In many ways, science is a story of happy accidents. From the (possibly apocryphal) story of Isaac Newton<\/a> and the apple to the discovery of penicillin<\/a> centuries later, accidents<\/a> can lead humanity in some truly wondrous directions. Now a team of scientists from Columbia University are adding a new fortunate fluke to the list. This one may not rewrite our understanding of gravity<\/a> or usher in a new era of medicine<\/a>, but it could be a huge boon for another world changing technology: artificial intelligence<\/a>. <\/p>\n In the study, published earlier this month in the journal Nature Photonics<\/a>, scientists detail how exploring ways to improve Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR)<\/a> accidentally led to the discovery of a chip-sized<\/a> frequency comb, a special kind of light where color bands are lined up next to each other and bright frequencies appear as spikes on spectrogram\u2014sort of like teeth on a comb. <\/p>\n \u201cThe technology we\u2019ve developed takes a very powerful laser and turns it into dozens of clean, high-power channels on a chip,\u201d Andres Gil-Molina, a former postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University and the study\u2019s lead author, said in a press statement<\/a>. \u201cThat means you can replace racks of individual lasers with one compact device, cutting cost, saving space, and opening the door to much faster, more energy-efficient systems.\u201d<\/p>\n Related Story<\/p>\n
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