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Scientists Create New "Lightsaber-Like" Form of Matter
First time accepted submitter loftarasa writes "A group of scientists led by Harvard Professor of Physics Mikhail Lukin and MIT Professor of Physics Vladan Vuletic have developed a form of matter by binding massless photons together in a special kind of medium to create 'photonic molecules', effectively bringing us a bit closer to a world with lightsabers. 'The discovery, Lukin said, runs contrary to decades of accepted wisdom about the nature of light. Photons have long been described as massless particles which don't interact with each other – shine two laser beams at each other, he said, and they simply pass through one another. "Photonic molecules," however, behave less like traditional lasers and more like something you might find in science fiction – the light saber.' The work is described in Nature (paywalled)."
Street justice can get pretty rough.
Oh yeah.
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
What a doof! everyone knows Steven Spielberg created Firefly, not Star Wars.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
As the photons enter the cloud of cold atoms, Lukin said, its energy excites atoms along its path, causing the photon to slow dramatically. As the photon moves through the cloud, that energy is handed off from atom to atom, and eventually exits the cloud with the photon.
These are not photons in free space being described. These are photons which have excited electron orbitals in some material.
I've also heard that black holes are so massive that the force of gravity does not let anything escape including light.
So, if photons have no mass, how do black holes keep the photons from escaping?
Good thing that lightsaber quote isn't getting out of hand.
Science is cool enough without ridiculous hyperbole.
That is all.
....... the number of accidental amputees is going to skyrocket.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Oh, come on! It was created by Gene Roddenberry!
rewriting history since 2109
That's right...'accidental'.
So I'm reading this, and they do the whole lightsaber thing- they explain this opens the possibility of -crystals made of light-
They have completely missed the cultural reference. Clearly this needs a Tolkien reference. This is Feanor's Silmaril. Why can't they see the obvious?
Oh, and new form of matter made of energy- there's that too. That didn't even make the title.
Seriously though, howto simerils.
_B
Everyone knows photons were meant to be shot out of phasers, not for dueling with lasers.
Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.
They can take my LifeAlert pendant when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.
These are not the photons you are looking for.....
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
While everyone misses the science. Sad state of affairs of the so called 'geek'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Use the force Harry!
-Gandalf
Most people, I would expect, would not intentionall dismember themselves.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
From what I can tell, they are simply creating a system of quantum-mechanically entangled photons, not a "molecule" of photons...
Apparently trick is that they created a medium (a laser cooled "gas" of rubidium atoms), and excited it with photons from a laser at a frequency that created a condition for the formation of a Rydberg state in the gas. This state is basically kind-of a pseudo-atom (i.e., a group of atoms that behave somewhat like a "scaled-up" atom). The gas made up of the pseudo-atom has a different apparent index of refraction than the unexcited medium looks to the first photon but it can effectively keep a second photon nearby the first photon in a type of quantum entanglement
This is what is described as a photon "molecule". Of course the energy levels required to create a similar Rydberg state in air (at room-temperature) would be slightly different orders of magnitude because you are pumping in enough energy into the air so that hyper-energized pseudo-molecules of air are resisting your opponent's light sabre... Not so sure you want to be actually holding a device that does that ;^)
The journalist could not say their finding will cure cancer or obesity in several decades, therefore they sold it as a potential path to lightsabers!
We would probably not accept such bold tactics from politicians, why do we accept it from scientific journalists?
Lucky Rimmer!
OH, I'm willing to stipulate that *most* people wouldn't *intentionally* dismember themselves but consider the following:
1) a surprising number of people actually commit suicide by decapitating themselves with a chainsaw.
2) think of how many martial art wannabes buy or make their own nunchaku, proceed to flail themselves in the ribs, face and/or groin and then post video proof of their stupidity on youtube. That same demographic would do the same with lightsabers. (assuming they survived to post anyway)
3) Think of Jackass and the like where youths dare each other to do incredibly stupid shit like VOLUNTEER TO HAVE THEIR BALLS WHACKED WITH A GOLF CLUB! That same group would be trying to light a cigarette in their buddies mouth with a lightsaber, you can count on it.
4) If lightsabers were real, a fair number of people would carry one for self defense, you just know it. Some amateur waving one around to fend off a mugging, rape or gang related curb stomping is gonna lop parts off of *somebody* and it won't always be the intended target.
All in all, there would be a shitload of "I swear! I didn't mean to do that, it was a total accident bro!" dismemberments and deaths....
If it wasn't his nickname before.....
Remember kids: What's right isn't as important as what's profitable.
Mickey Mouse has more to do with Star Wars than George Lucas.
Please stop it.
Everyone knows that Star Wars started off as a cooperative writing project between Robert Heinlein and Issac Asimov, that it was then taken over by David Eddings and Neil Gaimen halfway through Emprire Strikes Back, and then all four cooperated on the Return of the Jedi!
The prequel trilogy were all written by J.K. Rowling and Judy Bloom.
The Force has a strong influence on weakly bound electrons.
sow awesome!
This is more like holodeck matter from Star Trek or hard light holograms from Red Dwarf rather than a lightsaber.
*It's not what you can do for the Dark Side but what the Dark Side can do for you!*
Use the force, Lukin!
No, that was Star Search with Ed McMahon
rewriting history since 2109
You're a very classical kind of idiot. If you regularly encountered black holes, or were the size of a quark, or traveled at relativistic speeds, you would not think anything unusual about the physics of these things. If this stuff were simple we wouldn't need the smartest guys on the planet working it out, we could just call you up.
Sorry Captain Hubris but the pencil necks win this one.
Just goes to show how little we really know about physics and laws of nature in reality... Now they make light behave unexpectedly.. Personally i welcome weapon of more civilized times into our reality. All we need now is to learn to understand the force...
<handwave>You don't need a coherent article summary.</handwave>
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Ugh... Judy is SUCH a bitch. This one time, at Band Camp... Nevermind.
That sinking feeling deep in your gut when you KNOW you screwed up bad summed up with: {head desk} {head desk}
I'm sure the math works, but what it describes is not explainable in human language. All of us outside of physics can see that the descriptive theory has no clothes.
Is math not a human language and form of description? If it works, as in it has predictive power and can't be simplified any further, how is an emperor with no clothes situation?
But LightSabre only Jedi handle can..and of course..the Siths..
http://xkcd.com/895/
Without Jedi skills, carrying a light-saber is just a good way to get shot.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
amateurs .. in central europe we are way ahead of you!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiTE3tfe7qM
Sounds like future holodeck technology or at least 'print' lightstructures in a 3d-printer? :)
If lightsabers were real, a fair number of people would carry one for self defense...
...I'm just picturing George Zimmerman with a light saber.
"Hey You! Kid!! What the hell are you doing around here!!!!" [bwazzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZ - bzzzzWAAAaaaa - bzZZZZWAAAaaa]
Correct, although I should point out that they're photons propagating through a medium, not photons being absorbed and re-emitted as one might assume. It's interesting that they're so strongly coupled to the rubidium.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
want this don't you Lukin. Take your jedi weapon - strike me down with all your hatred - and your passage to the darkside will be completed.
Everyone knows that Star Wars started off as a cooperative writing project between Robert Heinlein and Issac Asimov
Do you also love the part of the movie where Hari Seldon uses psychohistory to predict where the engineers would have put the most vulnerable spot, and then personally blows up the Death Star with a proton torpedo?
Ezekiel 23:20
This is happening in a non-linear medium where photons interact: it can't happen in free air. Photons hardly interact on most transparent media, but there are materials with non-linear electric properties that can be used to generate harmonics ( see for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-harmonic_generation ). This is used to convert red light into green in some green laser light pointers. At high power levels, the refractive index increases in more normal materials, which is a nuisance in high-power lasers as light in NdYg glass laser elements can self-focus and damaage the apparatus if the power gets too great.
Hardly "contrary to decades of accepted wisdom about the nature of light" if you can find it in a green laser pointer. Meh.
In a sense. They excite the individual rubidium atoms and then get re-emitted in a form identical to the original at the quantum level.
Calling it a form of matter is a bit of a stretch as is imagining that an advanced form of it could ever be lightsaber like. Unless all saber fights will take place in a rarefied environment consisting of super cold rubidium.
It would have actually made perfect sense if Obi-Wan had said "fly, you fools!" to our heroes on the ramp of the Millenium Falcon. It flies, see?
Ezekiel 23:20
What a terrible article summary.
Light is not self interacting at the tree level. This means there is no scattering of light in the classical sense, only through virtual particles (quantum loop corrections). Did this group of experimenters prove otherwise? No.
This is the most clear statement from TFA
"It's a photonic interaction that's mediated by the atomic interaction," Lukin said. "That makes these two photons behave like a molecule, and when they exit the medium they're much more likely to do so together than as single photons."
http://phys.org/news/2013-09-scientists-never-before-seen.html
What the experiment did do was place another particle in the theory, the electron, with which the light may interact. So the light continuously scattering off of electrons keeps the two light beams spatially near each other. This is not new physics. The sun does the same thing. How long does it take a photon to escape from the sun? Typically a few million years.
What is significant about this experiment is the level of control the experimenters have over the scattering proximity of the light. Unlike the sun, whereby a very large volume is effectively trapping the light, this is a tabletop experiment.
A proper summary would be that a breakthrough in experimental techniques allowed for controlling photon scattering to a higher degree than before achieved.
This is actually a very exciting discovery.
Pretty ineffective. They kept hitting that guy and he still wouldn't stay down.
Let's see.... Luke is a Jedi who can make a light saber. The scientist's name is 'Lukin'... Hmmmm Coincidence?
Did you read the whole article? One photon will be re-emitted in identical form to the original, but two photons will likely be re-emitted as a single, molecule-like unit.
No, it said two photons will be released together. Two photons flying in formation is hardly the same as a bound molecule.
Well that explains why Ep. V went downhill after the Battle of Hoth. Come to think of it, it completely explains the land side of the Battle of Endor.
I was going to reply with a "citation needed" to this one but, on second thought, if this is true then I really don't need to know.
Happy people make bad consumers.
He can't! My tricorder says Neo is in the way!
- Tyrion
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
No, it said
they were surprised to see them exit together, as a single molecule. ... these two photons behave like a molecule
Perhaps you could e-mail the scientists and tell them that they're wrong, that what they've observed is simply "two photons flying in formation".
I keep seeing this headline about scientists creating matter. Matter/energy is not created or destroyed.
With no binding force, it is not a molecule once it leaves the cloud (which mediated the binding). Since I seriously doubt they would bury a lead like 'new force of nature discovered' or 'photons interact through nuclear force', I can only conclude that you are taking the analogy far more literally than they intended.
WITHIN the rubidium cloud, they act as a molecule whose binding is mediated by rubidium atoms. That is not uninteresting, but is not the same thing at all.
"an elegant weapon for a more civilized age" (vs. a chainsaw)
Because: It cauterizes the amputations. (And we never dwell on how much energy would be required for instant cauterization of such wounds and how much damage that thermal energy would inflict.... above and beyond the systemic shock)
I think Dumbledore says that.
The news was that once they exited the cloud they still acted like they were bound together.
by what?
"Researchers began by pumped rubidium atoms into a vacuum chamber,"
PUMPING... wtf is wrong with the world when the best of the best don't proofread their shit? Are we really doomed to be a half-assed society?