Question about the future in Telecommunications..

[RonMaverick]

at Disney World there is a ride inside the EPCOT called "Spaceship Earth" and this ride is about Telecommunications. It tells the start and future of telecoms seemingly based all on fact.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t00RNz59jSA

since this ride is based on real facts and not sci fi what is going on at the 3:40 mark?!

It is a form of communications, based in the future though. What does it seem to be? It looks like some kind of infrared based telecom? maybe light beams? Could it be something else? Exactly how is it broadcasting? It seems t be emitting from city to city at a singe source.

Keep in mind at this point in the ride's time scale it is beyond our current use of radio, internet and satellite... even beyond the hologram.

Can anyone in the field explain to me what method of communication this appears to be dictating? What do we have noq that could likely lead to that?

 

[dragon04]

Just some dazzling FX promoting fiber optics?

I know that there's a lot of research happening right now using "slow light" for communications and computing. The idea being that slowing light down greatly enhances the efficiency of information transfer. Maybe that's what is seen in the video.

A little over my head, but pretty fascinating stuff, that Slow Light.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_light#Potential_use

 

[RonMaverick]

Thanks for that. I didn't think I'd ever get a response by it being about Disney and all. That is really interesting stuff!

 

[dragon04]

Thanks for that. I didn't think I'd ever get a response by it being about Disney and all. That is really interesting stuff!

Been to Disney, been on the ride. That's not why I answered though.... After looking at the (poor) video, the green light traveling slowly through the clear tubes in an arc reminded me of two things.

1. The water feature at the Bellagio in Vegas

2. What I'd read a couple months back about "slow light".

Its only real applications would be for communications at the near-microscopic level as opposed to the macroscopic though. While it might take much less energy and be less susceptible to interference, one wouldn't want to use it to transmit data over very long distances unless it had the Mother Of All Bandwidth.

Imagine data being transmitted on a "slow light" fiber optic cable, for instance. Roughly, it's 2400 miles between New York and LA. For data transmission you might be willing to wait 24 seconds to receive your data package. At that rate, the optical transmission would be traveling at a modest 100 miles/sec. or 360,000 mph.

Now if you're able to add multiple transmission channels (multiplexing), you can slow it down even more and take better advantage of slow light. Transmitting that same data package simultaneously (or very nearly so) over 100 channels would allow you to reduce transmit speed to 3600mph. The more channels you add, the slower your data can travel.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of applications that require essentially immediate transmission/reception of data. Especially in the case of video and voice communications in real time.

Inside the case of your computer though, where information is traveling millimeters or centimeters at the most, the applications are essentially endless.