Fiber-optic cables move data really fast. But there's a bottleneck: At the end of a fiber, the light pulse must be converted into electricity before it can talk to the rest of the world. Sandia National Labs scientists Jim Fleming and Shawn Lin realized that if they could tame light - get it to bend around tight corners as nimbly as an electrical current - they could lay the tracks for all-optical networks.
In January, Lin and Fleming unveiled this 6-inch wafer, the photonic equivalent of a semiconductor. So what? Just as solid-state circuitry displaced vacuum tubes, optical chips may someday render the Pentium obsolete.
ELECTRIC WORD
Guiding Light
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Scrabble Rouser
Hollywood Shakers
Flight Delay
