Scientists stop light for record-breaking one minute
Scientists have managed to stop the fastest thing in the universe for one record-breaking minute - light.
To halt light, which travels at roughly 299,791km/h, researchers from the University of Darmstadt in Germany fired a series of lasers into a crystal.
They then halted one of the beams, creating a magnetic field and trapping the light inside the crystal for an entire minute.
Thomas Krauss, Head of the School of Physics and Astronomy at the university, said "one minute is extremely, extremely long".
"This is indeed a major milestone."
To put the breakthrough in context, physicists managed to slow light to 17m-per-second in 1999 before halting it for a fraction of a second in 2001.
Earlier this year, scientists managed to hold light still for 16 seconds.
It is thought that the feat will eventually lead to secure quantum communications working over long distances.
The scientists' findings were published in the Physical Review Letters journal on July 15.
What I find really exciting about this is the use of the evolutionary algorithm (an optimization algorithm inspired by biological evolution, which uses mechanisms such as mutation, recombination, and selection. This Darwin'ian approach to problem solving is amazing in itself. The early work of Turing and the chaos theory researchers are leading into ever more useful models for understanding how nature is self-organsing over time. It's use in applied physics research like this is inspiring new approaches to problem solving.
What I find really exciting about this is the use of the evolutionary algorithm (an optimization algorithm inspired by biological evolution, which uses mechanisms such as mutation, recombination, and selection. This Darwin'ian approach to problem solving is amazing in itself. The early work of Turing and the chaos theory researchers are leading into ever more useful models for understanding how nature is self-organsing over time. It's use in applied physics research like this is inspiring new approaches to problem solving.
If c is a constant, what does this experiment mean.?? Have they actually slowed it down, or just made it go round and round in a very small space?
Edit
Ahh...ok just read the summary. The light is 'stored' as atomic spin states, then reconverted to light by switching the beam back on. Not sure if you can really call this stopping light...?
Ahh...ok just read the summary. The light is 'stored' as atomic spin states, then reconverted to light by switching the beam back on. Not sure if you can really call this stopping light...?
Yep, saying they stopped light is probably a bit of a fudge.
If you think that is impressive consider this: my employer can stop time.
If you remember PAL television (what we had before digital) we had a device called a delay line which delayed the electronic signal for 64 microseconds and then mixed it with the un-delayed signal. This is an application of stopping an electromagnetic radiation for a short time.
Now if they can just speed light up or find a nice reliable wormhole somewhere I'll be able to zap to the other side of the universe and see what's really out there...
Isn't it time and speed of light are related? if we travel at speed of light time also slowed down infinitely? Those laser beams therefor stayed within the magnetic field for an extremely long period of time, yet we see it as one-minute. I just dont get it
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