Of all the thing you might choose to halt in its tracks , the world ’s immobile — light — might not be at the top your listing . clear , you do n’t have the aspiration of the team of scientists who just managed to stop it dead — for a whole second .
In a vacancy , sparkle usually travels at just under a bewildering 300 million time per second . Teams have attempted to stop it in the past tense : first they slowed it tojust 17 metres per secondment in 1999and then end it for a fraction of a secondtwo year later .
Now , though , a team from University of Darmstadt has managed to block lightness for an full second . So how ’d they do it ? Well , not easy , that ’s for sure . First , they hire an opaque watch crystal and fired lasers into it to trouble the quantum United States Department of State of the atoms within . By creating two quantum states within those corpuscle , they were able-bodied to make the originally unintelligible material transparent to a tightly delineate frequency reach of visible light .

Then , they shot another optical maser beam of the ripe frequency through that newly crystal clear region , before turn off the disturbing laser ray of light to make the material once more opaque . The consequence : a laser shaft , halted within the material . The beam was held in position for a whole minute — enough metre for it to move around 18 million kilometre , or 20 round trip to the lunation , if it had been left unimpeded .
Interestingly , they were also able to store — and then think — an image using the same technique ( OK , three streak , but still … ) . That suggests that data can be put in in a stationary light beam , a conjuration which is required to make something make love as a quantum repeater , the missing piece of the mystifier increating a true quantum net . If the scientist can use the knowledge to make such a thing , the future of the internet just got super , extremely quick — unlike some of the Christ Within that will be fueling it . [ Physical Review LettersviaNew Scientist ]
Government laboratory Admits to Using Quantum cyberspace for Two Years

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