[Newspoetry] science news

[Joe Futrelle]

They stopped light.  Well
I'll be damned.  Dead in its
tracks, you understand.  Not
exactly like slamming the brake
on your car, more like trapping
a bug in a marmalade jar.
Unscrew the lid and the bug
flies back out, like light in
these studies I'm talking about.

They halted the light with rubidium
gas, and a beam from a laser through
which it will pass, and shrink and
grow dim and then finally stop,
imprinting its spin (not the spin of
a top) on the atoms that linger about
on the scene, so it stops
(even I don't know quite what that means)

As if that's not bizarre enough,
there's more than one scheme to
frustrate the process of this sort of
beam.  You can set your refigerator
down real low (that's if it'll go to
absolute zero) and shine what amounts
to a flashlight into it.  Voila!  That's
the alternate method to do it.

Once you've stopped light in this way,
it's a snap to restart it, just put on
your laser's lens cap.  Or fling open the
fridge and stand clear of the door.
The question remains, so what is this all for?

Just what is the use of this awesome
invention?  A phone that connects to the
fourteenth dimension?  Or cool tinted windows
and laser gun shooters?  No, say the geeks,
it's for quantuum computers.

Which just means we're left to the very same
fates as before: "Let there be light!" quoth
our lord Bill Gates.

--
Joe Futrelle
editor-upon-chief
Newspoetry dot calm