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ly5: The universe is made of two kinds of particles, Bosons and Fermions. Light is a boson. Most of the stuff we touch is made of Fermions. Electricity is fe
by seanc 2y ago
ly5:
The universe is made of two kinds of particles, Bosons and Fermions. Light is a boson. Most of the stuff we touch is made of Fermions. Electricity is fermions also.
Bosons, like light, don't like to interact with things. They just want to go places, as fast as they possibly can. So if you want a particle to carry information from point A to point B, light is great. Point it in the right direction and off it goes, and it won't interact with anything unless it absolutely as to.
Fermions, like electrons, love bumping into each other and changing each other. They like to make atoms and collide and bounce off each other all the time. So if you want to build a switch or a microchip where lots of things connect to each other to do some big complicated task like computing lots of math then electrons work really well.
But if you try to get photons to dance together to do something complicated you'll have a hard time. They only interact with each other and the stuff around them when things are just right, and then only in limited ways.
And if you try to use electrons to move data over any kind of distance that's hard too. They're constantly stopping to chat with atoms they find along the way, turning the energy of your message into heat.
How's that?
- macilacilove 2y agoThere are bosons that carry charges and/or mass like the weak bosons and the gluons. There is nothing in principle about bosons that would make them incapable of building logic gates out of them. Some advanced civilization (future us) may use them. Even photons interact with each other a little bit due to QED.
- seanc 2y agoFor sure, you can if you want to. And if you pull it off there are some advantages, which the article describes. It's just harder.
- watt 2y agoI wonder if it's just harder for us, now. It used to be hard for humans to make fire: nowadays you have match stick or lighter technology to make fire just like that. I wonder if we as humanity will be able to build the technological harness around light just as well.
- tedajax 2y agoThere's also composite bosons like cooper pairs which are just made up of two electrons.
- FrustratedMonky 2y agoThat is nice. But then why do fiber optic cables work? The data does need to be turned into photons, and back from photons into electrons at some point. So all of that has switching and has been done for a long time. Guess maybe lot of people like me are wondering why the technology for fiber optic cables can't be scaled down further to be used on chips.
- JoeAltmaier 2y agoLatency? Takes time to make photons from electrons and vice versa. Folks try to step around this with light-driven gates. Lots to learn! Plenty out there!
- tempodox 2y agoThat's a fantastic explanation. +1.