The transistor ushered the modern world of gadgets that we all
love, and now optical transistors could help to bring us to the
proper next generation of the internet. Researchers at the Max
Planck Institute of Quantum Optics have demonstrated successful
electromagnetically induced transparency, or EIT, which is
effectively a way of enabling one beam of light to control
another. In their experiments, researchers used a rubidium atom
to indicate state, blocking a beam of light in one direction
but, when a laser hit it at a perpendicular angle, turning it
transparent to allow the first beam through. The idea is that
this could serve as a sort of optical gate for quantum computers
; the building block of a next-gen internet for next-gen
devices. There's reason for excitement about the potential here,
but researchers have a long, long way to go before anything like
this is ready for reality, so don't give up those handlinks just
yet.