[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]
2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/sci/ - Science & Math

View post   
File: 5 KB, 300x229, dn23925-1_300.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5925896 No.5925896 [Reply] [Original]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23925-light-completely-stopped-for-a-recordbreaking-minute.html#.UfK1cDnZfTo

The fastest thing in the universe has come to a complete stop for a record-breaking minute. At full pelt, light would travel about 18 million kilometres in that time – that's more than 20 round trips to the moon.

To break the minute barrier, George Heinze and colleagues at the University of Darmstadt, Germany, fired a control laser at an opaque crystal, sending its atoms into a quantum superposition of two states. This made it transparent to a narrow range of frequencies. Heinze's team then halted a second beam that entered the crystal by switching off the first laser and hence the transparency.

>> No.5925901

While light normally travels at just under 300 million metres per second in a vacuum, physicists managed to slow it down to just 17 metres per second in 1999 and then halt it completely two years later, though only for a fraction of a second. Earlier this year, researchers kept it still for 16 seconds using cold atoms.

>> No.5925906

>>5925901
So light particles just hovered in the air for a whole minute?

>> No.5925921

>>5925906
No, the energy was stored in the material.

>> No.5925954

>>5925896
i hate it when they say "light is stopped/freezed/slowed"

the following event takes place every day:
>light hits a ppant
>electrons "freeze the light"
>the electrons move to a more stable configuration to freeze the light long term
>this configuration gets compressed and turned into coal
>coal gets burned
>light gets made
Nature froze light for 15 million years!

get it together humans.

>> No.5925967

What (if any) are the practical applications of this?

>> No.5925973

>>5925967
You could take material near the sun, absorb light,and use it for energy.

Then again you might as well be using a atomic reactor.

>> No.5926088

>>5925967
lest say you work at night, make a window from this that delays light by 12h, and you will have sunlight in the night and darkness in the day.

>> No.5926106

>>5926088
Don't forget lighting up the streets and buildings during the night.

What energy energy would of spent on light, could be used for air and heat.