Frozen Light... Slowing the speed of light to a halt!

In Cambridge, Mass they have done experiments with slowing the speed of light. Their goal was to drastically slow down light. After years of experiments they actualy brought pulses of light to a complete halt within tiny gas clouds cooled to near absolute zero.

Slowing and freezing light opens up new possibilities for optical communications and data storage and for quantum-information processing (ie quantum computers)
The freezing light system essentially converts between motionless forms of quantum info and photoms flying around at the usual speed of light.

Science has evolved to a state that most common folk have no clue what anything means anymore. It is so advanced that the common joe would have no clue what the heck the purpose of freezing light would be.

Science is a double edged sword... it can be used for the good of mankind... but as we've seen throughout history it can also be used to stab each other in the back.

The sad thing is we usually see a boom in technology after war... this is another kick in humanitys teeth.

Will science lead us to our own extinction.. or will we be able to unify with the goodness of it and each other?



Peace,
Omega

I was thinking...if you could somehow projectively freeze light...you could, in effect, create a force field vs. lasers...

I'll wager though, on science being more of a help, than a tool of destruction....

Originally posted by Gazrok
I was thinking...if you could somehow projectively freeze light...you could, in effect, create a force field vs. lasers...

I'll wager though, on science being more of a help, than a tool of destruction....

hehe the govt has already used their mind controlling laser beams on me thats why I now wear my tinfoil hat

for more info on stopping light check out these sites


www.afrlhorizons.com...
moreinfo

Originally posted by Gazrok
I was thinking...if you could somehow projectively freeze light...you could, in effect, create a force field vs. lasers...

I'll wager though, on science being more of a help, than a tool of destruction....

what they do is bring the air to near "absolute zero" and that is how they slow it down.

There is a lot more to it then the tempature. Deep space is pretty cold, yet light continues to flow through it at full speed.

I heard that in a labrotory in the states, under extreme temps.. they slowed a beam of light down to 35 mph...

So in theory, if you were on one side of this supercooled cloud(assuming they can do this on a larger scale and you can see through it), watching something on the other side, would you see it in slow motion or even frozen?

You want to bring light to a halt, shine it at a wall.

Anyways, yeah, there is more to it than just temperature. They put the light through gas clouds. Light slows down as it passes through certain things, eg. refracts when you shine it through water.

very interesting thread
good info

If you could use a beam of absolute zero cooled gas and projected it out much like a laser, it would dissipate at a point, this point may be variable. Focus your light into this beam of super cooled gas and effectively, you may be able to create a light saber of focused radiant energy compounded by its inability to move through the gas. It would be like scrunching up photons until they were hard as concrete, yet hot enough to tear through anything. Any light beyond the focused beam of cold gas would be less powerful. how cool... (har har)

*EDIT:now that I actually thought about what I just said it doesnt make sense. How could you have a focused beam of absolute zero temp gas yet have it be hot enough to cut through anything? nevermind... I'm a sorry excuse for a physicist.

*EDIT #2, If you could use a super cooled nobel gas it would make the lightsaber turn different colors depending on what gas it was.

[Edited on 18-11-2003 by insite]

[Edited on 18-11-2003 by insite]

Not to step on your feet but this is not something new... I read about this over 2 years ago. And while the possibilities that it opens up, it is not logical to even consider due to the enviroment that is needed to work. The power consumption would be enourmous to keep anything near absolute 0. Also, as everyone else has said here, there is more to is than this. They have also proved that in the right condition, they used a pulse laser and shot it through a vaccum with some rare gas and found that light had speed up 35 times its normal speed, in fact they said that the light almost exited the vaccum before it entered... But Nice thread anyways

this stopping light might help ppl discard the linear time theory fun fun fun

Actually, I think that light is another deminsion of time. Think about it, when you freeze frame a picture, everything stops, EXCEPT the lighting. the light stays there and keeps lighting the same way. I thought of this theory while I was researching light.

If you were to stop light either

A: It would appear to freeze time because the light would not get to you're eyes.

Or B: Where the light is stopped would look black because the light would not get to you're eyes.

If they sent the light back out into the "wild', how did the light accelerate back to it's original speed? wouldn't it have needed a boost or maybe it has it's own energy source

Originally posted by DarkHelmet
If they sent the light back out into the "wild', how did the light accelerate back to it's original speed? wouldn't it have needed a boost or maybe it has it's own energy source

a fine point. i supposed the very nature of light allows it to keep goin. technically, since light has no mass, a random fluctuation in energy wud give it an infinite acceleration, puttin it back at c.
and yeah, outsidethemilkglass light technically is time. since its the fastest thing out there, its the fastest u can find out about something, making it the benchmark for time. light travels an infinite distance in no time, so it doesnt travel anywhere.
i love astronomical physics.

Ah yes... but haven't I heard somewhere that they made some kind of "waves'' go faster than light for a split second? If so... then light doesn't travel at infinity... But yeah... i see what yer saying... And I also... I wonder what light looks like frozen??problably jus bright I guess?

i dunno. but technically, things go faster than light easily, if theyre not part of the universe. relativity only applys for things inside of the universe. inside is hard to define, it really means things that are part of it.
the good part is that since space is expanding, things are alwasy going faster than the speed of light. the distance between two points is always the same, even after space expands, making them technicalyl farther apart. light takes longer to travel there, so its moving faster than light. PLUS, if it leaves point A, travels to point B, the space has expanded, but the light 'thinks' it has gone the same distance, so from its view it has gone faster than the speed of light.

Originally posted by DarkHelmet
And I also... I wonder what light looks like frozen??problably jus bright I guess?

probably not much, u cudnt see the light coming off it.

William One Sac started and posted a while back
with much of this discussion

www.abovetopsecret.com...

/\/ight\/\/ing