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IBM Science Technology

IBM Slows the Speed of Light 365

Posted by Zonk from the galileo-spinning-in-grave dept.
dptalia writes "According to an article on ZDNet, IBM has come up with a way to slow light to 1/300 of its normal speed. While this has been done in laboratories before, IBM has found out how to do this using standard materials, which opens the possibility of mass production. This means that the dream of having optical based CPUs may be closer than previously thought." From the article: "When the optical conversion might start to occur is a matter of speculation. Luxtera has said it will start to commercially produce products in 2007. The computer industry, however, tends to move slowly when it comes to major overhauls of computer architecture. Several components will have to be developed before photons can replace electrons inside computers. A paper providing details on the chip will run in Nature on Wednesday."
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IBM Slows the Speed of Light More

IBM Slows the Speed of Light

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  • Nothing new (Score:5, Funny)

    by JavaNPerl ( 70318 ) * on Thursday November 03, 2005 @12:30PM (#13941658)
    This is not new, my city has been slowing down light for years, particularly red lights they can't seem to apply the same technology to yellow or green lights though.

  • Research Paper (Score:3, Funny)

    by pmike_bauer ( 763028 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @12:30PM (#13941660)
    Research Paper Title:
    How to Slow the Speed of Light Using Common Household Items.

  • How about speeding it up, now (Score:4, Funny)

    by CheshireCatCO ( 185193 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @12:31PM (#13941665) Homepage
    I'm waiting for the day when we can raise the speed of light so we can go faster. Futurama predicted it'd be in 2508, but I'm hoping we get there sooner.
    • me, I am waiting for "bachelor chow"

      mmm, mmm, that'll be good!
    • I'm not sure this technology can be pushed in that direction...Doesn't seem like they're so much slowing it down as making it take more time to get from point A to point B...fine distinction I know.

      But since light traveling in a vacuum isn't really being impeded by anything, I don't know how we could speed it up, except maybe by finding some way to "flatten" the waveform without destroying it.
       

      • Re:How about speeding it up, now (Score:5, Insightful)

        by geoffspear ( 692508 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @12:44PM (#13941813) Homepage
        Of course you don't know how we can speed it up. If you did, you'd be celebrating your Nobel Prize instead of posting on Slashdot.

        That hardly proves that it can't be done; people used to see no way that a plane could possibly go faster than sound.

        • Re:How about speeding it up, now (Score:5, Insightful)

          by CheshireCatCO ( 185193 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @01:48PM (#13942413) Homepage
          Actually, the sound-barrier analogy is misleading. For the speed of sound, people KNEW that things could exceed that speed long before we got planes to do it. The issue was one of technology: could we build a plane to withstand the stress?

          For the speed of light issue, it's a different. If you believe Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity, you just can't exceed that speed. At least not if you start below light speed and remain in this universe. There's a very clear physical law that prohibits this, not a concern about technology being up to the task.

          Of course, the law might be wrong. Or there may be ways of side-stepping it. In fact, I'm giving a whole planetarium talk this very evening on that very issue.
          • Which planetarium, and what time? Is it the Fiske planetarium in Boulder? Will you be doing the same talk tomorrow?

            According to the Fiske website, they are doing a thing on science fiction ttonight, so I assume that is what you are referring to. They also say they are doing the same show tomorrow, but I'm not sure if it will have the same speakers, or just cover similar topics. I can't make it tonight, but I will plan on being there for tomorrow's event. In the discussion of side-stepping relativity, w
            • Yep, that's me. Both nights.

              And now that you've brought it up, I probably should mention Alcubierre's warp drive when I talk about Star Trek. (Although I've long since learned that with Trek just think "magic" any time science or technology comes up. It's the only way to keep it form hurting.)
          • If you believe Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity, you just can't exceed that speed.

            What if Einstein is wrong? I'm sure he'd agree that we should at least try to prove him wrong than just accepting his word as truth.

          • I'm reminded of what Larry Niven wrote in his book World of Ptaavs:

            Trying to change one law of physics is like trying to eat one peanut.

            With so many of the laws of physics being connected to each other, to change something that is seen as axiomatic (like the constancy of the speed of light) would require a total overhaul of relativity, quantum mechanics, and so forth.

            Of course, if it's shown to be different... well, nobody said that science was easy.

            • Yep. As I was putting together my public planetarium show, this issue occurred to me. Basically, hyperspace (as it is often envisioned) just doesn't work. You could go faster there, perhaps, but anything you brought into that space would probably be destroyed since atoms probably couldn't exist. Which sort of negates the point...

              Still, that makes for lousy science-fiction, so it's best to ignore the problem.
        • Thank you, oh obvious master of the obvious.

        • Apparently, the speed of light when the zero point energy is lower (as between the two plates generating the Casimir effect) the speed of light is higher than the speed of light in vacuum at normal zero point energy levels.

          http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/research/warp/wa rpstat.html [nasa.gov]
      • >> I'm waiting for the day when we can raise the speed of light so we can go faster.
        > I'm not sure this technology can be pushed in that direction

        Let us hope that the speed of light cannot be changed as it is vital to the operation of the universe as we know it. For example, the fine structure constant of the universe (alpha) [wikipedia.org] depends on the speed of light, and if the f-s contstant changes since c changes then funny things could happen, like electron having too much energy to orbit an atom, or
        • There's a lot of other research that implies that the study that showed that alpha (and therefore c) changes was wrong. There was some stuff done even before the fine-structure work that concluded that c was constant to some fairly absurd precision and follow-ups to that f-s study haven't been able to find the effect that they claimed. So I'm remaining very skeptical of the time-variablity claim for the time being. But that might also be variable :)
  • That is the best-written synopsis I have seen in a while. And posted by ZONK no less!
  • "A paper providing details on the chip will run in Nature on Wednesday".

    Anyone have a link to this considering that it is Thursday?

  • Does this mean (Score:5, Funny)

    by RandoX ( 828285 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @12:32PM (#13941683)
    I have to change the speed of light from a const to a variable now?

    • Re:Does this mean (Score:5, Informative)

      by Dashing Leech ( 688077 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @12:37PM (#13941733)
      I have to change the speed of light from a const to a variable now?

      Joke aside, it's always been a variable. It changes depending on the medium it's traveling through. 'c' is just the speed of light in a vacuum.

      • Re:Does this mean (Score:3, Interesting)

        by dpilot ( 134227 )
        I know you're giving a serious response to a joke, but it makes me come up with an even further off the wall, but still serious, response...

        Which vacuum?

        In physics, there seems to be the possiblility of other vacuum states than the one we happen to have in our observed Universe. Since this is Slashdot, it's worth mentioning that science fiction has at least 2 books where the concept of alternate vacuum states plays a plot-driving role, "Schild's Ladder" by Greg Egan and "The Forever Peace" by Joe Haldeman.

        B
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • Re:Does this mean (Score:3, Insightful)

            by jeffasselin ( 566598 )
            Your first statement (that our consciousness creates the universe), that I believe is correct, doesn't imply the second.

            The problem is that our creation of the universe is apparently restricted by limits that are intrinsic to it and necessary in order for that creation of the universe. Among those is the fabric of space-time which is necessary for perception to occur, and thus for specific consciousness to exist.

      • Re:Does this mean (Score:2, Interesting)

        by kalirion ( 728907 )
        As I understand it, traveling through a non-vacuum medium doesn't slow down the true speed of light. The light just bounces around a bit on it's way to the destination. The reason it takes the light longer to get from point A to Point B is that it actually covers more ground. Think of it as taking the scenic route.

  • Teenagers love slow light (Score:5, Funny)

    by mandreko ( 66835 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @12:32PM (#13941685) Homepage
    Millions of teenagers will love it if light gets slowed that much. It could give them time to zip up their pants when their mom walks in the room wondering what she heard coming from the computer.

    • You haven't thought this all the way through.

      When the speed of light gets slowed down, so does the delay between an image appearing on a computer monitor and it hitting the retinas of the observer of said monitor, much to the dismay of the aforementioned teenagers.

      As if waiting for the download to finish weren't boring enough ...

    • You are not thinking this through. If light slows down, then you will be able to "see" into the past. So when the mom walks in, she will be able to "see" what happened a moment ago.

  • Slowing? (Score:4, Funny)

    by b100dian ( 771163 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @12:33PM (#13941692) Homepage Journal
    I bet they are slowing it down to leave room for overclocking! :P

  • Next on the to do list: (Score:5, Funny)

    by scolby ( 838499 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @12:34PM (#13941702) Journal
    Slow down the speed of a Steve Ballmer-thrown chair.
  • The computer industry, however, tends to move slowly when it comes to major overhauls of computer architecture. Several components will have to be developed before photons can replace electrons inside computers.

    It is all just a matter of compatibility. If one company manages to make an optical Hard Disk which interface is the same SATA or IDE, and which is affordable of course, then it will surely be a great replacement for the current slow disks.

    The same goes for RAM, or motherboards. As long as they cont
    • Well, that's the problem. Eventually these interfaces are likely to be optical instead of electrical, which means no more backwards compatability. But I don't see it being a huge change. We already deal with all different types of sockets, SATA/ATA, etc. If they find a way to make components all optical, but convert to standard interfaces, then it would be as painless as the ATA->SATA transition. If they can't do that, then it will be a painful transition since there's no cross-over for the manufact
    • That wouldn't do it. If they had the same connecting interfaces, we could have infinitely fast processors/drives that would be limited by how fast we could the information to them. Which is a step up, but we're not going to see meaningful improvement if the processor or hard drive has to wait on the connection. A chain is only as strong as it's weakest link.

    • Re:A matter of compatibility (Score:5, Interesting)

      by electroniceric ( 468976 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @12:46PM (#13941832)
      We have optical hard disks, and they are a hella of a lot slower than magnetic ones. The optics we're talking about here are for moving the signal around the machine (and over the network) after it's been read from the media.

      My guess is that there are still some nasty snags awaiting even making a serious optical router, much less producing it commercially. I'm betting more on 2012 than 2007. Hell, even LongVista won't be out by 2007.

  • Doing it easy (Score:3, Funny)

    by JonGretar ( 222255 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @12:35PM (#13941715) Homepage
    Well... I guess this is one way to achieve faster than light travel. Guess it's easyer to just use the old car but slow everything else down. ;)

    • Re:Doing it easy (Score:3, Informative)

      by oni ( 41625 )
      I guess this is one way to achieve faster than light travel.

      I know you're joking but just in case anyone doesn't understand, you can't actually slow light down. When light passes through a medium, glass for example, the atoms in the glass absorb the light and then re-emit it. So, an atom on the outside edge of the pane of glass absorbs a photon and then reemits it, then the next atom in the glas absorbs it, and so on until the light emerges from the inside edge of the glass. The total trip time for ligh

  • A useful app? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by harrkev ( 623093 ) <kevin.harrelson@ ... om minus painter> on Thursday November 03, 2005 @12:35PM (#13941718) Homepage
    Can somebody please give me a useful application for this?

    Generally, in computer chips, the hard part is speeding them up. Slowing things down is easy. What does this new tech buy us?

    • Re:A useful app? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Gothmolly ( 148874 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @12:40PM (#13941768)
      It allows you to build chips using light, at speeds for which we can reasonably design things, and interface them with things at small fractions of C. The benefit to the optical chip is power and heat, which means you can pack more chips in, which means you can make a faster computer.
      • That's interesting, actually. I always thought that an optical CPU/mobo would be faster just because it's light.... How fast does electricity travel anyway? does it travel at the speed of light or does it depend on the medium it's traveling on?

    • Re:A useful app? (Score:4, Informative)

      by whit3 ( 318913 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @01:28PM (#13942224)
      There are multiple uses for a slowed signal; you can combine it with the un-delayed
      signal and make filters, like is done with SAW filters (but those use surface acoustic waves,
      and are not silicon-compatible). You can also make some kinds of shift register
      VERY simply by sending the signal out into the delay and picking it up when you
      need it. And a delay of a clock signal often makes a computer more reliable (designing
      high speed compute devices, this is OFTEN a vital consideration).

      The split/multiple delay/combine scheme for (for instance) radio signals is
      a very powerful tool, and is why a complicated-looking antenna can work
      so well. And, why a rabbit-ear antenna can take a lot of tweaking to
      get your idiotbox to receive Red Green.

      For major processing of data, it was common practice in the old days to tweak the
      interconnect wiring to make the correct time delay. Seymour Cray reported (of the
      Cray-1 supercomputer) that the interconnect in the central core of the computer
      was hand-wired by (slender women) assemblers who used cut-to-measure lengths of
      twisted pair, so that all the signals had the appropriate settling time before the clock
      arrived and latched the data. The computer was a cylindrical hole with draped wiring
      all over its interior, with spokes out that housed the cooled ECL logic modules.

      To keep the Cray quick, the cylindrical core was as small as feasible. The assemblers
      knew a LOT of the common computer language of their profession, i.e. profanity.
    • Dude you can't sell a chip starting at the fastest possible speed. That's the fastlane to financial ruin. You need to slow the thing down and then slowly rachet up the speed.

  • Microsoft? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03, 2005 @12:36PM (#13941722)
    IBM? Hrm. I'm a little surprised -- who else would've expected Microsoft to be the industry leader in making things go slower?

  • Experiment of the millenium (Score:5, Funny)

    by Chairboy ( 88841 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @12:36PM (#13941723) Homepage
    I'm looking for an optical processor that can do math at point 5 lightspeed. I expect this will be of particular assistance in my thesis project of calculating how fast a certain type of falcon can run. In the past, when trying to figure this out, I've had to hold the bird with a pair of grippers that would keep slipping out of my hands, and by the time I'd be done, I would have gone through maybe nine or ten pairs.

    With a faster processor, I hope to do the Kestrel run in less than 12 forceps.

  • The Apocalyspe Nears... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Kuad ( 529006 ) <demento@fuckyou . c o . uk> on Thursday November 03, 2005 @12:40PM (#13941763)
    First IBM starts offering Solaris as an OS choice. Now they've slowed the speed of light.

    Who else is waiting for a skinny guy on a pale horse to ride across the sky?
  • I wonder if we can make chips that modulate light, and therefore the info encoded in its state in time by slowing/speeding it depending upon whether or not other light is either present or due to other light's speed. Rather than transistors which modulate electron current by stopping/permitting it depending upon whether or not other electron current is present.

  • Good news / Bad news (Score:4, Funny)

    by Rorschach1 ( 174480 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @12:43PM (#13941797) Homepage
    The good news is we can have processors that run at the speed of light.

    The bad news is that the speed of light is now roughly 18 miles per hour.

  • Have the IBM engineers been to the Discworld? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Ken Hall ( 40554 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @12:47PM (#13941841)
    Every Pratchett fan knows that light slows down if you apply a strong Magical field...

    Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it's wrong. No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.

    - Reaper Man

  • Slowing the speed of light (Score:5, Funny)

    by thewiz ( 24994 ) * on Thursday November 03, 2005 @12:48PM (#13941846)
    IBM has actually found two more ways to slow the speed of light:

    Subject photons to their software development process.

    Put photons through the government procurement process.

  • Return of the "Turbo" button! (Score:5, Funny)

    by supun ( 613105 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @12:49PM (#13941856)
    Now IBM can run at 1/300 speed of light for the "normal" mode and at the speed of light for the "turbo" mode!

  • The fertile grounds for the new flame war (Score:5, Funny)

    by PierceLabs ( 549351 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @12:51PM (#13941881)
    countdown to the "Speed of light performance myths", "temporal over clocking", and bootleg computer makers using the lightbulbs from easy bake ovens as processors.
  • The computer industry, however, tends to move slowly when it comes to major overhauls of computer architecture.

    See, the computer industry has already slowed down, so now they're slowing down light to catch up with where the industry has already gone.

    One thing for certain, this sure makes building my FTL drive a whole lot easier!

  • I must be missing something... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rewt66 ( 738525 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @12:53PM (#13941905)
    If I'm using light in a CPU, why do I want to slow it down? Is there some reason why I really want to decrease bandwidth and/or increase latency?

  • I'd rather they not (Score:2, Offtopic)

    by alta ( 1263 )
    I mean, if I get an optical processor, I don't want it to run at 1/300th the speed of light. I want FULL speed. Are they planning on selling 1/200th as an upgrade, until one day we top off at 1/1th the speed of light like we have at around 3.8GHz?

  • What's the dispersion for this? (Score:5, Informative)

    by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @12:56PM (#13941945)
    Synthesizing a high index of refraction is cool, but if the dispersion (the variation of that index across wavelengths) is non-zero, then this can make a mess of modulated signals. Dispersion means that signals at slight different wavelengths run at different velocities and arrive at different times at the output.

    The higher the dispersion, the lower the practical bandwidth of the device.

  • Special Relativity (Score:2, Interesting)

    by LukaFox ( 765323 )
    It doesn't seem like the speed of light is really being "slowed down." Rather, the time it takes photons to travel a certain distance is being increased by the use of a device which scatters photons and also by means of electric fields. This is just like saying that light travels "more slowly" through certain media. Really, what I think is happening is that there is a delay when a photon is being absorbed into a certain medium before being able to pass through it. So, it seems that light slows down, but rea

    • Re:Special Relativity (Score:2, Interesting)

      by eluusive ( 642298 )
      Funny, I said exactly this during the last slashdot article about this sort of thing. I got flamed to hell and back by a bunch of naysayers. At least there are some sane people in the world.

    • Re:Special Relativity (Score:2, Informative)

      by rca66 ( 818002 )

      Rather, the time it takes photons to travel a certain distance is being increased by the use of a device which scatters photons and also by means of electric fields. This is just like saying that light travels "more slowly" through certain media. Really, what I think is happening is that there is a delay when a photon is being absorbed into a certain medium before being able to pass through it. So, it seems that light slows down, but really the delay is caused by the interference of the medium and the spee

      • Re:Special Relativity (Score:2, Insightful)

        by LukaFox ( 765323 )
        Yes. The point was that there needs to be a distinction made between "speed of light" and "amount of time it takes for light to travel a certain distance."

  • The computer industry, however, tends to move slowly when it comes to major overhauls of computer architecture.

    Huh? The computer industry, and more specifically, the processor industry, is the fastest adopter of new technology in any endeavor in human history. Anyone have an example of a faster-moving industry?

    • "Huh? The computer industry, and more specifically, the processor industry, is the fastest adopter of new technology in any endeavor in human history. Anyone have an example of a faster-moving industry?"
      That all depends on how you define new technology. Think about CPUs they are still CMOS and PC anyway they are still x86 ISA. CPUs are being improved at a rapid rate but it more of an evolutionary improvement than an adoption of new technology. Where is my massively parallel asynchronous clock very long wor

  • General Purpose Light Based CPUs Are Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)

    by HydroCarbon10 ( 40784 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @01:08PM (#13942045) Journal
    The wavelength of an electron is extremely tiny compared to the wavelength of light. This means that feature sizes for light based chips are necessarily much larger than those for electron based chips. Barring some advancement that allows us to pack more functionality per unit area into an optical chip, optical computing will remain a very niche field.
  • If this can be done using "standard materials", as the article mentions, one wonders if our calculated estimates of distance to stars could be off, considering all the unknowns outside the solar system. I imagine that even if there is a small modification to the speed of light coming from stars, our estimation of distance from stars and other celestial bodies (and likewise, our estimation of how long the star has been shining in order to reach our eyes on earth) would be greatly affected.

    In other words, if

    • Re:Occurring naturally? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Pryon ( 181814 )

      If this can be done using "standard materials", as the article mentions, one wonders if our calculated estimates of distance to stars could be off, considering all the unknowns outside the solar system.

      Generally, the speed of light is used only for "close" objects. For objects outside of the solar system, other properties are used including parallax, spectral type, and luminosity. None of these properties depend on the speed of light. Here [bramboroson.com] is an informative link on methods used at various distance sc

      • Thanks. Forgive my ignorance, but I often hear from astronomists, "this star is 5 million light years away", for example. Doesn't the use of the phrase "light years" imply the use of the speed of light?
        • No, it's just a standard measurement, it uses the constant c, which is the speed of light in a vacuum. It doesn't matter if the light moves faster or slower between the two objects, the distance remains constant.

  • Nature podcast (Score:4, Informative)

    by rune.w ( 720113 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @01:15PM (#13942105)
    The latest Nature podcast has an interview with one of the researchers working on this: http://www.nature.com/nature/podcast/index.html [nature.com]
  • Everyone knows that information travels at the speed of light through the Internet. The mecanism known as the slashdotting effect, named after the Slashdot laboratory, has been known and used for years to slow down the flow of information. It achieves much better results than 1/300 th of the speed, sometimes eventually completely stopping the flow.

    Completely unaffected by the IBM press release, the head of the Slashdot Research department, Mr CmdrTaco, let a laconic note on his blog: "been there, done that.
  • Call me when they alter the gravitational constant.
  • The salesman at the computer store said my new cup holder has photons instead of electrodes. So if I spill my coffee I won't get a shock.

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