Explain Like I'm Five
Simplifying Complexity, One Answer at a Time!
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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".
Ok I understood the morse code part but you lost me after that.
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?
There's no storage in light.
Think about when you talk. The sound comes out, shoots through the air, goes in someone's ear, and then they interpret and remember what you said.
The light is your voice. It is transmitting data, but if there's nobody around to hear it, the data is lost.
The light has to hit a receiver, which translates it into usable data and then saves it to a storage device.
mm I like this, you made it sound so simple!
Thanks! I'm a simple person who is interested in complex things, so I think I've gotten pretty good at these kinds of analogies.
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.
Using light to communicate has a pretty long history, you just blink lights in a pattern, same as electric signals just without a wire, I mean you can use a "wire" to make light go further (optical fiber), you send zeros and ones by turning the laser on and off, that's all, optical audio connections came to the market in 1983, the undersea internet cable are optical etc, you can blink a flashlight in Morse code and it's a light based communication, swap flashlight with a laser and you have "an information in a laser beam", that's all, you want to send more info faster just blink faster
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.
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.
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.
In other words, it’s effectively Morse Code via light instead of radio or telegraph.
you can pulse it or encode it changing color. this is nothing new.