Light at the speed of a bicycle and much more

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The speed of light, 300 million metres per second, was long thought an immutable constant and has defined our understanding of matter and energy but recent research in the area of optics and photonics is proving that we can manipulate light to some ingenious and hugely lucrative ends.

From the use of adaptive optics to catch perfect images of distant galaxies or detailed representations inside bio-specimens of, for example, mouse embryos, to electromagnetically induced transparency which can slow light to the speed of a bicycle - the field of optics and photonics is in the scientific vanguard.

The Institute of Physics (IOP) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) are launching a new report today, Wednesday, 9 September, entitled Optics and photonics: Physics enhancing our lives, to highlight the most recent advances in the field and demonstrate the potentially lucrative ends a range of researchers have in sight.

This field of research has already had a revolutionary effect on all of our everyday lives. From optical fibres, hair-like strands of silica glass that transmit vast amounts of data around the world as fleeting pulses of light, to lasers built in to our CD and DVD players, much of the developed world's technological infrastructure is already structured on physicists' ability to play with light.

There is however still much more to come. Just one of the research areas highlighted in the report, plasmonics, shows how our understanding of light, in this case stemming from the way light interacts with silver and gold to give off a shiny sparkle, could lead to the development of metamaterial-based invisibility cloaks or super-strength solar cells for renewable energy generation.

Advances will have dramatic effects on technology used in security as, for example, iris recognition systems become more sophisticated; communications will become swifter and securer; medical imaging techniques will become more precise; and we will be able to manipulate the plentiful energy of the Sun to greater human benefit.

Dr Robert Kirby-Harris, chief executive at the Institute of Physics, said, "We hope that this booklet illustrates how the research investment made by the EPSRC, and the support provided by the Institute to its membership, will enable the UK economy, and society at large, to benefit from the discoveries and advances being made in leading-edge physics research."

Source: Institute of Physics

   

• Alexa - Sep 09, 2009
  • Rank: 2.3 / 5 (6)

  ..the speed of light, 300 million metres per second, was long thought an immutable constant..

  And it still is, as it's related to speed of light in vacuum, not inside of boson condensates, where its mediated by whole atoms - i.e. not electrons or particles of vacuum. The heavier mediating particle is, the more slowly waves are spreading and nothing strange is about it. Before some years people mediated light by lantern signals - such environment is indeed even much more slower.
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• danman5000 - Sep 09, 2009
  • Rank: 5 / 5 (2)
  I was disappointed to find that this was another of PhysOrg's non-articles, having a big flashy title but completely devoid of any new information.
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• Alexa - Sep 09, 2009
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  I'd recommend you to read PDF review, linked into article, which is quite good.
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• Mr_Man - Sep 09, 2009
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  So if you can go faster than a bicycle, you can go back in time? This is going to be almost too easy...
  
  Edit: Please don't report me.. I usually have useful things to add in my comments, but I am a loose cannon today..
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• Alexa - Sep 09, 2009
  • Rank: 1.7 / 5 (6)

  ..you can go back in time?..

  
  Yes, for example recently a formation of acoustic "black holes" in boson condensates was reported. But we can travel through time dimension in very subtle level of reality only. In AWT for example follows, every moment, when you're breaking surface of water, you're traveling across time dimension of local space-time, represented by water surface gradient (brane). Whenever you're collapsing air into balloon, air molecules travel into future defined by direction of omnidirectional space-time expansion. And so on.
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• Slotin - Sep 12, 2009
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  Btw the neglected problem of time turism is in point, from rigorous perspective time travellers should expand or collapse, when they travel into future or past. Even worse, their bodies should expand, while their cells should collapse - or vice versa in in agreement with direction of omnidirectional space-time expansion.
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