Learning with the Fang

My google alert for things related to my work at Prof Tanya Monro’s Centre of Expertise in Photonics just turned up a hitherto undiscovered little gem – a podcast by Richard Chirgwin called ‘a series of tubes’. Richard asks some very insightful questions that bring out some interesting points about ‘extreme regime’ physics, the multidisciplinary nature of the centre and ways future applications might tie back into telecommunications. The interview begins with congratulations for Tanya’s recent award.

A great listen, I’m subscribed!

p.s. Richard – if you are reading this, I tried to leave a comment on the episode and reach out to you with regard to a request from Tanya to re-use parts of your show, but alas, comments were closed. Feel free to drop a comment here if you have any issues with re-use.

Tubes #67 — Filters and Fibres … a Double Helping of Tubes

October 30th, 2008

This week’s A Series of Tubes is brought to you by Nortel.

This week we’re back with a double-header episode. We delve into science again, to talk to Tanya Monro, winner of the 2008 Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year, to talk about how to put holes in optical fibres – and why you would want to.

http://itradio.com.au/?p=209

A possibly related episode of ‘a series of tubes’ for those interested in optical signal processing as a possible solution to the upcoming power crunch that will soon put the brakes on moore’s law growth of internet router infrastructure:

A Series of Tubes #57 — The Science of a Really Fast Network

July 17th, 2008

You or I won’t need an all-optical switch at the homestead any time soon, unless you’re hiding a terabit-per-second Internet connection under the sink. Still, it’s an interesting concept: fire a photon at a cloud of electrons, and get a really fast optical switch for backbone networks. Richard Chirgwin talks to Dr Ben Eggleston of CUDOS to find out why it’s not just sci-fi.

Note:

[From an old twitter tweet -> how did I miss the looming internet energy bottleneck?- http://tinyurl.com/3pjsce 3:47 PM Oct 13th from web]

Fang – Mike Seyfang

CoEP blog.