alt Hacker News> speed of light in a fiber optic is only ~2/3rds of speed of light in a vacuum
That made me wonder: Why can't we use vacuum cables?
(the sort of questions I should probably be bothering an LLM with.. someone should make a LMGPTTFY)
Replies
pkaye • yesterday at 10:11 PM
Not vacuum but an inert gas: https://www.thefoa.org/tech/ref/fiber/Hollow-core-fiber.html
LoganDark • yesterday at 7:34 PM
> Why can't we use vacuum cables?
Hollow-core fiber is basically this!
> LMGPTTFY
"let me go prompt that for you" or "let me GPT that for you"?
If you figure out how to make cheap vacuum cables you will probably become very rich.
But otherwise chains of microwave links does get much closer to c in applications where you want absolute lowest latency (or much more commonly, when digging a fiber line is too expensive)