Incidentally, think about the ramifications of storing data on light waves that can be stopped and started at the speed of light.

Theres a tremendous amount of work building the apparatus, getting the experiment to work. But sitting there late at night in the lab, and knowing light is going at bicycle speed, and that nobody in the history of mankind has ever been here before - that is mind-boggling. Its worth everything.

Why is it that I notice so many brilliant scientists using Macs for their personal computers why does the Lawrence Livermore & Berkeley Labs buy millions of dollars worth of Macs?

Physics is about questioning, studying, probing nature. You probe, and, if youre lucky, you get strange clues.