a
major step toward solving that puzzle, and have brought us one step
closer to ultra-fast, light-based computers.
The physicists, led by Professor Eric Mazur, have
created a material where the phase velocity of light is infinite. Their
results were published in Nature Photonics on Oct. 19th.
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