Comments on: IBM slows down light signals in chips

What's the best way for light to travel from point A to point B? The long way, says Big Blue.
Image: Optical signals delayed

[john.breen]

Slowing down light???

On the surface, it sounded like IBM was doing something special by actually slowing down the speed of light. Maybe I'm out of my league here, but it doesn't sound like they've done that at all. Rather, they've just made the light travel a longer distance to "simulate" it actually traveling slower.

If I drive my car at 55 in a straight line to grandma's, then drive home at 55 but use every cloverleaf I find, of course it will take me longer.

[ralfthedog]

Slowing down light is easy,

What most people think of as the speed of light is the speed of light in a vacuum. If light is refracted though any transparent material it is slowed down. If you refract light through caesium gas light is sped up.

What IBM did is far more impressive than slowing down the speed of light.

[Marc Myers]

Technology, not Physics

This story isn't about a breakthrough in Physics (slowing down
the speed of light), it's about a breakthrough in Technology
(effectively slowing down light signals).

[mjd420nova]

It's a matter of timing

Kind of like a traveling wave tube, that can speed up a wave front, using a light waveguide it conduct data bits would allow for critical timing in buffering data and kind of like cacheing data until it is needed by another device, or the device is ready to accept it.