Probably a repost but ….

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.

“One minute is extremely, extremely long,” says Thomas Krauss at the University of St Andrews, UK. “This is indeed a major milestone.”

The feat could allow secure quantum communications to work over long distances.

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.

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.

“One minute is extremely, extremely long,” says Thomas Krauss at the University of St Andrews, UK. “This is indeed a major milestone.”

The feat could allow secure quantum communications to work over long distances.

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.

More – http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23925-light-completely-stopped-for-a-recordbreaking-minute.html#.Uw6Hu_mSxnu

• Probably a repost but ….

Is that why you posted it twice in the same post?

So, what are the uses for this.
We already have light speed communication that we can stop and restart and pulse if we want.
What’s the end game with this research?

>What’s the end game with this research?

Freezing the very fabric of time itself.

Peak Warming Man said:

So, what are the uses for this.
We already have light speed communication that we can stop and restart and pulse if we want.
What’s the end game with this research?

A brain that can store information as light and hence rule the galaxy.

These kinds of ultra computer crave light as we crave water

When they get out of control you simply throw a blanket over it

Peak Warming Man said:

So, what are the uses for this.
We already have light speed communication that we can stop and restart and pulse if we want.
What’s the end game with this research?

A brain that can store information as light and hence rule the galaxy.

These kinds of ultra computer crave light as we crave water

When they get out of control you simply throw a blanket over it

Is this the double post thread?

Is this the double post thread?

> So, what are the uses for this. We already have light speed communication that we can stop and restart and pulse if we want. What’s the end game with this research?

The holy grail is an all-optical computer, one that doesn’t rely on electrons for calculation. A lot of calculations require memory and memory requires a time delay between store and recall. Stopping light allows us to remember optical impulses for in this case up to a minute without using either optical to electrical to optical conversion, or using a mechanical insert made from a million km of optical fibre.

I note that we’re getting closer and closer to “Slow glass”, the fictional material in Bob Shaw’s short story “Light of Other Days” in which the passage of light through a piece of “slow glass” is delayed for several years.

light is lazy

mollwollfumble said:

I note that we’re getting closer and closer to “Slow glass”, the fictional material in Bob Shaw’s short story “Light of Other Days” in which the passage of light through a piece of “slow glass” is delayed for several years.

‘

From my faulty memory, there was an aircraft crash or crashes because the slow glass was used on aircraft canopies, and this confused the pilots on landing, causing them to “flare” too late.

mollwollfumble said:

I note that we’re getting closer and closer to “Slow glass”, the fictional material in Bob Shaw’s short story “Light of Other Days” in which the passage of light through a piece of “slow glass” is delayed for several years.

I like that story.

One of the small group that really sticks in my mind.