Repulsive Force Discovered In Light

Aurispector writes in with news that the Yale team that recently discovered an attractive force between two light beams in waveguides has now found a corresponding repulsive force. "'This completes the picture,' [team lead Hong] Tang said. 'We've shown that this is indeed a bipolar light force with both an attractive and repulsive component.' The attractive and repulsive light forces Tang's team discovered are separate from the force created by light's radiation pressure, which pushes against an object as light shines on it. Instead, they push out or pull in sideways from the direction the light travels. Previously, the engineers used the attractive force they discovered to move components on the silicon chip in one direction, such as pulling on a nanoscale switch to open it, but were unable to push it in the opposite direction. Using both forces means they can now have complete control and can manipulate components in both directions. 'We've demonstrated that these are tunable forces we can engineer,' Tang said."

Force source?

[aeve]

What the crap is an article about a newly found force that doesn't explain at least a theory as to the source of the force? Is it magnetic?

Doesn't this stuff excite you?

[generic.individual]

There are a lot of jokes as replies, I assume partially because the summary sets them up so well and partially because it is rather dense subject matter. But doesn't this stuff excite you? Years ago a friend and I used to talk about how there should be a way to make computers out of light and we should just try for that, because, well, there isn't much faster. Articles like this mean its closer to reality. Even if it never happens in my life time it still excites me to know we are headed there.

I am sure some physicist is now going to tell me how it's actually better to use some other quantum something for computing and how I don't understand light and subatomic particles/waves/strings/finnegans. I know I don't. I just like the idea of light computers.