He stopped light in midair!

[Coldkilla]

Lene Vestergaard Hau can stop a pulse of light in midflight, start it up again at 0.13 miles per hour, and then make it appear in a completely different location. "It's like a little magic trick," says Hau, a Harvard physicist. "Of course, in all magic tricks there's a secret." And her secret is a 0.1-mm lump of atoms called a Bose-Einstein condensate, cooled nearly to absolute zero (-459.67 degrees Fahrenheit) in a steel container with tiny windows. Normally ? well, in a vacuum ? light goes 186,282 miles per second. But things are different inside a BEC, a strange place where millions of atoms move ? barely ? in quantum lockstep.

About a decade ago, Hau started playing with BECs ? for a physicist, that means shooting lasers at them. She blew up a few. Eventually, she found that lasers of the right wavelengths could tune the optical properties of a BEC, giving Hau an almost supernatural command over any other light shined into it. Her first trick was slowing a pulse of light to a crawl ? 15 mph as it traveled through the BEC. Since then, Hau has completely frozen a pulse and then released it. And recently she shot a pulse into one BEC and stopped it ? turning the BEC into a hologram, a sort of matter version of the pulse. Then she transferred that matter waveform into an entirely different BEC nearby ? which emitted the original light pulse. That's just freaky. Hey, Einstein may have set that initial speed limit of light, but he only theorized about BECs. "It's not breaking relativity," Hau says. "But I'm sure he would have been rather surprised."

http://www.wired.com/science/d...ine/15-11/st_alphageek

Too bad it wasn't as easy as flipping a switch and seeing a hologram, but hey! That's pretty cool.

 

[Jeff7]

Neat. BEC's always seem to turn up fun surprises.

 

[Boo Boo]

its She not he

 

[Coldkilla]

Ouch, burn! Wired screwed that closing statement up!

 

[JohnCU]

wow, that's f'n awesome.

/goes off to read about BECs.

 

[Fritzo]

WTF- Does this person shop at "The 70's R Us"?

Cool though- next step is a working light saber

 

[AnonymouseUser]

Originally posted by: Boo Boo
its She not he

Originally posted by: Coldkilla
Ouch, burn! Wired screwed that closing statement up!

Hey, Einstein may have set that initial speed limit of light, but he only theorized about BECs. "It's not breaking relativity," Hau says. "But I'm sure he would have been rather surprised."

Originally posted by: Coldkilla
He stopped light in midair!

 

[911paramedic]

I stop light with a switch on the wall, been doing it for years.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: AnonymouseUser

Originally posted by: Boo Boo
its She not he

Originally posted by: Coldkilla
Ouch, burn! Wired screwed that closing statement up!

Hey, Einstein may have set that initial speed limit of light, but he only theorized about BECs. "It's not breaking relativity," Hau says. "But I'm sure he would have been rather surprised."

Originally posted by: Coldkilla
He stopped light in midair!

Lene Vestergaard Hau was the physicist who "stopped light in midair," and this person is female.

 

[OdiN]

Well..that sucked. Videos but they don't actually show it.

Shens.

 

[Winchester]

Originally posted by: 911paramedic
I stop light with a switch on the wall, been doing it for years.

 

[Mrvile]

Haha why is there so much confusion about the gender of the physicist? Learn to read folks.

 

[imported_Baloo]

Originally posted by: Coldkilla
Ouch, burn! Wired screwed that closing statement up!

Uh, not sure what you mean, but Einstein was a he, so, makes sense to me.

 

[Coldkilla]

Woops, confusion of gender was just my confusion!

 

[NanoStuff]

Originally posted by: 911paramedic
I stop light with a switch on the wall, been doing it for years.

Cute, but no you don't.

 

[waggy]

Originally posted by: NanoStuff

Originally posted by: 911paramedic
I stop light with a switch on the wall, been doing it for years.

Cute, but no you don't.

sure he does. i do it myself. hell my 1.5 yr old does! he flips the switch and the light stops!

 

[SlickSnake]

Originally posted by: Mrvile
Haha why is there so much confusion about the gender of the physicist? Learn to read folks.

Take a long look at that picture at the physicist. Then take another look. Look at the large hands. Look at the fact he...I mean SHE? is wearing a turtle neck to cover up the adams apple, which is usually obvious in males. The overall facial features screams male. Look at the broad shoulders, too. Either it's drag, postop or preop. I think the author or Hau had it right when he got it mixed up. Maybe Hau knew her as a he. :roll:

And interesting post. I have this bookmarked. I read this on some other site a while ago.

Here's in interesting tidbit about light, and how it can also react like a particle, or matter.

Light consists of wave-packets in neighboring E-Strings. On it's way toward it's target, a wave-packet will follow the geometry of these neighboring E-Strings. This description of light embodies duality, i.e. light possessing properties of a mass-bearing particle as well as a wave packet.

 

[marvdmartian]

Originally posted by: 911paramedic
I stop light with a switch on the wall, been doing it for years.

You only stop it? So the room remains lit, with no new light coming out of the fixture?? Shoot, my light switches suck that light right back up into the lightbulbs!! :laugh:

 

[Coldkilla]

Lmao WTF is with the confusion of gender? Here's the last sentence in the article that even mentions the word 'he':

Hey, Einstein may have set that initial speed limit of light, but he only theorized about BECs. "It's not breaking relativity," Hau says. "But I'm sure he would have been rather surprised."

She's referring to Einstein. Derr

 

[SKORPI0]

Hau Lab

Pic

Ultraslow Light & Bose-Einstein Condensates: Two-way Control with Coherent Light & Atom Fields Hau Publications

Light speed reduction to 17 metres per second in an ultracold atomic gas