As computers get faster and faster, researchers are looking to use tiny lasers to send data and fit them onto a computer chip. Janelle Shane of the University of California, San Diego’s Electrical and Computer Engineering department, describes just how tiny these lasers need to be.

"We want to make lasers that are about 100 times thinner than the diameter of a single human hair, so these lasers need to be microscopic to fit in well, size-wise, among all the other microscopic components on a chip."

One of the issues working on this in the lab is that these particles are basically a hundred times smaller than your typical dust particle.

"In every breath of air that we take, there is about a million particles of dust. And so if you can imagine you are trying to build something that is that small where there’s all these giant things floating around in the room. And so if one of these blimps lands on your chemistry experiment, your experiment is ruined."

Thankfully, Shane and her colleagues work in a clean room that filters out most of the dust.

"So, that is a huge improvement!"