5 ms·
The speed of light in optic fiber is about 66% of c. Is it feasible to just build a hollow reflective tube/waveguide?
by iwr 16y ago
The speed of light in optic fiber is about 66% of c. Is it feasible to just build a hollow reflective tube/waveguide?
- ashika 16y agoI guess the article is optimistic in that sense. If you can engineer fiber that's 74% of c, or better yet, bore one of your mirror holes directly through the center of the earth, between nyc and shanghai, or something even crazier, you can make a lot of money.
- eru 16y agoIf you have the capability to bore a hole through the center of the earth, you would be so much more advanced than the current state of the art, that our puny earthling money wouldn't buy you anything you couldn't get in easier ways.
- iwr 16y agoI was just wondering if hair thin, hollow, reflective tubes could be made cheap enough for oceanic data cables. It would obviously be more expensive than regular fiber.
- eru 16y agoAnd the advantage wouldn't be that big. Especially compared to co-locating.
- JoachimSchipper 16y agoYou can't colocate at two stock exchanges at once, which is required to make use of the arbitrage opportunities the article talks about.
- eru 16y agoAh, ok.
- wnoise 16y agoLight slows down in waveguides too. A heuristic explanation is that as it travels down the guide, it's also bouncing off the sides, and so effectively going at an angle.
- iwr 16y agoThe maximum signal speed loss due to inclination would be sqrt(1+(1/refraction_index^2))-1, or around 20% for fiber described above. Although, in practice, the fiber would not be even close to its maximum angle. But potentially, a lower refraction index fiber with a reflective coating would allow signals to travel faster.
- seva 16y agoSee photonic band-gap fiber
- iwr 16y agoThis is interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photonic-crystal_fiber http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photonic-crystal_fiber