Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Harvard Physicists Make Light Dance

Posted by kdawson on from the not-so-fast dept.

tetrikphimvin and others clued us to the latest work by Harvard's Lene Vestergaard Hau, being published today in the journal Nature. The NYTimes has a good layman's overview of how Hau's team encoded a light beam in a clump of atoms and later reconstituted it elsewhere. The Harvard Gazette offers additional details, a photo, and video links.

2 of 109 comments (clear)

  1. One Bad Movie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Harvard Physicists Make Light Dance

    Then they slowly loaded their six shooters while chewing on a half burnt cigar and made it dance again. They then told light to leave town or it would be pushing up roses. The Harvard townspeople danced joyously and there was much rejoicing.
    Dir sir, I heavily enjoyed your rendition of The Good, The Bad & The Global Warming I hope you make it into a movie, at least we would win in the end in the Hollywood version.
  2. Re:So, if you walk next to stopped light... by et764 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    The use of "IANAP (I am not a physicist)" increases the redundancy, which is useful for error checking and correction. Suppose there was a glitch in transmission, and you received just "IANAW." You'd have no idea what it was or even that there was an error, so you might assume the poster meant "I am not a wombat." If the poster omitted the acronym and there were a transmission error you might receive "I am not a Shysicist," and you'd have no way of knowing there was a transmission error. However, if you received "IANAP (I an not a shysicist)," there was clearly a transmission error, though there isn't quite enough information to correct the error yet.