Nano antenna concentrates light

[tytower]

**broken link removed**

What advances might this bring?
New video camera/camera/microscope magnifying properties?
New Space telescopes ?
Could this be going on naturally and affecting what we see in space ?


The mind boggles !

 

[Sceadwian]

Microscopic laser battles! woohoo =)
Who knows, only the guys that made the thing probably have a good idea of it's possible applications, I can't think of any off the top of my head. Making quantum effects work on a macro scale is not easy, the basic fabrication of that single example probably cost large amounts of resources, turning that into a real product that can be manufactured is a tooooooootally different situation.

 

[cr0sh]

I can think of one immediate application (well, assuming that they can manufacture a commercial device): longer distance fiber-optic links with lower power lasers. Right now, fiber optic links over long distances (ocean floor) require repeaters which are incorporated into the cable and powered via a power source supplied by wires in the cable. Decreasing the number of repeaters (or eliminating them entirely) would likely have numerous benefits (greater bandwidth? more channels? lower costs, etc)...

 

[Sceadwian]

Sounds like a good application to me cr0sh but that'll take them a while to develop, what they have right now is a single lense, so they can focus to a point what you're talking about would require multiple lenses to concentrate and refocus the beam back into a collimated source.