Light is stored as sound
Light is stored as sound – physicsworld.com:
Physicists in the US have discovered a simple way to “store” light pulses in a material by converting them into sound waves. The technique, which involves just two lasers and a piece of standard optical fibre, could be used to create memory devices that could boost the performance of optical telecommunications networks.
Modern telecommunications networks transfer vast amounts of data along optical fibres in the form of packets of light pulses. However, if a network is extremely busy, two packets can arrive at the same node at the same time. Ideally, one packet would be stored for a very short period so that both packets could be processed in turn.
hehe yup!
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I read about this research quite a while ago. I did not know till now that they had figured out how to do it. I guess it would be “light year” jump in storage and transfer technology!