Scientists said yesterday that they had achieved a long-sought goal of slowing waves of light to a relatively leisurely pace and using those harnessed pulses to store an image. Physicists said the new approach to taming light could hasten the arrival of a futuristic era in which computers and other devices will process information on optical beams instead of with electricity, which for all its spark is still cumbersome compared with light.
The speed of light may have been lower as recently as two billion years ago on Earth, based on measurements of the fine structure constant, or alpha, which dictates the strength of the electromagnetic force.
Physicists say they have brought light to a complete halt for a fraction of a second and then sent it on its way. Controlling the movement of light particles - so-called photons - to store and process data could lead to the development of quantum computers.
Electric signals can be transmitted at least four times faster than the speed of light using only basic equipment that would be found in virtually any college science department.
Light can be turned into a glowing stream of liquid that splits into droplets and splatters off surfaces just like water. The researchers who've worked out how to do this say "liquid light" would be the ideal lifeblood for optical computing, where chips send light around optical "circuits" to process data.
Analysis of the light coming from distant quasars suggests that a fundamental physical constant may have been increasing slightly over the past six billion years.
An international team of astrophysicists has discovered that the basic laws of nature as understood today may be changing slightly as the universe ages, a surprising finding that could rewrite physics textbooks and challenge fundamental assumptions about the workings of the cosmos.
The cosmic speed limit - the speed of light - may have reduced as the Universe matured. New research seems to confirm hints that one fundamental constant, and possibly the speed of light as well, has changed slightly over time.
Slowing a beam of light to a halt may pave the way for new optical communications technology, tabletop black holes and quantum computers.
Separate teams of physicists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Harvard University have managed to trap light and release it again, a feat that could aid the development of high-speed quantum computers and a quantum Internet.