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Light Stopped, Held And Re-emitted By A Crystal
nherc writes: "An article in Nature talks about an incredible new crystal that can actual stop and hold light to be later emitted. It's mentioned light has previously been "slowed" by super cooled gases, but this certainly blows that away. They mention this could be a major step towards quantum computing."
Uerm.. correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't glow-in-the-dark stuff "stop and hold light to be later emitted"?
This is old news - I saw this in Scientific American awhile ago. Shoulda said it then... --pi
optical ram that is a crystal matrix that actually holds the image and energy?
comment directly in my journal
No, really, I know light speed changes. c is just for light in a vacuum... This is really neat stuff, and I hope this becomes a leap forward in understanding quantum mechanics.
Click here or here.
Fucntioned by super cooling a special gas in a chamber, and then shining a specialized laser (yeah, I don't know the specifics) through the gas, opening a pathway through it.
Light was then shined through this pathway, then the laser was cut, "trapping" the light in the gas. What actually happened was that this left an "imprint" in the cooled gas, and when the laser was beamed through the gas again, the imprint of light activated and the beam of light continued.
There was a serious issue with degradation though. The longer the light was trapped in the gas, the poorer the quality the beam of light was when it was reanimated.
Seems like this new method has improved immensely upon that weakness.
Those 2002 Earthlings may be able to beam you in any day now ;o) .
Stopped? How do you measure the speed of light to verify it has stopped? The only way I know of measuring speed is to measure distance over time... Stopped would imply zero distance, or infinite time... Can someone please pull me out of the dark ages, what am I missing?
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
This is very old news.
Microsoft products can bring the fastest processors Man has created to their proverbial knees-- slowing and stopping light is something they're more than qualified to do.
oh, gee, crystals filled with light, neat-o. let me know when you actually get your hands on some news.
feanor@mandos.org
god is just pretend.
How will BEOWULF CLUSTERS benefit from this?!?!?
a "light capacitor"? Does Radio Shack carry these? I want to build a flashlight that doesn't use electricity.
No, a candle won't do. Smart ass.
Reed the article. This is not the same story as last year. They stopped light in a *room temperature* *solid*. The story from a year ago was about a super cooled vapor. This is way cooler.
Solid stops light
Doesen't sound quite so amazing...
Geez Louise! Get with the program!
Is this basically what the crystal Galadriel gives to Frodo does? Stores light, until it's needed in his "darkest hour?" If it is, it means that those damn elves are still decades ahead of us in technology! We must find them, take their tech, and destroy them!
Colin Winters
...who thinks Galadriel is hot...
Thanks for the clarification -- being a non-physics major, I didn't really differentiate between the two.
is that they've not only stopped light, but made it go backwards, reversing time, so this 'discovery' got projected into the future, where we're reading about it now as if it were new, altho it's been done some time ago.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
will be the first quantum CPU? Does AMD have something in the works in this department?
I was always taught that the speed of light was a constant 186,000 miles per second, and that the Theory of Relativity stated nothing could go faster than the speed of light. Does this mean that now that the light in that crystal has a velocity of 0 that my little Honda Civic violates the theory of relativity, or does this mean that somehow the distance between one side of the crystal and the other has become infinite, and remains so until something causes it to become a small finite distance again?
If it's the former, we definitely need to reevaluate our present concepts of Space and Time. If it's the later, how long do you think it will be until we learn how to do the reverse?
I guess this has turned into a few questions, so I'll add another. Have we developed any substances where light seems to speed up while passing through them?
When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.
At last, we can get some light into that thing. I was getting really tired of The Dark Crystal
:-)
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
...or does the picture at the start of the article make everyone else think of "Missile Command"?
TheFrood
If you say "I'll probably get modded down for this..." then I will mod you down.
helps to explain how they're achieving this with a graphic representation. Still a little technical for me, but it kinda makes sense.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
"a crystal of yttrium silicate containing a few atoms of the element praseodymium"
They need a catchy marketing name... Something like DyLithium Crystals.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
....is of course "Schroedinger's Hammer", but I probably spelled his name wrong.
Infuriate left and right
What a beowulf cluster of these things could do!
You mean, i could eventually store a whole bunch of them high-energy photons in a tiny crystal and, at will, release it all? Blast.
No wonder military people are doing research on this...
I thought this story sounded familiar. Stop, Light?
Can the crystal stop and prevent Jon Katz from
submitting article to Slashdot: News From Katz,
Stuff That Doesn't Matter?
Thanks in advance.
Sounds like "slow glass" to me . . . .
It is very dark in here. You might get eaten by a Grue.
(NT)
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
It was in a short story I read a while back, I believe by Bob Shaw. My memory about it is pretty vague, but from what I remember "slow glass" somehow slowed light down to a crawl, holding a slowly-changing image for years and years. Is this something like that?
***
a step towards cartrage-based laser guns.
Which would explain a lot in some of those future sci-fi films I've seen.
The article does not say that they actually stopped the light beam, which is impossible on the grounds of relativity theory.
The trick is that they can give an idefinite halt to the photon reemission.
As light beam passes through any material the photons get absorbed by atoms they hit on their way. In normal circumstances the atoms immeditely reemit the photons in order to get back to previous, lower energy state.
The success of the experiment is that it demonstrates the technology to give an indefinite delay to forementioned reemission.
Or, at least, that's what textbooks on quantom mechanics I've got say :D
To quote Groundskeeper Willy: "I a-doon't git it."
They 'shackle' the light pulse to an atom so that it can be released later, and all it's "energy is transferred to the electron."?
I thought that could only be done by: causing an electron to jump to a higher orbital (thus higher energy), or adding another electron through ionization.
So can they boost an atom to a higher orbital without filling the lower orbitals? Like bumping an S-1 up to a P-2 or something? Maybe you compare what the energy level is as opposed to what it should be (e.g. three orbitals above normal) and that represents the data (plus spin, too?)
Gee, it's fun to speculate when ZERO DETAILS are given in the article.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Could this be used to create more efficient solar panels? The photons are converted directly into energy, "stored" in the atoms. Rather than re-release the photons as light, would it be possible to capture that energy and convert it into something more useful?
My understanding of optics is rather lacking... something is nagging at the back of my mind telling me that this wouldn't work...
-- Minds are like parachutes... they work best when open.
I call my light storage device a "battery", and my light emitting device a "laser pointer". And I shall hold the world ransom for 1 million dollars.
Anything that brings us closer to proving Dark Sucker Theory is okay in my book.
± 29 dB
after the light stops, can you remove the laser? if you can, then this would be a huge step into opticle storage.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
You could use this (while providing the medium with additional energy or cooling it down) to change the wavelength of the photons while they are absorbed and re-emitted within the matter.
Think of it as some kind of "modifying receiver". Forwards streams of photons while being able to re-set the information transported in the stream by changing the frequency.
You could overwrite (or: for the first time write to them, think of an empty ATM fixed-size packet stream where you can inject-by-overwrite data in) data which would make it possible to manipulate (write-only) data in a photon stream without any active elements at the injector or breaking/transforming the stream.
What about you CIA people? Any further ideas to modify/sniff sub-ocean cables?
42. Easy. What is 32 + 8 + 2?
The light is converted to another representation than light inside the crystal, so technically, the light is not being halted. Rather, it is being converted to another form, and then later converted back to light again.
Specifically, "stopping light" has nothing to do with it, though that is what the media in my country keeps calling it.
Bjarke Roune
I wonder if it is the same crystals found in Wint-O-Green Lifesavers? They emit light when you bite them.
'Same speed C but faster'
Only average lightspeed changes. The speed of light (photons - same speed as all massless particles) is always c (about 300kk in m/s). However, the light can be delayed. When a photon hits an atom, it usually transfers its energy to an electron, which jumps to a higher orbital. The electron then nearly instantly drops down to its old orbital and gives off the energy in the form of (guess what) a photon. A constant rate of interception and expulsion by atoms can cause the average speed of the light to be slowed, but the photon is always moving at c. The crystal/laser combination mentioned in the article just keeps the energy from the light a LOT longer than the picoseconds it spends in electrons normally
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Wasn't there a series of science fictions stories about "Slow Glass" - glass which can hold light for years before emitting it? I love when nature imitates art.
I'm the stranger...posting to
- An electronic delay generator that simply buffers packets;
- Fiber loops.
Fiber loops are better (they introduce no jitter), but more expensive and cumbersome. Maybe in a few years you'll be able to get a short strip of fiber that'll generate tens of milliseconds of delay.I wonder whether there's any signal degradation in the light that passes through the crystal.
-- Stanislav Shalunov
Bring it on Vader!
[figz@figz figz]$ kill -9 `ps -ef | awk '$1=="figz" { print $2 }'`
I wonder if you could use a similar technology for making 3-d displays?
Vietnam aside, I really don't like the chances of any army against one with significantly superior technology - and the US army is heavily trained to rely on the superiority of its tech.
Futhermore, the peaceniks would have a field day with this - I doubt the Elf War would be very popular on the home front. It would take a really strong president to overcome this...
Vote Sauron in 2004!
(This post was a paid message from the Committe to Elect Sauron, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to America's future as the stronghold of the Dark Lord.)
I'm the stranger...posting to
See my other post: They know that since the light is always travelling at c, that if it takes longer than c*(distance) time increments to get to the other side, it was stopped (in different places along the way) for a grand total of (measured time) - (expected time) time increments.
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Well sure, they used praseodymium. It isn't so impressive once you realize that. Anyone could do it if that had some praseodymium.
You guys don't get this, do you? It is not a "light capacitor" or a new twist on "glowies". What has been done here is to use subatomic particles to store information about coherent light signals.
/. geeks remember stirrings that show up from time to time in cyberspace regarding holographic 3D memory. The premise is that, using holographic media, it is theoretically possible to store massive (a terabye in 10 sq. cm) amounts of data in an extraordinarily small space without electron lag which is a problem in high-speed microelectronics.
Perhaps some of the enlightened
In optoelectronic computing systems and quantum computing systems the ability to store photons and photon signals is tantamount to the realization of full scale optoectronic (and quantum-based) computing.
I digress. This is awesome and I am very enthusiastic. Once again, it doesn't stop light, bend time, slow light, warp space or anything else like it. And it doesn't glow in the dark. It's like a single-channel holographic buffer and it is absolutely wonderful!
Vortan out
Knowledge is like ignorance.. too much can be just as bad as not enough.
I'm guessing if it were heavier, the difference would be far too small to measure?
Does anyone remember Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country where Captie Kirk and Doc McCoy are on the surface of the ice planet after they break out of prison? Their little campfire was one of those cute little "Snap-N-Warm" thingies. They broke a 'plastic' stick and the light started coming out and kept the people warm... Way to go Gene and thanks for showing us the way! Rest in Peace friend...
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
A lot of people have been saying that light only goes at c in a vacuum. This isn't quite right.
Light goes always at c, period. When it goes through a solid, a better metaphor is that it has to slalom around the atoms in the solid. Of course due to QM it's really more like that Charles Addams cartoon with a ski track leading up to a tree, splitting around, and continuing on. At this point, classical approximations stop making sense, and you have to start talking about amplitudes. You can get the Feynman New Zealand videotapes here. It's an excellent but basic and easily understandable introduction to quantum electrodynamics.
In any event, this doesn't seem to be the same mechanism (unless the amplitudes get stuck as if the photon were going in a loop). It appears to be a similar mechanism, as pointed out elsewhere, to glow-in-the-dark paint. Terribly exciting, but not foundation-shattering, unfortunately. It would be a lot of fun if it were.
Another minor wrinkle is that c is very slightly faster than the speed of light in a vacuum, because a vacuum isn't quite empty. Particles come into the vacuum and immediately annihilated each other all the time. You can theoretically get rid of these by putting a vacuum between two plates so close together that these virtual particles can't form.
It has been done, but not with anything in the "gas" state as is commonly understood. The light-freezing trick was done, IIRC, with a Bose-Einstein condensate. This much-ballyhooed creation is made from a bit of ultracold sodium gas, but it isn't in the same physical state as a gas any more than superfluid helium is.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
From a technical point of view, it never seemed naturally impossible to me to delay photons. For a long time now, it has been possible to send photons to atoms, have them "suck them in", changing into a higher energy level, jumping back into a lower energy level and re-emit a photon.
This takes time. A "microscopic" amount of time, but it takes time. The atom re-emits because it gets some instability from the new, higher, unbalanced energy level. This is also not a fixed amount of time. Just when the "situation collapses", the atom emits energy again in form of a photon.
Having appropriate matter, it should be possible to extend this "photon lag" by some quite high amount, maybe 10x or even 100x the time it would take in household kitchen matter. Just find/create atoms that can handle the additional load longer without collapsing.
42. Easy. What is 32 + 8 + 2?
The real application I see here is in the field of optical computing.
We already know how to build optical "wires", optical "amplifiers", and optical "gates". What we haven't been able to do until now is build optical "memory".
This could also lead directly to fully optical routers which can "store and forward" data.
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
As they talk, the homeowner keeps looking in his house, whenever family members appear. Just stops and watches them, till they move out of view.
Turns out, he's had these special windows for years. His family died a couple years back in an accident. The glass works both ways...
Photoelectric effect of Albert Einstein is about exciting electorns so that they go out of the material (metal). There is no significant reemitting of the light in the matter.
First, A copy of the NYT article on the same subject
What I'm wondering now is if these experiments were conducted at room temperature. I'm also wondering if the laser was used in a vacuum or with air in between the laser emiter and the crystal. If so, what are the sizes of the crystals involved, and how much room is required between all the components for the phenomenon shown to work at room temperature.
If it works at room temperature, with a normal earth atmosphere, and could occur reliably on microscopic levels - this could be amazing.
:^)
Ryan Fenton
I did not find any mentioning of the emitting light in the same direction in the article (not even mentioning of the same frequency, but that may be expected).
It would be really exciting, if thit lets you preserve direction, but it seems to me that combining of the "standing still" and "preserving the direction" is next to impossible.
So what? The Elves have been doing this for ages. Just ask Galadriel.
O Elbereth! Gilthoniel!
OK, so I've been reading LOTR too much again...
Cheers,
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
If we can stop the emission of light and trap the little photons, then what is to say we can't determine their spin, hence have a good look at everyones wonderful quantum encrypted messages. Stuff a crystal of this in the fiber and start to monitor the structure of the data packets, pick out your favourite light encrypted message, pass on, then look at the trail it made.
I'm old, my brain is addled, but being able to stop light, or its immediate emission, has to have counter intelligence uses.
Okay I hate guns but here's a thought that I don't even know if it's possible:
:-)) used to burn ants with magnifying glasses.
:-(
Suppose you use one of these things to store light. You store, store, store, and then 'beam' it to a specific direction, using somekind of glass to concentrate the light power. Pretty much like when we (at least I
That would make weapons where the ammunition is the sun, or some other large light emissor device feeding it. Pretty scary thought, heh?
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
The best joke I've read on Slashdot for a long time.
(Never moderated anything as "funny")
He had a short story about 'slow glass' called 'Light of Other Days', and he expanded it into a novel called 'Other Days, Other Eyes'. His short story is at: http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/classics/classics_ archive/shaw/shaw1.html
Amazing New Material! Stores Light!!!
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1. Put Oak Light Trees (TM) in ground.
2. In most climates, do nothing for 5-100 years or more depending on how much light you need and when. In some climates, you may need to water the ground in the viscinity of the Oak Light Tree (TM).
3. Cut the base of the Oak Light Tree (TM) with a chain saw or axe, or simply have someone knock it over with a bulldozer, then cut into smaller pieces.
4. Allow to dry for 1 year.
5. Light the smaller units of the Oak Light Tree (TM) with a match or lighter until they begin to emit light on their own. Add larger and larger pieces until the light is satisfying.
Amazing!!! And not only do they provide light, but heat as well. Buy today. Only $20/piece.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
When the 'material' is beamed with the second laser, it makes the material 'liquid'-like to light, allowing the light to travel through. As the second laser is reduced in energy, the 'material' becomes more and more viscous until it totally absorbs the energy of the light that is in it (becoming 'solid' to light). It stores the light's energy AND it's wave pattern.
Cool idea.
passetspike!
In the scifi short story, Light of Other Days, the author (was it Bradburyintroduced the concept of slowglass, which people used for lighting (a 12-hour delay let sunlight be emitted at night) and for view windows. In later stories, he had the government grinding into microscopic particles slowglass of varying delays. It was then distributing it via crop-duster-like aircraft. The result was that anytime someone wanted to, they could collect some pieces of this stuff, which was as ubiquitous as dust, and use a microscope to see the delayed images. It was like an infinite universe of surveillance cameras which was impossible to avoid. Eek. I hope it never really becomes possible.
Could this technique be used to store high energy laser light, requiring large power sources not otherwise available portably to be produced, for reuse in vehicle-mounted or even handheld weapons? Such applications could lead to the pulse energy type weapons so often seen in science fiction.
So could I create a laser, fire it into this crystal, then release it later?
Thus putting the massive equipment it takes to generate that laser energy in one place, charging a crystal, put it into my blaster clip, then fire it later?
Can I store light, then later release it into a solar collector or cell? if so this has great potential to be "the perfect" battery.
As I sit here typing, I have about100 other ways this could be used. Time to fire up the ol' patent lawyer!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Were this experiment conducted in conjunction with one measuring the quantum entaglement of those particles in the medium used to "store" the light, I wonder what effect it would have on the spin of the particles on the other end?
A little simpler: a) Quantum entangle the Rb particles (or some of them) with those at a distance. Observe spin.
b) perform this experiment (the one used to "store" light).
c) Observe the spin of the remote particles.
Any change? This would further explain the effects of Quantum Entanglement because not only would the spin of those particles not included in the experiment theoretically change, but one would know it wasn't a change caused by observation alone.
"You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake."...Tyler Durden
This is incredible. I can already foresee the following uses for this technology: (1) Quantum switches and routers (no need for converting laser light to electrical impulses; i.e.: no D/A or A/D needed), (2) Quantum Holographic Security Images (show a hologram ONLY with a matching laser light), (3) awe-inspiring super-bowl displays (have the ceiling filled with these crystals before the show, and during the show excite them to release imagery), (4) Ultra large and fast storage (I can already imagine a PetaByte hard drive within this decade for a common PC), (5) a way for the military to store light on a flare which is sent over the enemy and then have all its laser light come out to view the enemy, (6) a new type of hologram which actually stores data in 3 dimensions inside a huge solid cube (as opposed to storing an image in a 2-D plate) and which would allow you to view its contents from a 360x360-degree angle (i.e.: from any view).
I think this is as revolutionary as the transistor or the laser itself.
Eyefish.
How long can they keep the light stopped without too much degradation of the signal?
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
if it is stored in the crystal, and I walk past the crystal, it is no longer traveling a c in respect to my perspective, so wht does this do to relativity?
Will the proton decay?
If light is an effect of another dimension, does the other dimension feel any effect when we stop light?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Maybe Edgar Cayce was right when he spoke of Atlantis and the use of crystals: "...Rays of various kinds were controlled, including the death ray. Fluxes of metals unknown today were used in the various types of air and water craft which were constructed by the Atlanteans. The forces used to propel these crafts were first gas and electricity, but later, forces from the sun's rays - caught and reflected by crystals."
Maybe there is some truth to what the whackos say about crystal power.
Or maybe not.
-- anthony /p>
Ooooo, I think a quantum computer would greatly nicrease the speed of my beowulf clusters, thereby allowing me to get even more framerates when plainyg my favorite Linus game, DOOM.
This is something I h ave been longing for, as my framerates have not been too good lately and the evil humans of DOOM shoot me too much. When they shoot me they say "Hey! Hey!" and it is very scary! My little face in the center of the screen, scrinches up in pain when this event happens. It is an accurate depiction of my own face, as I do not like being shot at when playing DOOM on my Linxu beowulf clusters.
e=mc2
c is now 0 for this light particle
e=m02
e=m0
e=0
if there is no e, then how do they expect it to "represent" a bit of information?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
There was also the short story (probably published in F&SF magazine?) where the local bordello went out of business, and everybody bid up the mirrors to amazing prices after hearing a rumor of 'slow glass' type image extraction from antique mirrors...
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
When I was in school I research BiRefringent materials. It was a cumbersome construction of 3D devices which would allow for light to control light switches. But I never saw it come to anything really useful since that time. That was a long time ago.
They don't go into much details of how exactly they control (switch/stop/start) this beam of light. But it does imply a static storage device would be capable.
With that, BiRefringence, and a few other goodies, we might be approaching the optical computer. Even with conventional (non-quantum) circuits we would have some impressive improvements in performance:
Of course this would kind of move along the adoption of optical fiber in everyone's home... And overclockers really wouldn't have anything to do anymore.
I wonder if this could be used as a recording device? Perhaps you could have a crystal that takes 3-d photographs or videos (store light, emit light, translate light into image.
I think, sir, that you are mistaken.
A photon emitted by an electron changing
energy levels has a random phase and orientation.
Therefore, if what you say is true, then when
a beam of light hits a vat of water, rather than
passing through and coming out the other side,
it should difuse in every direction.
*sigh* back to work...
I've worked(not played. worked. got paid.) on systems ranging from Unisys A series, NT 3.51-4/win2k, BeOS, BSD/OS2.0-3.1, solaris 2.6-2.8, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Digital Unix, AIX, and linux 2.0-2.4...
./" with a stray space (while I was a bit intoxicated), and once because of wonderful windows. It miscalculated my disk geometry and overwrote part of my linux partition. Again, thats not e2fs' fault. On the other hand, my windows system (not duel boot. just windows) failed to boot a week ago. I put the disk in a windows/linux duel boot system and neither recognized it as a windows partition.
You have no idea what you are talking about you flameing fucking troll. Out of all of them, NT/2k and solaris took the most work to get setup and running and required the MOST (2-3x) as much administration.
UFS with soft updates enabled is no more reliable in a crash than e2fs. period. I don't care what you fucking think "seems" to happen. You are wrong. Since linux 2.0, I've never lost data because of e2fs (or any file system other than windows). I've only lost data 2 times (on home computers. not business related at all), once because of a "rm -rf
Linux admins cost more than NT admins. very true. On the other hand, most linux admins actually know something about computers and don't rely on "just reboot it, and reinstall if that doesn't work" mentality.
Steep learning curve? yeah... compared to windows... if all you want to do is browse the web. Sure, windows is better for most non-business things. I tell all my relatives to get macs if they just want email/web or windows if they want games and applications. As far as a steep learning curve compared to other unix systems, your very wrong.
badly coded tools? low performance? If you only want to watch DVDs, browse the web, and game then windows is probably for you. If you want a system that needs little emergency downtime (aka crash and reinstall) then get windows. I for one have never ever ever ever gotton a kernel panic on a production system even under the heaviest of loads. Windows really is that bad. I can sometimes get my windows box to stay running for over a month before something (usually a game, which isn't window's fault most likely) crashes... but hardware vendors reliably put out bad drivers. My current windows box (installed a week ago) crashes every day, sometimes when I'm not even doing anything. What do I have running? nothing... not even so much as an open explorer window. When I booted it to linux and ran a 24 hour burn in to test out the hardware everything passed with flying colors. Let me repeat, MY CPU AND MEMORY WERE VERY NEAR 100% USEAGE FOR 24 HOURS AND LINUX DIDN'T PANIC.
Professional OS? You talking about using MS Word as professional? moron. linux isn't right for anyone. certainly. but nothing is. What is linux right for? Businesses who are willing to pay for a webserver, application server, or really ANYTHING (even desktops for grunts), and want no unexpected downtime from anything. These are corporations that are going to have really expensive hardware (redundant power, raid, etc, etc).
As far as performance goes, linux tops everything for general server purposes currently. Granted that 2.0 and 2.2 performed badly, but 2.4 is better than even BSD/OS under heavy loads WHEN PROPERLY CONFIGURED. Thats goes back to that money thing again... If your running a home webserver, then linux may not be right for you. If you want (or need) to be able to control the computer and use it to it's full extent, then linux is definately for you. 2.5 is already showing itself to be better by leaps and bounds than 2.4 is. Which is amazing in itself.
Your post is obviously a flaming troll meant to get responces from zealots. I'm not a zealot by any means, but I felt I should respond just incase you believe any of the garbage you have falling out of your mouth.
-EvilMonkeyNinja
Mild Mannered Host by Day
Wild Hammered Programmer by Night
Is it possible? Can you calculate and model such a thing?
I'm gonna whoop him good.
Security through promiscuity is no better than security through obscurity.
Score: 1, Offtopic
Get a sig like mine. Moderators either love you, or they hate you.
Now that's funny!
Zodiac Survey
Interesting idea, but I believe it may be prevented by light having zero mass.
OTOH, black holes of significant size are supposed to be able to attract light with their gravitational pull.
Any astronemers here care to explain how gravity can pull something that has no mass?
--
grep "xercist"
A light pulse that is brought to a standstill is not destroyed. The atoms 'remember' it, so the pulse can be regenerated by changing the intensity of the coupling laser to allow the atoms to re-emit photons - the particles of which light is composed.
This sounds like it came straight out of the a Star Wars technical manual! Maybe when Star Wars Ep III comes out, Lucas will be able make his billions by packaging a tiny lightsaber in every happy meal.
Once upon a time Feanor (employee) created the Silmarils, and they were pretty nice. The gods (management) took notice of Feanor's creation and said, "Hey Feanor, we've got a project for which the Silmarils would come in really handy, so would you kindly hand them over". Feanor then said, "Fuck you, I made these on my own time and if you want them then make some up for yourselves!" The gods then replied, "Were sorry,
but were afraid that were going to have to let you go for your attitude unless you come off of the Silmarils." Feanor replied, "Fine, then let me go." The gods then said, "We'll also make sure that you never work in this town again." Feanor laughed, " Good I don't want to work here anyways." The gods then left Feanor with a final admoninition, " Oh yeah, well see about that! Who will pay you more than we did for the kind of work you do here? You'll really miss the paycheck if nothing else about this job." Feanor was silent; yes he would miss the paycheck, but the Silmarils were worth it!
Actually, I noticed someone earlier [above] saying that the light somewhat went 'back in time'.
This is nothing new as it's be a theory for years that particles move back in time for a moment.
Read more here if you want more info.
It's actually a mind bender, but I haven't read the page above. Another source would be a book called "In Search of Schrodinger's Cat?". A review here.
Other than the Discovery channel crap I studied no Q. Physics. That book was an easy read for anyone who's taken algebra, and I finished it in less than a month. [not bad, I read it when I took a shit... you know]
Get your Unix fortune now!
I actually don't see how this can be applied to quantum computing, yet.
:)
This sounds almost exactly like an optical transistor, except that a transistor actually is an amplifier.
To make it more like a transistor, imagine a 2 part crystal; part A is continually primed to be discharged, laser like. Part B is the light capturing component. A 'gate' laser turns B on and off, an input laser is the signal, and the lazed output is the output.
Quantum computing and quantum mechanics deals with superposition and tunneling, to my understanding, so unless they can feed in 4 inputs, freeze the crystal, and then get one 'correct' output when they unfreeze it, I fail to see how this is quantum.
Given that I described a transistor, I can see this as being critical to an optical computer
Source = input
Gate = freezing laser
Drain = output
You can make an optical and gate this way:
Combine input A and B into one beam. If they are in phase (both true) their output signal amplitude doubles. If they are out of phase (one true, one false) their output amplitude is zero. Pass this combined signal through two crystals.
Pass a *second* 'clock' signal as well that happens to be out of phase and half the amplitude of a true signal. The first crystal fires true when the clock and input signal cancel to produce a '1'. The second crystal fires false when the clock and the input signal combine to produce a '-1'
GPL Deconstructed
That's it, buddy, waste a little more time feeding that Troll.
thinly sliced. Yum!
That's the definition of the event horizon of a black hole. Beyond the event horizon, gravity is weak enough that light can escape. Inside, light gets pulled to the singularity. But at the horizon, a photon can circle forever.
So while you could trap light using gravity, you're not getting it back.
But then again, I could be wrong.
Does anyone know what this solid matter might be composed of... and who the biggest amnufacturers of it might be :)
Have they started making automobile windshields out of it yet?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
test
so if these crystals stopp light, coudl i cover my car with these and make a clocking device?
Photons have a tiny mass due to their energy.
This is not limited to black holes. During the 1919 solar eclipse, astronomers observed that the Sun's gravity was bending the light of distant stars, thus confirming general relativity.
With black holes, the gravity is so strong that a photon's path gets bent so much that it can never escape.
But then again, I could be wrong.
Is this an old post? I thought there was something almost exactly like this where they stopped light (using 2 lasers) in a brose-einstein cloud...
It's a solar-powered flashlight. I charge it up by putting sunligt in it through a photovoltic cell, then release the light through a 5-watt bulb.
The speed of light is a limiting condition more than it is a defined speed. It's an asymptotic thing IIRC. You can't ever accelerate to the speed of light (though there are particles alleged to move faster than the speed of light, but the last time I heard that explained is that they popped into existence moving faster, so they never "broke" the barrier or limiting condition that lightspeed represents).
:)
At least, not in the fashion the Millenium Falcon would!
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
I wonder if this technology could be used to create more advanced laser weapons. How long can you stop the light and how much can you hold? If there is essentially no limit, you could store enough energy to create a very powerful weapon, and then release it as an explosion of light.
I wonder what a beowulf cluster of these is like
my pee smells like blueberries. - Kewsh on LSD
I troll too, but I'm good at it. I use facts when I troll. and I like feeding trolls. I like off-topic discussions because most topics on slashdot are boring... and I have all topics enabled. I also browse at -1. I used to read trolldot.org. Trolls are fun for me. To me, what you posted is a troll too. :)
It's not wasted time in my opinion. If someone reads what he posts (like searches off google) and takes it to heart, thats bad. There should be a voice of reason on the internet... even if it took 2 minutes out of my boring existance.
-EvilMonkeyNinja
Mild Mannered Host by Day
Wild Hammered Programmer by Night
Uerm.. correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't glow-in-the-dark stuff "stop and hold light to be later emitted"?
Glow in the dark stuff is made up of phosphors - similar material as what's in your CRT monitor. Phosphors emit visible light when excited.
The phosphors in your monitor are delicately excited by the electron gun in the back. The phosphors in glow in the dark stuff are excited en masse by normal light.
See How Stuff Works for more details.
J.J.
The MPAA announced today that it has worked with the US government to ban light research under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. A spokes person said "We are happy that we have nipped this little thing in the bud. Controlling light would allow people to create special viewing devices that could delay light at one end and allow people to watch previously 'recorded' films. We think that such a device could even be incorporated into a pair of glasses." They then went on to speculate that quantum computers could be built that were so fast, they could generate DVD decryption keys in fractions of a second, and that there were many other uses that pirates could come up with.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Ummm.... I may be wrong, but I thought that gravity was able to attract photons. It is an effect of General Relativity, not Newtonian mechanics(which requires gravitational attraction to be between objects having mass). I think this is the principle for the "gravitational lens" that astronomers use to help detect faint stars and, I guess, planets...
I'd rather be flying
Not quite up on my hard-drive-mechanics here, but this crystal would gain, if any, almost no weight. It's absorbing light -- photons or waves, whatever -- and it's all basically weightless. A HD would gain more weight, if it gains and loses electrons to represent 1's and 0's. Electrons trump photons hardcore when it comes to mass.
What ever happened to the old idea of "Computer programmers can make viruses, but choose not to". We need to quit making these people celbrities and start going back to the old hacker code of ethics.
So read the link and mod the parent up.
Signed AC because it's more fun ...
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
I once read a sci-fi story about some stuff called 'slow glass' which did something like this... it slowed down the light so the photons took about 6 months to get through the glass. The upshot was that you could have a window which looked out onto a midsummer garden in the middle of winter. I never thought they'd actually work out how to do it, though.
Heck, even if they could make it delay only a few seconds it'd make a cool effect!
Fiber optics are essentially the same thing, except they don't completely 'trap' light, allowing all your leet warez to continue flowing. But fiber optics do a pretty good job nontheless of containing light.
If you've ever seen a fiber optic lighting system, you'll kindof know what i'm talking about. The light follows through the fiber, instead of just shooting out at the bottom.
It's not really stated definitely. It says something like she went off to hide and live a tortured life, and maybe devoured herself in hunger. But it says maybe. Shelob was an offspring of Ungoliant.
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
...does this technology bring us any closer to having lightsabers? If not, then we need to shift our focus!
Hmm.. this is interesting...
Some of you may remember that uncrackable quantum encryption can be created by using a pair of photons. The problem is that the transmitter and receiver would have to be line of sight, or possibly over fiber. I wonder if two of these crystals can be used to trap the photons individually for later analysis.. Don't know if the process of entrapment within the crystal will destroy the quantum effect that makes this sort of crptography possible, IANAQP....
-fc
. echo -e \\04 >
I'm nowhere near qualified to ponder this, but...
If they could store light in a medium, in this case the yttrium silicate crystal, then one other property of light being that it is infinitely compressable, does that mean that we can use that same crystal as a battery that we could charge an infinite amount of energy into? Think laptop battary with the life of 1 year. (Or if the crystal becomes unstable at one point because of the amount of energy in it, make a bomb that releses pure energy and leaves no trace of itself?)
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
I'm sorry, I should update my .sig - wouldn't want the Committee and their Dark Master to be displeased with me, after all. Sauron is seeking the Republican nomination, so Perot's political career will be safe. Until Sauran casts him into the infernal abyss of Mount Doom, of course.
I'm the stranger...posting to
One definition of a black hole is an object with an escape velocity higher than the speed of light.
Imagine an ship traveling from cape canaveral at a million miles an our. It's path is bent by the earths gravity, but there's no way it's going to get into any orbit at that speed, it will just hurtle of into space on it's slightly bent path.
Play Command HQ online
... of the light (crystal) being used on the sorcerers stick in Lord of the rings ...
... It's not magic and it's not new!
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
The last science headline that had any science beyond the headline was around the time Neal Armstrong stepped onto a soundstage in the Nevada desert.
Anyone remember reading a short scifi story years ago in which people used something called slow glass to hold light and images?
In this story they could manufacture slow glass that would hold on to light for a specific time before it passed through.
This was used for street lighting and to capture images that would show up days, months, even years later.
In the story a police detective and a bunch of press and people were attending a party to watch the image that was going to come out of a pane of slow glass that evening.
I seem to recall that a murder had been commited in front of the pane years ago and everyone wanted to see if the right person had gotten the chair. ( or something like that)
It was a pretty good story.
Every wrong attempt discarded is a step forward - T. Edison
hasn't miss cleo used one of these for the last few years?
if memory serves, the debate about lightsabers was about being unable to control the length/stopping the laser from growing...
but the specs clearly show a crystal being used
I don't understand quantum computing, but when I heard 'stores light to be later emitted', the first thing I thought about were lasers. I mean, if you could store a lot of light, then emit it into some sort of focusing ray all at once, that'd be pretty cool.
Of course, I could be dreaming... any thoughts?
frost pist? frist prost? FP? post de firste? first post?!?!
If they've actually stopped the light, then the velocity is 0, therefore wouldn't the uncertainy in position be infinite (delta p)*(delta x) > (h-bar), so if that were true, how would you get the light to come back out the same crystal?
I'm not a physicist or anything I just have a high school physics backgrounds, and I'm just wondering.
"Knowledge makes us accountable." - Che Guevara
how fast can it be cycled?
coherent light ... quantum-based
holographic media
optoelectronic
all key points and may I add: maybe potentially very sensitive to light, and very fast.
I can imagine plates of these buffers sandwiched between layers of superconducting neural networks. Great for satellites.
then sandwich it between neural network layers and interrogate it periodically with MRI. Or just say we did.
Under normal conditions light does age because all of it's possible movement is through spatial dimensions, and hence it's not really (or just barely) moving through time.
But with this new technique, light can now begin to age. I wonder if aliens somewhere have discovered this, or if we are the first beings to ever witness light growing old....
I picked this concept up in Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe". Great book. The key to the idea that light doesn't age lies in Einstein's revelation that the speed of light is a constant, and can't be exceeded because we are *always* moving at that speed exactly! However, our motion is divided between space and time. The faster one moves through space, the slower throught time and vice versa.
I want a picture of a sunrise over a Tahitian lagoon to wake me every morning. What an alarm clock that would be. Of course the Tahitians will have to look at pieces of glass forever afterwards as they collect images for later resale.
What the porn industry could do with these genuinely stereo, turn on/turn off images is beyond the imagination.
The price could be a little out of my range. LOL.
the jewels, Silmarils, do exist. :)
As you might know from basic physics or chemistry, atoms can only absorb photons of specific wavelengths. In most solids there is sufficient flexibility that it can absorb a significant range of energies, but this still doesn't give the answer.
Light can be thought of as the propagation of transverse electric and magnetic fields (centered on the photon). As they move through a material the travelling fields cause electrons (and atoms) to vibrate in response for a short period of time. However, the material has an inertia and the acceleration of charged particles generates a counter impulse of electric and magnetic fields. The response has exactly the right characteristics to impede the motion of the light's field, but typically at much lesser amplitude. The difference in magnitude of the response explains why light is typically slowed and not stopped.
Oh, and in the case in question, they are presumably converting the energy of the photon into a vibrational excitation within the material rather than an excited electronic configuration.
At least it does as long as a photon has no mass... but even then I could imagine that if it's somehow transmutable from one form to another that it all works as well.
That's the whole point, Energy and Mass are the same thing. Mass is just the appearance to us of a whole lot of energy bundled up in one place. Our perceived distinction between the two breaks down when you start dealing with very small amounts of energy, so that when they (photons) make very slight phase changes between travelling through space and being part of a more energetic electron, our definitions of what is matter and what is energy break down. Photons are thought of as both particles and waves concurrently, and which one you use to describe it depends on the situation and what it is interacting with. Photons really are just little packets of energy. They don't have any "mass" as far as weight is concerned, but since mass and energy are the same thing, technically an atom that absorbs a photon has slightly more mass than it did before. (Think about the proposed "solar sail" space travel ship designs.) They don't have mass, but they have momentum. It is in this little gray area that we realized that our typical terminology and concepts of 'matter' and 'energy' were incomplete and slightly misleading, and led to Einstein's widely repeated but rarely explained equation: E=mc^2
(Energy released/gained) = (change in mass)*(speed of light in a vacuum squared)
The speed of light in this equation is used as a numerical constant and doesn't actually have anything to do with the distance the matter or energy is travelling.
Sometimes the best solution to morale problems is just to fire all the unhappy people.
Here's one home application for this: (from an old Sci-Fi book)
Suppose you take a sheet made of this crystal thick enough that light takes one year to pass through it.
Then, place this sheet in a place of great natural beauty - (e.g. Lake District, view of Golden Gate bridge, Grand Canyon, etc.)
Leave the sheet there for a year and then take it home, frame it and hang it on your wall.
Over the next year, you will be able to watch your chosen beauty spot (delayed by a year) as the light emerges.
Pretty cool, huh?
It's old. 'Crystal Matrix' technology has been used successfully in real military data and power applications for at least a decade. -That's 'real military' as opposed to the highschool production version of it currently unfolding in the Middle East.
From my perspective, I see one aspect of it working like this:
Get everybody addicted to data technology. --Almost done. Note the introduction of the Euro, ("Citizens: To avoid confusion, try to only use credit and debit cards. Thank you. -Yours truly, The New Europe.") and the ever-growing specter of bio-metrics. (Down at my local business supplies warehouse outlet, you can already buy thumb print readers designed to lock all but 'favored users' out of computers or whatever.)
For those of you who don't see why this is bad, consider how much fun it would be to have yourself locked out of the economy for having dissident political views. --Or for failing to pay a traffic ticket. You only get to buy bread if you heartily agree that Arabs are evil. Mm. Fun!
After we spend the next few years allowing this paradigm to settle into place, new computer systems will be introduced which EVERYBODY must upgrade to, and which industry/government will be able to design from the ground up with the objective of making it impossible to flip on your computer without the goons being able to look over your shoulder. -That 'Encrypting Hard Drives' thing from last year? A dry run in order to learn the proper P.R. population handling techniques. They won't screw it up twice, and it's the second time that will count.
Whatever. It's just an elaborate show. Nothing to be scared of. Sit back and enjoy.
As such, being a lover of geek toys, my favorite part about Crystal Matrix technology is its ability to store industrial strength power in very small batteries. --Military vehicles powered by batteries the size of cigarette packs. Neat stuff. Old, but neat.
-Fantastic Lad --"He's just making it up, right guys? He's just crazy, right? Guys. . ?"
I read a short SF story a long time ago which was about 'slow glass', which was ordinary glass except that light would take several decades to go through a piece as thick as a window pane. People made their living by 'farming' this glass; putting sheets of it on mountain slopes and other places with great views, so people could later buy these sheets and put them in their homes for a decade of looking out on a mountain vista despite living in a crowded city. Interesting things happened such as murders being witnessed that took places years before.
Does anyone remember this? I can't find the story anymore and I have no idea who wrote it or where it was published.
/Pepijn
and also, the spped of light is always c. no matter what medium it's passing through.
Stupid media keeps calling it 'slowing' or 'refractive index' or some such rubbish.
I want a full QM description of the lenses in my glasses, or I won't buy 'em!
Of course we've been using materials that simply *store* and *re-emit* light for a long time (phosphor anybody? glow in the dark?). But I think the real break through here is that these crystals not only store the amplitude of the light, they actually "store" the whole function, so that the same pulses over time can be retrieved. Would this imply a larger crystal could be used for permanent data storage? I can imagine sending one of these things out into space instead of a chiseled plate. It would seem a lot more intuitive than sending, say, a DVD or hard drive ;p
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I don't want to sound stupid, but could this be used to create some sort of camoflage or invisibility suit? Or at least blend into shadows since the light wouldn't be reflected off of the material.
Slow Glass indeed. Bob Shaw's classic Light of Other Days appeared in Analog Magazine in 1966! Such a shame that most of his stuff is out of print.
His basic premise was to make windowpanes (and perhaps mirrors? don't recall) out of the stuff, which passed light over a period of time -- days, months, even years -- and explore the implications (for example, solving mysteries and belatedly convicting criminals or exonerating those unjustly accused). He did it well.
They most certainly have mass. That's why their paths are altered by gravitational fields. The correct statement is that they have zero REST mass. It turns out that all particles increase their mass as their speeds increase, relative to whatever reference frame in which you happen to be measuring the mass. The E=mc^2 formula of special relativity gives the correspondence between a particle's mass and its energy. As the particle's speed increases, so does its mass. BTW -- the transformation is between "matter" and energy, not "mass" and energy.
Of course, I could be wrong. But I'm pretty sure the physics books will back me up.
Guns don't kill people -- people kill people.
But the guns seem to help a bit. (apologies to Eddie Izzard)
< obvious > /obvious >
I think that the property to absorb light is called opacity.
<
Anyway, how would you release the energy, the only way that I can think of would be to break it.
REAL friends don't let freinds use Microsoft