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Fucking amazing. What a time we in which we live! Now, what are we gonna do with this? Waking Times. Full article:
In two independent experiments that defy the notions of Einstein, researchers have been able to stop, then restart a beam of light.
Ordinarily, light travels at the speed of 186,282 miles per second, but the research team of Lene Hau, a professor of physics at Harvard, who in 1999 was able to slow light down to 38 miles per hour, has been able to trap light in a cloud of sodium atoms super-cooled to near ‘absolute zero.’
“It’s nifty to look into the chamber and see a clump of ultracold atoms floating there,” Hau says. “In this odd state, light takes on a more human dimension; you can almost touch it.”
In an independent experiment, an easier approache was tried by the team of Ronald Walsworth and Mikhail Lukin at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).
They shot laser beams through a dense cloud of rubidium and helium gas. (Rubidium, in its solid or natural form, is a soft, silver-white metal.) The light bounced from atom to atom, gradually slowing down until it stopped. No supervacuum or ultra-cold was needed. In fact, the chamber where the light stopped was at a temperature of 176 degrees F.
Both experiments accomplish almost the same thing, however, in the CfA experiment researchers were only able to store about half of the incoming light, and the storage time was about half that of Hau’s experiment.
Think of both contraptions as sophisticated light switches that control not just light but information. Incoming light can carry information expressed by changes or modulations of its frequency, amplitude, and phase. When the light stops, that information is stored just like information is stored in the electronic memory of a computer. To access the information, you turn on a control laser, and out it comes.
Remarkably, scientists are somewhat uncertain about the implications and practicality of this research.
“We hope for wonderful things,” says David Phillips, who worked on the CfA “stop light” project. “Our imagination hasn’t figured out what the possibilities are yet.”
However, there appear to be clear implications for using experiments like this to ultimately improve the speed of computers, potentially creating the possibility to shift from binary computing to quantum encoding of data.
Computers operating by these so-called quantum effects are much more efficient that those available today, or even on the drawing board. (“Quantum” refers to changes in the energy levels of the atoms.) Today’s machines represent information in bits, electronic combinations of zeros and ones. Bits represented by quantum states of atoms could carry much, much more information. Cubic inch for cubic inch, quantum computers could tackle problems that would stymie the most super of conventional computers. For example, they could perform many calculations simultaneously.
The eminent physicist Albert Einstein theorized that it was impossible for light to travel at a speed faster than 186,282 miles per second, and in this case he has not yet been proven wrong.
Einstein never said anything about slowing light down, now did he?
The more we learn, the less we "know." Evidently, it's all relative! From the Daily Mail. Excerpts:
The laws of physics may not be as set in stone as previously imagined.
One of the laws of nature seems to vary depending on where in the universe you are, research suggests.
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The 'constancy' of physics is one of the most cherished principles in science - but the scientists say that the 'laws' we know may be the galactic equivalent of 'local by-laws' and things may work quite differently elsewhere.
The discovery - if true - violates one of the underlying principles of Einstein's theory of General Relativity, and has profound implications for our understanding of space and time.
The findings could mean that the universe is far bigger than we thought - possibly even infinite.
It also means that in other parts of the universe, the laws of physics might be hostile to life - whereas in our small part of it, they seem fine-tuned to supporting it.
And:
The researchers looked at 300 distant galaxies. The experiment found that the atoms in space behaved differently from ones on earth.
'The results astonished us,' said Professor Webb. 'In one direction - from our location in the Universe - alpha gets gradually weaker, yet in the opposite direction it gets gradually stronger.'
'The discovery, if confirmed, has profound implications for our understanding of space and time and violates one of the fundamental principles underlying Einstein's General Relativity theory,' Dr King added.
This is Big News. It is now apparent that our entire institutional cosmological perspective is much, much narrower than previously thought. Astonishingly so. By making this great leap forward, we must also understand that, as much as we think we know, we don't know shit. It is imperative that as many people possible globally keep their minds open, as wide as they can, beginning now. Everything everywhere is changing, rapidly, Science and Spirit included. Adapt, and prepare for a vast expansion of your, and our, consciousness.
From NASA Science News Excerpts:
Einstein was right again. There is a space-time vortex around Earth, and its shape precisely matches the predictions of Einstein's theory of gravity.
Researchers confirmed these points at a press conference today at NASA headquarters where they announced the long-awaited results of Gravity Probe B (GP-B).
"The space-time around Earth appears to be distorted just as general relativity predicts," says Stanford University physicist Francis Everitt, principal investigator of the Gravity Probe B mission.
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Time and space, according to Einstein's theories of relativity, are woven together, forming a four-dimensional fabric called "space-time." The mass of Earth dimples this fabric, much like a heavy person sitting in the middle of a trampoline. Gravity, says Einstein, is simply the motion of objects following the curvaceous lines of the dimple.
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The idea behind the experiment is simple:
Put a spinning gyroscope into orbit around the Earth, with the spin axis pointed toward some distant star as a fixed reference point. Free from external forces, the gyroscope's axis should continue pointing at the star--forever. But if space is twisted, the direction of the gyroscope's axis should drift over time. By noting this change in direction relative to the star, the twists of space-time could be measured.
The only thing you really need to know..
For readers who are not experts in relativity: Geodetic precession is the amount of wobble caused by the static mass of the Earth (the dimple in spacetime) and the frame dragging effect is the amount of wobble caused by the spin of the Earth (the twist in spacetime). Both values are in precise accord with Einstein's predictions.
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The results of Gravity Probe B give physicists renewed confidence that the strange predictions of Einstein's theory are indeed correct, and that these predictions may be applied elsewhere. The type of spacetime vortex that exists around Earth is duplicated and magnified elsewhere in the cosmos--around massive neutron stars, black holes, and active galactic nuclei.
I have so many questions, but I really don't know the language of physics well enough to ask them. But I'm still excited, though..
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