The Chinese Solar Machine Layer by Layer Fire in the Library The Mystery Behind Anesthesia
Novel "photonic-band-gap materials" promise to light up the pipes of the telecom network. Their breakthrough? They carry signals through air rather than glass.
At first sight, these new materials are simply odd: thin as a hair, transparent and full of holes. Like the optical fibers that are the mainstay of the telecommunications industry, they're made of glass. But there the similarities with conventional materials come screeching to a halt.
The center of each of these novel fibers-which are made at the University of Bath, in England-is hollow. In existing optical fibers, light is transmitted through a glass core. In the fibers made at Bath, light travels unhindered through air. The light beam is confined to the hollow core by the holes in the surrounding glass material, which looks like a honeycomb in cross section and creates a strictly no-go region for light. The ability to confine light in air this way, says Philip Russell, a Bath physicist, "could completely revolutionize telecommunications."
To read the entire article you must log in:
Most of our content — all daily news, blogs, and videos — is free. Magazine stories are paid. To read this story, you must have a subscription or you must use a reading credit. Registration to Technology Review is free and entitles registrants to three free reading credits.
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
Our list of the 50 most innovative companies, including the following: