Time telescope' could boost fibre-optic communication
Monday, 12. October 2009, 10:22:33
A "telescope" that can magnify time could dramatically increase the amount of data that can be sent through fibre optic cables, speeding up broadband internet and other long-distance communications.
It isn't possible to speed up the flashes of light that stream through the global network of optical fibres at around 200 million metres per second. But more information can be squeezed into each burst of light, says Mark Foster at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, using what he and his colleague Alexander Gaeta call a "time telescope" fitted with "time lenses".
"A time lens is essentially like an optical lens," says Foster. An optical lens can deflect a light beam into a much smaller area of space; a time lens deflects a section of a light beam into a smaller chunk of time.
Source: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17867-time-telescope-could-boost-fibreoptic-communication.html
It isn't possible to speed up the flashes of light that stream through the global network of optical fibres at around 200 million metres per second. But more information can be squeezed into each burst of light, says Mark Foster at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, using what he and his colleague Alexander Gaeta call a "time telescope" fitted with "time lenses".
"A time lens is essentially like an optical lens," says Foster. An optical lens can deflect a light beam into a much smaller area of space; a time lens deflects a section of a light beam into a smaller chunk of time.
Source: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17867-time-telescope-could-boost-fibreoptic-communication.html
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