So we listen to music from an MP3 file or a CD most of the time, and watch movies on Blu-ray, DVD or head to the cinemas. How about changing the way we do the latter, through inhaling some gas? No, I am not talking about doing anything illegal here, but it seems that scientists have managed to come up with a way to stash away video in a totally new format – gas. This is the first time in history where images are stashed in a non-solid format, and can be played back afterwards. Titled “Temporally Multiplexed Storage of Images in a Gradient Echo Memory”, it is a start, but you cannot expect a modern movie to fit into a single gas canister as the technology involved is not that advanced just yet. Basically, information is stashed away in small vials of rubidium, and light is beamed into a 20cm long tube. In order to play back those memories, a magnetic field is flipped backwards, while the control beam is turned back on, enabling the atoms to begin moving in the opposite direction. This gas stores ‘quantum’ information, and once it is refined – if ever, it might prove to be a basic building block for future computers. Hopefully someone can make a more practical use of it first instead of just expounding theory…
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