>The trick is to use what is known as a "fast Fourier transform" to unpick more than 300 separate colours of light in a laser beam, each encoded with its own string of information.
No, the "trick" is decades of hard work and research in materials, electronics, photonics, signal processing and more.
Journalists like to believe you can sum up any scientific result in one sentence understandable by mortals. It turns out it's not the case.
It takes a very unfavourable reading to come to that conclusion, IMO.
The particular discovery that is the core of this, is to do this transform. That doesn't imply that (a) doing that is simple (b) getting to the point where you can do the trick doesn't build on decades worth of science.
And, just out of curiosity, what's the alternative to simplification? "It's fast. There's no way you'd be able to grasp why. kthxbye."
I find this an appropriate, consumer-oriented summary right at the start of the article - you cannot expect the BBC News to dive too deeply into the matter and especially not during the first 2 paragraphs.
Also, consider they did add that touch you were missing at the end:
"Think of all the tremendous progress in silicon photonics," he said. "Nobody could have imagined 10 years ago that nowadays it would be so common to integrate relatively complicated optical circuits on to a silicon chip."
And since the scientist they interviewed was German, you should also factor in certain translation issues like a German scientist explaining Fourier transformation and splitting of light beams to a British news reporter.
Comments
>The trick is to use what is known as a "fast Fourier transform" to unpick more than 300 separate colours of light in a laser beam, each encoded with its own string of information.
No, the "trick" is decades of hard work and research in materials, electronics, photonics, signal processing and more.
Journalists like to believe you can sum up any scientific result in one sentence understandable by mortals. It turns out it's not the case.
It takes a very unfavourable reading to come to that conclusion, IMO.
The particular discovery that is the core of this, is to do this transform. That doesn't imply that (a) doing that is simple (b) getting to the point where you can do the trick doesn't build on decades worth of science.
And, just out of curiosity, what's the alternative to simplification? "It's fast. There's no way you'd be able to grasp why. kthxbye."
The trick is to oversimplify.
I find this an appropriate, consumer-oriented summary right at the start of the article - you cannot expect the BBC News to dive too deeply into the matter and especially not during the first 2 paragraphs.
Also, consider they did add that touch you were missing at the end:
"Think of all the tremendous progress in silicon photonics," he said. "Nobody could have imagined 10 years ago that nowadays it would be so common to integrate relatively complicated optical circuits on to a silicon chip."
And since the scientist they interviewed was German, you should also factor in certain translation issues like a German scientist explaining Fourier transformation and splitting of light beams to a British news reporter.