can we slow down and observe light travel at 100 mph?

[R1]

Can a glass rod miles long be built so that we can observe light slowing down to<br />about 100 mph or less?<br /><br />is there any such experiment already built somewhere for people to see?<br /><br />I know there's plenty of particle accelerators. This would be <br />a light decelerator, probably cheap to build too.<br /><br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[mithridates]

Wikipedia says that light has been slowed down to a speed of 17 metres per second before, and has also been brought to a full stop:<br /><br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light#.22Slow_light.22_experiments<br /><br />I don't know anything about glass though or whether it can be used in that way. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p>----- </p><p>http://mithridates.blogspot.com</p> </div>

 

[R1]

thanks. I do remember reading a while back about scientists slowing light down to 10-20 m/sec<br /><br />and I read in another thread something about glass slowing down light.<br /><br />we need some museum display somewhere or something where the public can see light <br />travelling slow.<br /><br /><br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[vandivx]

I read a while back a good scifi story about 'thick glass' or rather 'slow glass' I think it might have been called that<br /><br />someone figured how to make plate glass that passed light through in ten years or thereabouts and he placed newly manufactured plates in nice sceneries for ten years and then sold them to people to replace with it their window panes<br /><br />upshot was that if you had such glass put in your windows in a city with view into brick wall next house, you would then see real natural scenery with weather changes and all for next ten years... <br />of course it had downfalls too, after those ten years the glass would start passing the view of your interior of house as it was ten years back, like you could see looking from outside in your wife when she was still young and also your parents alive for next ten years...<br /><br />vanDivX <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[chesh]

This article in NS today.<br /><br />http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11376-photons-life-cycle-watched-in-full.html

 

[R1]

thanks for the article chesh, it's real interesting.<br /><br />Interesting glass, vanDivx, it doesn't seem too much like fiction or maybe just not the 10 year slowness. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[mental_avenger]

In the Bose-Einstein Condensate experiments, they really did not slow down or stop photons. Technically, they did not slow down or stop light. As the photons entered the BEC, they were absorbed by the atoms of Sodium (or rubidium). The color and direction information was stored in the spins of the electrons in the BEC. This information then propagated through the BEC. Using lasers to slow or stop the motion of the BEC molecules, they were able to control how fast the information was propagated from one molecule to the next, and therefore the speed at which it propagated through the medium. When the pattern reached the other side, it was reemitted as new photons into the air. It appears that is how light “travels” through any transparent substance. Light does not “pass through” the substance, but propagates through as a pattern imprinted on the spins of the electrons of the substance, to be reemitted on the other side as light. It appears that mirrors work in a similar way, absorbing and then reemitting the light in a direction proportional to the direction it is received. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p style="margin-top:0in;margin-left:0in;margin-right:0in" class="MsoNormal"><font face="Times New Roman" size="2" color="#ff0000"><strong>Our Solar System must be passing through a Non Sequitur area of space.</strong></font></p> </div>

 

[lukman]

below deep sea, no light there, it has stop in somewhere in the middle depth.<br /><br />I think we cant slow down light that way, light will be weakened instead of slown down. So it will just vanish before it slows down any further. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>