Frozen Light is the Wave of the Future

Firstly, there's a joke in that headline if you look all hard and geeky enough.

Secondly, NASA froze light, and I'm not joking.

The speed of light is approximately 186,000 miles per second (670 million miles per hour). Some substances, like water and diamonds, can slow light to a limited extent. More drastic techniques are needed to dramatically reduce the speed of light. Hau's team accomplished "light magic" by laser-cooling a cigar-shaped cloud of sodium atoms to one- billionth of a degree above absolute zero, the point where scientists believe no further cooling can occur. Using a powerful electromagnet, the researchers suspended the cloud in an ultra-high vacuum chamber, until it formed a frigid, swamp-like goop of atoms.

When they shot a light pulse into the cloud, it bogged down, slowed dramatically, eventually stopped, and turned off. The scientists later revived the light pulse and restored its normal speed by shooting an additional laser beam into the cloud.

How amazingly cool is that? Just stop for a second and consider that they "turned (light) off."

I have no idea what the practical applications of this knowledge will be, I have no vision for what this means for the future, but the little kid in me still goes gaga over science stories like this one. Stories like this just remind us that the seemingly impossible is not, necessarily, impossible.

Read the story.

Posted by zombyboy at May 23, 2003 12:00 AM | TrackBack