Light mimics hotel with limitless vacancies

Hilbert illustration of infinity inspires new twist in optical information storage

hotel vacancy sign

PLENTY OF ROOM  An imaginary hotel conceived by mathematician David Hilbert always has vacancies, even though its infinite number of rooms are all occupied. That idea of opening up more space could be used to let light carry more data.

Jeremy Brooks/Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0

A mind-bogglingly large hotel has provided inspiration for expanding the data-carrying capacity of light.