In the current faced-paced world, researchers and scientists alike are breaking their backs every day to come up with new innovations that will make the world a better place. Airplanes are known to create a shockwave that produce a sharp “boom” sound when they start to move faster than the speed of sound.
Now, researchers at MIT and other parts of the world have discovered that passing an electric current in a sheet of graphene creates the same shockwave, but this has to be done under controlled circumstances. First, it is important to note that graphene is a two dimensional form of carbon. The only difference between the two scenarios is that, in this case, the latter creates a focused beam of light.
This discovery has revealed that it is possible to convert normal electricity into visible radiation that is efficient, fast, and controllable. The new findings also brought to the surface a completely new and intriguing observation that is worth digging deeper into. The researchers have discovered that when light rays hit the sheet of graphene, it is possible to slow it down by a factor of more than one hundred.
By slowing down the rays, the reduced speed of photons as the rays move through the graphene layers is almost equal to that of electrons moving through the same material. The researchers believe that the special characteristics of graphene, such as the ability to trap light and its ability to allow electrons to move through its layers at high speeds are some direct causes of this effect.
However, its ability to allow electrons to flow very fast through the layers and slowing down light rays show that graphene not only has the ability to trap light but also produce light. With more experiments and creation of advanced equipment, we may be able to generate light in a new advanced and sophisticated way.