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Showing posts from February, 2014

As inspiring as the Olympics: photonics!

Records are broken, new tricks are introduced, new stars step onto the world stage -- there is a lot of inspiration generated when the Olympic Games are on. Feats of athleticism are being demonstrated that were not imagined to be possible, and possibly not even imagined, as recently as 10 years ago. It’s the same with photonics -- you can decide whether it is as flashy or as exciting as the Olympic Games. But feats are being demonstrated that were not possible until now, by people we may or may not have heard of before. And the results are definitely life-changing, for more than just those who perform them. For example, in separate talks at SPIE Photonics West last month, Michal Lipson of Cornell University and Ashok Krishnamoorthy of Oracle described new tricks with light that could help solve one of the most profound problems facing our increasingly digitally plugged-in world: data storage capacity, or more precisely, the projected lack of it sometime in the next 5 or