German Scientists Create Bose-Einstein Condensate Using Photons 61
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by
Soulskill
from the keep-this-discovery-away-from-sharks dept.
from the keep-this-discovery-away-from-sharks dept.
xt writes "A team of physicists, led by the University of Bonn's Martin Weitz, have managed to create a Bose-Einstein condensate (here's a more detailed explanation) out of photons, previously thought to be impossible. The research was published in the journal Nature (abstract, and the arXiv has the submitted paper as a PDF) and has possible applications on solar energy technology and shortwave lasers, which would be well-suited to the manufacture of computer chips as the process uses lasers to etch logic circuits onto semiconductor materials. Seems like Moore's law is safe again!"
Re:Moore's law is worthless right now... (Score:3, Interesting)
True, but FLOPS have not been the bottleneck for a long time. When was the last time you had to up your CPU speed or used all your CPU?
Last night. Then again, I was trying to play a game on netbook, so I had it coming. Really, for a desktop, if I am not getting enough speed I am probably just being cheap and not upgrading, but for a netbook or phone, a faster processor would make a noticeable performance difference. I agree that the other stuff is important too, but CPUs are still a bottleneck for real consumer applications, just not on the desktop.
Re:F1RST P0ST! (Score:3, Interesting)
You know whats odd?
If this was previously thought to be impossible - you'd think it would have much larger implications.
Perhaps they should have said previously thought to be improbable?