Scientists Trap Light In Nano-Soup

An anonymous reader writes "Physicists at the Bhavnagar University in Gujarat, India have trapped light in a nano-soup concoction. The chance discovery could pave the way for lab-on-a-chip devices for processing optical information. As of now there is no theoretical explanation for why the fluid has the effects it does on laser light."

Comments

the message

[mseidl]

Peter: "Hey Brian, there is a message in my Nano-Soup, it says 'oooooooooooooooo'"

Brian: "Thats not Nano-Soup, its your Cheerios."

Re:the message

[courteaudotbiz]

My nano-soup says "101110101101011100001101011011010110110111100010111100010110101"

Re:the message

[Jumphard]

RTFA, you wouldn't be able to *see* the Soup, all the light has stopped!

Waiter

[Anonymous Coward]

Waiter, what is this light doing in my nano-soup?

It looks like the backstroke, sir.

Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week.

The photons took too long to order.

[Rob T Firefly]

Nano-soup for you!

My...

[larpon]

potato soup does the same... nothing to see here move along

FRIST SOPU!

[corifornia2]

FRIST SOPU WITH LIGH TIN I!

Better than flashlights or the Light of Elendil?

[Jumphard]

Apologize for the rotten LOTR reference, but apart from applications to electronic this could make a really could mass light storage device. "Take this crystal with you into the (forest, cave, night, basement) and flip the switch and it will turn from darkness to light!" Sounds hocus-pocus, but cool nonetheless! Then you just charge it by leaving it in light (artificial or sunlight) and you've got another use out of it.

No theoretical explanation?

[GammaKitsune]

Why do they claim that "As of now there is no theoretical explanation for why the fluid has the effects it does on laser light" when there's clearly a theory about why this happens right in TFA? Or is there some other definition used in the Scientific community for a "theoretical explanation" that I'm not aware of?

Re:No theoretical explanation?

[Daniel_Staal]

Why do they claim that "As of now there is no theoretical explanation for why the fluid has the effects it does on laser light" when there's clearly a theory about why this happens right in TFA? Or is there some other definition used in the Scientific community for a "theoretical explanation" that I'm not aware of? Yes: One where the math has been shown to work.

Currently they have ideas, but haven't proven the math. If the math can't be made to work, either the underlying theory is wrong, or something else is happening.

Re:No theoretical explanation?

[mr_mischief]

From TFA: "but the researchers believe that"

It's good to remember that "theory" and "hypothesis" are quite distinct in scientific circles. In science, a belief is not a theory. A belief is either a hypothesis that can be tested or an article of faith. Since these are research scientists and this has no clear ties to any religion I can see, I'm going to bet they'll want their hypothesis tested.

They'll want the experiment set up specifically with storage of the light in mind, since this was a surprise discovery this time. Then they'll want some way to prove, mathematically or empirically (preferably both) that the light is getting trapped consistently and how that's being done.

Then, they'll want others to repeat the experiment in other labs from their write-up and get consistent results.

Then, when scientists can use the explanation for the light getting trapped as a portion of further work and it become useful to just assume the explanation is true and move on to work based on it... then it's a theory.

Or... that's how I'd think of the words "hypothesis" and "theory" from my interested lay understanding of research science. In short, a hypothesis is an idea about something happening under certain circumstances or why something happens in those circumstances that has not been properly vetted by experiments and mathematics. A hypothesis can be right or wrong, and noone knows until it is tested. A theory is a hypothesis that has been proven reasonably correct by multiple individual teams and can be used as a basis for further work. A theory is sometimes wrong in part, like Newtonian mechanics, but should offer a good enough model to make more discoveries.

In even shorter terms, a scientist says "theoretically" only if the basis for the belief is tested and accepted. Otherwise, it's "hypothetically".

That's a bit bland...

[Hanners1979]

Let's hope they're currently developing nano-croutons.

No definitive explanation..

[explosivejared]

A rigorous theoretical explanation is yet to come, but the researchers believe that the spheres are aligned by the magnetic field and form microcavities - filled by the ferrofluid - in which the photons get trapped, resonating back and forth

I know they haven't published an explanation on this yet, but does anyone know what kind of power this sort of process takes? Power consumption would obviously be germane to computing using photons, which the article discusses. Also, what effect does the stasis have on the photon?

Re:No definitive explanation..

[orclevegam]

Yeah, and when the system crashes you've got to reboot it with a flashlight.
Seriously though, this is cool stuff, but probably at the absolute minimum 10 years from seeing mass market application.

Re:Better than flashlights or the Light of Elendil

[Daniel_Staal]

Probably not: you need to keep a magnetic field of an exact strength around it to hold the light. So you still need batteries or some such to maintain the field. (You'd want an atrificial field so you can choose the wavelengths of light to capture, and because it is easier to remove uniformly.)

There is probably also a maximum amount of energy you can store per unit volume, though I'd guess they don't have that worked out yet.

Re:Better than flashlights or the Light of Elendil

[eln]

This will do great things for the National Strategic Light Reserve, which is a vital part of our national security initiatives. Specifically, it exists to protect the nation in the event the sun burns out. Up until now, we've been storing light using a series of 100 watt bulbs and mirrors, but there has always been doubt as to what would happen to our light reserves in the event of a power outage. Perhaps this technology will help us solve that issue.

Re:Campbells releases new flavor

[somersault]

Finally - a way to eat lasershark soup without scarring your retinas!! \o/

Re:"Storing photons"

[ajdecon]

I wonder if storing photons should be actually seen as storing their energy (say, as that of an electron in an atom), rather than "storing" the photons themselves, as particles.

It's not just the energy. If I understand the article properly, and it works like other photon-storage schemes, the phase, polarization, etc. of the photons are also preserved, so that the light which is released is equivalent to the original light. It's possible there could be some frequency-changing effects, as in non-linear optics, but that's speculation.

Re:A question...

[ajdecon]

Except that according to TFA, the light hasn't actually "stopped". Instead it's been trapped in resonators, so in a crude picture it's bouncing back and forth within the fluid. The time effects observed relative to light should remain as they usually are, per relativity.

I'm on a diet...

[dwiget001]

... I'll have the light nano-soup with the eggless nanoodles.

Re:Better than flashlights or the Light of Elendil

[0xABADC0DA]

There is probably also a maximum amount of energy you can store per unit volume, though I'd guess they don't have that worked out yet. If you can input more energy than is lost over time then you could conceivable build up any amount of energy until... what happens? The iron spheres melt from heat? A hole opens in the time-space continuum and the Enterprise C comes through? What?

Some physicist please tell us what happens.

Re:Better than flashlights or the Light of Elendil

[SatanicPuppy]

In this case, the only way they're catching the light is effectively locking it up in a jar. If they open the jar to try and put more in, they lose the light they already captured.

Assuming they do find some way of adding more photons without losing what they've already got, the two options are:

1) The container fills up.
2) The container breaks.

Either way, nothing catastrophic would occur, unless they managed to contain a lot more energy. Just a flash of light. You can see from the photos in tfa, that the photons don't exhibit the same pattern that they did when the laser was firing (indicating some internal diffraction), so there wouldn't be a danger of having the equivalent of a more powerful laser shooting out in the same direction as the original beam. Then comes thermodynamics...It unlikely that they'd be able to contain energy in excess of the energy they're putting into containment (understatement), and entropy usually makes it so you have to spend a lot more energy, just to break even.

Re:Better than flashlights or the Light of Elendil

[ruiner13]

The unusual fluid, they say, works at room temperature, holds photons for far longer than other systems, and can also be tuned with a magnet to store any wavelength of visible light That is interesting. I wonder if they could extend it to trap other EM frequencies. It would make an interesting cloaking technology in my mind. Can absorb and possibly redirect radar, light, microwaves. It would seem to make decent shielding from x-rays in medical labs, who knows. I wish it said how much energy the magnetic fields took to sustain, and how many photons they can capture per area. If this turns out to be legit...