LASER TO MAKE INTERNET FASTER
Do we need to make the internet faster than it is? Some would ask why, but many internet aficionados would jump and say ‘hell yeah!’ If you’re in the latter group, we have some good news for you. Scientists have just created a new kind of laser that will make the internet drastically faster than it already is.
Lasers that are currently available take several nanoseconds to generate one pulse. But these semiconductor nano-lasers need less than a picosecond, and is therefore over a thousand times faster than regular lasers.
What does this mean? The fact that these lasers can create thousand times more pulses in a given period of time means that they can carry information thousand times faster. Because each pulse could mean either a 1 or a 0, and because in the computer world, that means information, the faster a laser ‘beeps’, the faster it will carry information.
Scientists working on the laser have said that this is perhaps the fastest a semiconductor laser can be operated. But then, this should be taken with a pinch of salt because many such proclamations have been broken by the relentless forward march of technology.
The most exciting bit about these lasers is that they’re stable at room temperatures, which makes them perfect to be used in internet and communication systems. They could also be used in medical diagnostics by detecting single molecules and microbes.
Downloading gigabytes of data in seconds may be a dream today, but it may not remain one for long.
