Light stop

Discussion in 'Free Thoughts' started by sniper, Jan 12, 2022.

  1. sniper Registered Member

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    4
    hi

    Would it be possible to slow light to a stop?

    How could we do this and what would happen?
     
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  3. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    It has been done and reported on

    Briefly slowing light to a stop involved a very cold tube of something through which the light was directed

    Mr Google and Miss Chrome will be a lot more helpful with a lot more detail

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  5. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    We have to be a bit careful in interpreting those experiments, which use ultra-cold gases of atoms. The speed that is being referred to is what's called the group velocity of the light, which is different from the phase velocity. I don't think those experiments bring a single wavelength of light to a stop.
     
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  7. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    Link

    https://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/18/...ull-stop-hold-it-then-send-it-on-its-way.html

    I think this is a different article I read. Does not have the same look I recall the article I read

    Articles I read some time ago may have been by Dr. Hau who went on to stop light soon after

    Extract from this article

    Two years ago, however, Nature published Dr. Hau's description of work in which she slowed light to about 38 miles an hour in a system involving beams of light shone through a chilled sodium gas.

    You will need to read this to satisfy your query group velocity of the light, which is different from the phase velocity

    More coffee needed

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  8. sniper Registered Member

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    who is Dr. Hau?

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  9. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    A simple

    Dr Hau stop light experiment

    placed in Mr Google brings up the following

    https://sciencenordic.com/computers...moves-it-around-and-makes-it-reappear/1408618

    Extract

    In 1999 the Danish physicist Lene Hau managed to slow down the fastest thing we know: light.

    Since then she has continued her work with light at Harvard University.

    In her latest experiment, she not only stopped the light but also moved it around, manipulating it for half a minute, before she made it reappear.

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  10. RainbowSingularity Valued Senior Member

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    does a black hole stop light ?
     
  11. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    13,077
    Reminded me of a poem I wrote years ago, may even have posted it in the poem thread

    Found a torch other day
    Had a switch went two way
    Push it forward out came light
    Very shinny very bright
    Slide it back out came blackness
    Very dark very black
    Found a torch other day

    Anyway my understanding is Black Holes absorb light which fall into its gravity well and absorb the light's kinetic energy, hence no reflection

    Guess destruction of light would be considered stopped. Scientists really want to stop light to study followed by starting it again

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  12. RainbowSingularity Valued Senior Member

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    if the kinetic energy is removed, what is left of the light ?
     
  13. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    Nothing
    Light only has kinetic energy
    No mass

    https://www.uwsp.edu/cnr-ap/KEEP/nres633/Pages/Unit1/Section-B-Two-Main-Forms-of-Energy.aspx

    It is a bit of the way down but you will find this
    Light is an example of electromagnetic radiation and has no mass, so it has neither kinetic nor potential energy.

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    00:30am 14 Jan far to early for coffee
     
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  14. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    would a non-reflective sheet of black paper stop light?
     
  15. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    It would have to be truely non reflective in which case it would absorb the kinetic energy of light and heat up

    It should not be said to reflect light as heat but to have absorbed lights kinetic energy and converted said energy into heat which it radiated out as of its own

    Although that could be a difference without a distinction

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  16. RainbowSingularity Valued Senior Member

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    06:11 am 14 January
    coffee finished breakfast finished
    now thinking about the fence repair i need to do & wondering if i have forgotten something because it feels like i have.
     
  17. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    Now 3am Darwin time
    Thunder keeping me awake no rain
    May as well do something

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    If get tired enough can sleep all day tomorrow, well as long as bladder holds out

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  18. sniper Registered Member

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    hi

    i found this on light stopping:

     
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  19. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    No.

    Interestingly, what a black hole does is that it bends space so much that once light crosses the event horizon it can only travel towards the centre of the hole; outward paths are no longer possible. The energy of the light ends up manifesting as an increase in mass of the hole. From another perspective (frame of reference), light falling into a black hole never actually crosses the event horizon, so all "information" in the light remains at the surface of the hole, in some sense. We don't see light from the horizon (hence black hole) because light propagating outwards from there is red-shifted so such a degree that it would have no energy by the time it reached us (outside the hole).
    I personally wouldn't describe it as kinetic energy, though that's not unreasonable. The energy of light obeys somewhat different rules to the kinetic energy of massive particles.
    Yes, it absorbs the light and heats up a little in the process.

    There are some interesting youtube videos about the blackest available paints, which are very very black indeed. They absorb well over 99% of the incoming light.
     
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  20. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    8,476
    nasa
    Singularity Black sucks up 98.5 percent of the light that enters it.
     

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