For the past 60+ years, we lived in a world that incorrectly interpreted a statement from Albert Einstein, who allegedly claimed that nothing can move faster than the speed of light. Just like Moore’s Law, people tend to "bend" its meaning until it has no meaning at all.
Scientist John Singleton created an interesting device that accelerates the radio waves until they pass the speed of light. Yes, you’ve read that correctly – by using a process that is similar to the way Pulsar stars emit light – John jerked radio waves until they caved in and passed their theoretical speed barrier.
With radio waves traveling faster than the speed of light, near real-time communication as seen in Star Trek is possible [traveling in Star Trek style is another thing], but more importantly, this has serious implications in the world of telecommunications and the design of computer chips.
For ages now, semiconductor industry thought that once that conventional ways of communication are used, a move to optical interconnects will be mandatory. Back in 2006, Intel demonstrated its own SOI [Silicon-On-Insulator] wafers that used the optical laser interconnect. As you might know, the latency inside computer chips increased due to the fact that electrons lost the ability to travel at the speed of light, hence the SRAM latencies of 1-4 cycles, up from the latency of 0 in Pentium 4 and original Athlon processors. If accelerated radio waves could be used, semiconductor industry just might enter a whole new era of speed.
Singleton stated that usages for his device are enormous: "Because nobody’s really thought about things that travel faster than light before, this is a wide-open technological field". This discovery could revolutionize medical, communication, semiconductor, space exploration fields.
Who knows, last day of June 2009 might be hailed in scientific books in decades to come. From attacking cancer to complete change in way how astronomers search the universe above – accelerated radio waves just might be the silver bullet we needed.
Somehow, there is no doubt who just positioned himself as the prime candidate for Nobel’s prize for Physics.
