COMING SOON TO A SPORTS STORE NEAR YOU: THE LIGHT SABER

This is just too good not to share, and in fact, so many of you shared it with me, including many regulars, I simply have to let everyone know about it. There exists a lot of strange "stuff" in the world of theoretical physics: dark matter, dark energy, giant whirlpools in the nothingness called black holes, wormholes (or, to give it a more technical name, Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen bridges), anti-matter (particles with the opposite spin to their "matter counterparts"), not to mention the bizarre cosmologies to come out of the world of quantum mechanics: the uncertainty principle and all its strange children: wave-particle dualities, phase spaces, collapsing wave functions, multi-verse theory.

One of them is the very arcane idea of taking two photons - those are the little particles of light that physicists take about when they're not talking about light as waves(see the above wave-particle duality) - and binding them together to form, well, what can only be described as "molecules" of pure light. And the result is, to quote the following article, a "not in-apt analogy to the light saber" (and for those who have been following my notes on analogical calculus, note the reference to "inept" vs "apt" analogies):

Scientists create never-before-seen form of matter

So what's all the fun of coupling light and matter together in this way? I hope you caught the following reference:

"'It's a photonic interaction that's mediated by the atomic interaction,' Lukin said. 'That makes these two photons behave like a molecule, and when they exit the medium they're much more likely to do so together than as single photons.'

"While the effect is unusual, it does have some practical applications as well.

"'We do this for fun, and because we're pushing the frontiers of science,' Lukin said. 'But it feeds into the bigger picture of what we're doing because photons remain the best possible means to carry quantum information. The handicap, though, has been that photons don't interact with each other.'

"To build a quantum computer, he explained, researchers need to build a system that can preserve quantum information, and process it using quantum logic operations. The challenge, however, is that quantum logic requires interactions between individual quanta so that quantum systems can be switched to perform information processing.

"'What we demonstrate with this process allows us to do that,' Lukin said. 'Before we make a useful, practical quantum switch or photonic logic gate we have to improve the performance, so it's still at the proof-of-concept level, but this is an important step. The physical principles we've established here are important.'"

All this lays out an interesting possibility, one of those "high octane speculations" that is our trademark. The release of this bit of news, you'll recall, follows the story that we blogged about several weeks ago, regarding the claims that there was already in existence a quantum computing network - think of it as an internet on steroids, and then some - at Los Alamos and other defense-related sites in New Mexico. And that suggests that the technique being announced here might have been brought to a much higher pitch of development in the black projects world than is being suggested in this article.

And that raises further high octane possibilities. The article refers to a "blending of light and matter," so let's really wildly speculate on the basis of that "not in-apt analogy to the light saber." Suppose we "fused" light, electromagnetic energy, and matter, in a unique way, by building a region or column in a physical medium that is "solidified" by standing waves of EM energy. Of course, that would require an impractically gimungous(to use Art Bell's fabulous term) amount of energy. But just suppose one could solidify a column of air in such a fashion... Well, the point is, fantasizing about quantum "molecules" used to be a fun exercise. A mathematical plaything. So perhaps that phrase about a "not in-apt analogy to the light saber" is the first barely perceptible crack in the door of letting us know what is coming down the pike next, in a generation or two perhaps.

After all, now they've done, once again, the impossible, and created that quantum photonic molecule. A first step, a small one, but a significant one, on the way to quantum switches, and they, in turn, possibly to much more beyond.

See you on the flip side.

 

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Joseph P. Farrell

Joseph P. Farrell has a doctorate in patristics from the University of Oxford, and pursues research in physics, alternative history and science, and "strange stuff". His book The Giza DeathStar, for which the Giza Community is named, was published in the spring of 2002, and was his first venture into "alternative history and science".

11 Comments

  1. Margaret on September 30, 2013 at 10:47 pm

    Confused about quantum physics? String theory? Curved space? Infinity? Molecules and atoms, light and energy, space, time and matter? …. Let Tim Blais and “A Capella Science – Bohemian Gravity!” enlighten you, musically 😉
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rjbtsX7twc



  2. Frankie Calcutta on September 29, 2013 at 5:11 pm

    Forget the light saber. What about the light body? Wait until they figure out how to download one’s information into this new shell. The cyborg body will be as fashionable as a polyester suit among our elite. The photon man will be the envy of the Breakaway Civilization. That is until they discover that downloading oneself into a light body is the equivalent of getting your stomach stapled. Giant egos and negative emotions will eventually blow the light body into trillions of pieces, just like the stomach staples coming undone after an evening of wine and dining. When Nimrod jr. asks Mumsy what happened to Daddy, she will have to explain to the little creature that “daddy couldn’t keep it together but now he is everywhere watching over you,” And it really will be the truth.

    “Fusing light, electromagentic energy, and matter in a unique way (to create a light body)” is nothing new and can be done in the comfort of one’s own Himalayan cave. The manual for this is Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. Of course, capturing one of these kind of light beings may be possible as well– in a crystal. Could it be the recent efforts to trap light in crystals is not just for quantum networking, but also to serve as a weapon against these ever meddlesome, benevolent light beings– those guys that can hold the vibration together?

    Lastly, couldn’t that gimungous amount of energy needed for this fusion come from a singularity at the center of the the photon itself, so long as you don’t allow this infinite energy potential to be renormalized and discarded?



  3. DownunderET on September 29, 2013 at 1:52 pm

    I hear Yoda and Darth Vader are working for Lockheed Skunkworks, and sales of light sabers will go ballistic.

    They are not going anywhere with this dead ended physics courtesy of Mr. Heaviside, so somewhere down the track, the pussy will have to come out of the bag.



    • DownunderET on September 29, 2013 at 2:49 pm

      Oh I forgot to mention that a new interview is up at The Byte Show with George Ann Hughes.

      It’s CosmicWar_18



  4. marcos toledo on September 29, 2013 at 1:12 pm

    Dear Mr. Farrell since yesterday and today when you send me a notice to activate my subscription to your website after commenting on the day post l receive a notice it can not activate it have others of you subscribers receive this notice from Word Press as well.



  5. marcos toledo on September 29, 2013 at 12:42 pm

    Quantum computers would they be cheaper as well as more glitch proof than today computers I hope so. Anyway Jedi’s draw and activate your light sabers and prepare to bring down the sith lords.



  6. Robert Barricklow on September 29, 2013 at 9:41 am

    And this “quantum computer” may not be as “hard-core” as a “graviton” computer. I’am not suggesting a quantum leap; but, rather the opposite, a graviton fall into darkness. Where one is light; the other is its absence. And the graviton(in numbers) captures the light. Like the duality of man/one side owes allegiance to the “group”; while the other side of man lives for the “self”. A constant throughout the galaxies; a constant spirit of yingyang/where the border is everything/nothing. This border resembles the fluxutuating in/out, on/off, light/darknes, graviton/photon, ect., ect. ?



  7. basta on September 29, 2013 at 9:18 am

    The most impressive thing about a quantum computer is that you get the output before you input. Ba-da-bing!



  8. shockandawe on September 29, 2013 at 7:55 am

    Note the name “Lukin”.

    Okay…I wasn’t going to bring this up yet again…but you did….

    Adiabatic Quantum Computers and their functional non-gate-model using qubits: def. noun the fundamental unit of information in a quantum computer, capable of existing in two states, 0 or 1, simultaneously or at a different time.

    It is not a stretch, to say…if one has an Adiabatic-based computer, one also has its corresponding internet. The public version is the fiber-optic system known as the ESnet5.

    I will climb out on the tiny end of your branch and speculate that indeed there is a hidden photo-based net, tied to the non-gate-model quantum computer I cite here.

    A gate-model, whether photon, or transistor-based is a ruse, meant to throw us off the track. It is obsolete, due to adiabatic, qubit actions.

    Now leaving the podium……



  9. jedi on September 29, 2013 at 7:54 am

    and the light said, let there be a god to divide them.



  10. DanaThomas on September 29, 2013 at 5:48 am

    After the Death Star and androids, here comes the Light Sabre. But I still prefer Yoda’s approach of consciousness-infused matter…



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