A modified standard model works for me
Of course it does. That's like saying that digital electronics theory works for you, no need to bother with analog electronics theory.
True, yet digital is nonetheless based on analog.
I'm by no means the biggest advocate of string theory, but obviously it is intended (regardless of its current incompleteness) to be a deeper level of description of the universe than is the standard model.
Even if string theory (or loop quantum gravity or spin foams) eventually succeeds at being a good theory of everything, it is quite possible, even likely, that it will continue to be more practical for most purposes to work in terms of a modified standard model.
We still make heavy use of Newtonian physics, after all.
But that doesn't mean that a theory of everything is pointless; its purpose is not identical to that of simplified working models.
So I'm curious, what do you get on today's systems that makes it worthwhile to pay $200 for a sound card?
I had the feeling it was no longer for wavetable, nor for number of bits of d-to-a conversion. Is it 7.1 surround, or what?
That means that it's likely that my karma will never change to speak of (since I'm not planning to ruin it with a career of trolling), so it's questionable what "karma whoring" even means, under those circumstances.
I was just peeved at the incorrect claims endlessly repeated, so I made multiple corrections rather than just one.
I did get modded down for redundancy, understandably, and that seems the more apt term. FWIW.
On the subject of noise, there are very strong theoretical reasons (e.g. Shannon's theorem) to think that noise in a channel in the same mode as the information modulation is an absolute limit to the rate of data transmission in that channel using that mode of modulation
The bolded caveats are important. Noise present only in one channel doesn't affect information transmission in a different channel (e.g. one channel using radio, a second using optical). Approximately white noise in the amplitude domain has limited impact on frequency domain modulation (to a first loose approximation), which is why phase locked loops manage the apparent magic of being able to track FM signals below the noise floor.
Little is known about sources of noise in this new OAM channel. Certainly nature must produce *some* noise there (due to various fundamental principles), but it is likely IMHO to decrease with increasing OAM energy (see the history of physics topic "ultraviolet catastrophe" to see why). But we have much to learn; we shall see.
As to single photon RF systems and exotic technology, well, we're certainly talking about a very exotic technology here, so I wouldn't worry about exotic-ness.
Finally, as to photon counting versus group ensemble production/detection in other regards, that's something interesting to ponder. I have a dozen half-baked thoughts on the subject, but mostly they are about various kinds of tradeoffs and circumstances, rather than about a rule of thumb concerning maximizing data rate. Instead of trying to to verbalize all that, I'll just say that I don't know.
Apparently, so is the art of RTFA. And reading even the other comments.
Usually I and others will just make a correction once, and shrug off repetition of nonsense (although I must admit a lot of it was unusually erudite nonsense), but I got peeved this time.
It's been a pet topic, ever since I heard a little tidbit about it years ago I've been waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it finally did (a bit, anyway), but what I thought was some of the coolest news of the century was swamped by noise. Argh!
Well, you're contradicting them. Look at the left side of the page; there's an animation of polarized light.
Look at the right side of the page; there's an animation of light with orbital angular momentum.
Look at the text in between the right and the left, explaining how polarization is different than OAM, and that what they are doing is the latter, not the former.
Now pretend they're lying, is that your plan? Their page is unambiguous, so I don't know what you think you'll accomplish by stubbornly misinterpreting it.
I agree that Shannon steps in with random noise; no one said differently.
This new technology allows further data transmission on top of that, for a total of *more* than 1 megabit per second (how much more isn't clear yet, since there's no obvious cap on the orbital angular momentum).
If it were what you and the OP are claiming, then the absolute limit would still be 1 mbps.
This isn't some sort of disproof of Shannon/Nyquist, of course; it's just the appearance of a new channel in addition to the previously known channels, so presumably it, too, will follow the traditional theorems (although I personally don't know the correct way to *apply* them to this new domain).
It won't take but a second for you to stop guessing that it's about polarization once you see their clear explanation that it's different.
They're using physics that wasn't even discovered until 1992.
This is about modulating the orbital angular momentum of photons, a property that wasn't even discovered until 1992.
Each photon can have an integer quantity of orbital angular momentum (0, 1, 2, 3...) without obvious limit (or in the opposite direction, -1, -2, -3...). In principle, and increasingly in experiment, it is possible to encode information by modulating the orbital angular momentum carried. This provides and entirely separate channel with its own bandwidth in addition to traditionally understood modulation. They're right to be excited about it; it has the potential of being just as big in scope as was the invention of radio.
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