Latest Front Page News

Laser Creates Quantum Whirlpool

Submitted by: Hologram @ 07:21 PM | Tuesday, November 18, 2014 | (url: http://www.labora...)

Physicists at The Australian National Univ. (ANU) have engineered a spiral laser beam and used it to create a whirlpool of hybrid light-matter particles called polaritons. Polaritons are hybrid particles that have properties of both matter and light. The ability to control polariton flows in this way could aid the development of completely novel technology to link conventional electronics with new laser- and fiber-based technologies. Polaritons form in semiconductors when laser light interacts with electrons and holes (positively charged vacancies) so strongly that it is no longer possible to distinguish light from matter.


Sanyo Laser to Enable Faster, Higher Capacity Blu-ray Discs

Submitted by: KnightMare @ 11:31 AM | Monday, October 6, 2008 | (url: http://www.pcworl...)

Each recording layer on a Blu-ray Disc can store 25G bytes of data and the current highest capacity commercial discs have two recording layers. A four-layer disc would be able to hold 100G bytes of data, which translates to about eight hours of high-definition video, and at 12X speed all that data could be burned to the disc in just 10 minutes.

While the development of the laser is a step toward such systems, users shouldn't expect them anytime soon. With the development of a suitable laser, companies are now able to work on products supporting the higher speeds, but the length of the development cycle and the Blu-ray Disc standardization process means drives and recorders running at the higher speeds likely won't be available until one or two years later.