DaveC426913
Jan21-07, 12:04 PM
These guys are storing whole images using a single photon!
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070119094254.htm
I didn't think too much of the article until I read how they're doing it. It is pretty much living, breathing proof of QM's basic, weirdest principle.
"To produce the UR image, Howell simply shone a beam of light through a stencil with the U and R etched out. Anyone who has made shadow puppets knows how this works, but Howell turned down the light so much that a single photon was all that passed through the stencil.
Quantum mechanics dictates some strange things at that scale, so that bit of light could be thought of as both a particle and a wave. As a wave, it passed through all parts of the stencil at once, carrying the "shadow" of the UR with it. "
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070119094254.htm
I didn't think too much of the article until I read how they're doing it. It is pretty much living, breathing proof of QM's basic, weirdest principle.
"To produce the UR image, Howell simply shone a beam of light through a stencil with the U and R etched out. Anyone who has made shadow puppets knows how this works, but Howell turned down the light so much that a single photon was all that passed through the stencil.
Quantum mechanics dictates some strange things at that scale, so that bit of light could be thought of as both a particle and a wave. As a wave, it passed through all parts of the stencil at once, carrying the "shadow" of the UR with it. "