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To: FatSam who wrote (1788)	2/4/2000 12:17:00 AM
From: DownSouth	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10718

I believe that you are correct, FatSam. The end result is that blue lasers can transmit data more densely, and theoretically, blue light CDs can pack more bits per inch. (So I have read, anyway.)

To: FatSam who wrote (1788)	2/4/2000 2:02:00 PM
From: John Walliker	Respond to of 10718

FatSam, Because of the shorter wavelength there are more blue light waves in any given unit of time than red light waves during the same interval - which makes the blue wavelength laser much more efficient than the commonly used red wavelength laser for reading from a CD-ROM, for example. Hopefully some of the more scientifically inclined on this thread can expand on this (or tell me if I'm all wet)! Not at all! The key is that the smallest size of spot that light can be focused down to with a lens is directly related to the wavelength. Hence blue lasers can produce smaller spot sizes on a CDROM/DVD than red or infra-red. If the wavelength is halved - by going from red to blue, the minimum spot diameter is halved and the spot area is quartered. Hence there is the potential to quadruple the amount of information that can be stored on an optical disc of any particular size. It gets even better with multilayer storage, where the optical layers could be stacked closer together, giving even greater benefits. John