Physics
The minuscule fluctuations of seemingly empty space can be controlled just enough to make the building blocks of a new type of computer
By Karmela Padavic-Callaghan
The experimental setup passes light through lenses, mirrors and a crystal
Charles Roques-Carmes, Yannick Salamin
Empty space is not actually empty – it is filled with tiny flickers of quantum fields. Boosting those flickers with very weak laser light can turn the apparent nothingness into a building block for a new kind of light-based computer.
“Suppose you had a completely empty, dark box and then you put an electric field detector inside the box. If you averaged all its measurements you would get zero, but each individual measurement would be a little more or a …
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