Remember reading an article a while back where they said they did it. Can’t find it but never really explained how it is even possible or how or why someone said look light lets put some data in itl
you can pulse it or encode it changing color. this is nothing new.
As the other comments stated, it can be as simple as turning the light on and off and we already do this with fiber optic network connections. The light particles themselves aren’t carrying the data, just the pattern of on and off.
It is also possible to send multiple streams of light using color filters. It’s called Wavelength Division Multiplexing.
That’s how fiber optic cables work now.
You can use a laser for line of sight through the air, so you don’t have to lay fiber. So ship to shore
How it is transmitted, others in this thread have said, light on is a 1 off is a zero, now just transmitting information in binary. You can go as fast as you can reliably turn it off and on, and understand the info at the other end.
The real trick is using multiple wavelengths at the same time. So your data goes at 100nm mine at 110nm and yes that is a gross oversimplification.
Digital data is just 1s and 0s.
On and off. If you turn that laser on and off you’re transmitting binary information. The receiver can interpret that. We already do that with fiber optic cable, basically. This is just removing the wire.
The simple way is like Morse code, variable gaps and lengths of emissions to convey information.
The more complex version is that plus variable intensity and variable wavelengths for a more complex “language”.
The entire internet backbone is fiber optic cables, so most data is already transferred using “beams” of light.
This is what computers do on either end of the fiber optic cables to transmit the data; except billions of times faster, using multiple “colors” (wavelengths) and similar tricks with light to stream as many 1’s & 0’s as fast as possible.
If you flip a sine wave upside down (shift it 180 degrees), it can mean “1.” If the wave stays as it is, it can mean “0.” This flipping happens really fast, creating a pattern of 1s and 0s. That’s your data.
A special receiver then measures the wave’s shifts and turns them back into the original 1s and 0s.
Instead of just flipping the wave or not, you can also shift it by smaller angles:
- No shift (0°) = 00
- Small shift (90°) = 01
- Bigger shift (180°) = 10
- Biggest shift (270°) = 11
This way, each wave can carry two bits of data instead of one, making it faster.
I may be going out on a limb but something tells me we are far off from like transmitting a whole book and storing it in light or beam?
