This is the first time ever the scientists have achieved infinite speed on a microchip. The light warping technology behind this innovation could lead to new light based microchips. As the light travels at the speed of about 670 million miles per hour in a vacuum and this is theoretically fastest possible speed at which matter or energy can travel. Exceeding this speed limit leads to impossible results like time travel,according to Einstein’s theory of relativity. In order to understand this feat, imagine a pulse of light as a packet of waves.
The energy of this packet rises and falls across space, cresting somewhere in the middle. If a pulse of light encounters a material that absorbs or scatters the light, these waves makes a packet which interfere with each other driving its crest forward. This makes the speed at the packet’s crest as the velocity of the pulse faster than light. Where as in the zero index materials, light behaves as either all crests or troughs, stretched to infinite wavelengths which travels at infinite speeds.
All these faster do not make the energy in a group pulse to travel faster than light, so the theory of relativity remains unbroken. These altered pulses also get more distorted as faster they go. This clearly states impossible to send useful information at faster than light speeds. Zero index materials has some applications to controlling light just as electronic devices steer electrons around in circuits, photonic devices manipulate light. Whereas the electrons in all electronic components are generally limited to trickling at only a fraction of speed of light because electrons encounter resistance in metal wires. Photonic devices act not only faster but also be cooler in more powerful computers.
Now that the scientists have woven a zero index material onto a microchip for the first time and the researches designed a new meta material which is an artificial material which is structured to manipulate light in novel ways. This consists arrays of silicon pillars embedded in a soft plastic and clad in reflective gold film. The zero index materials can help in connecting photonic microchips to all kinds of devices such as fiber optic networks. To get light from an ordinary optical fiber onto a microchip, need to slowly move it from regular scales to micro scales.
However, the question which arises over here is that how practical the implementation of this technology would be??
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