- Background
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- Robert Boyd, an optics professor at the University
of Rochester made a breakthrough in optics in 2003. He used what he calls
"table top optics." The optics system consists of lasers and
a small piece of ruby. The optics can slow light from over 669,600,000
MPH (186,000 miles per second) down to just 38MPH, or 56 feet per second.
[1] Earlier systems by other researchers that previously accomplished
this required a room full of equipment.
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- Problems for Physics Theories
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- This raises some serious questions about the known
theories on the nature of light. Physics theory claims that light has almost
unlimited energy, and that it would require "all the energy in the
universe" to accomplish this. A massive amount of energy should have
been released when light is slowed to a comparative crawl.
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- Yet no such energy release took place. New theories
about the true nature of light will need to be developed, to fit the observations
which cannot be denied. Its been my own belief (which may also be that
of others) for some years that light is a manifestation of zero point energy,
not a particle with infinite energy. This might also better explain the
well known double slit experiment results in physics
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- In experiments done in other laboratories, light has
been turned into matter and stored as a Bose-Einstein condensate. Suspended
in a vacuum chamber at near absolute zero, it can be held for a period
of time. It can then be re-accelerated back to the speed of light. The
re-acceleration did not require "all the energy in the universe,"
as physics always has boldly claimed.
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- Grant for Research [2]
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- A team of researchers led by professor Boyd at the
University of Rochester, has been awarded $6.5 million to show how his
new cutting edge research will help optical computing. The technology has
immediate applications in fibreoptics for merging optical data in computer
networks. Boyd has developed a simple table top apparatus to slow light
down to 38MPH. Also participating in the DARPA grant are researchers from
Cornell University, Duke University, University of California at Santa
Barbara and the University of Southern California. Additional methods and
technology using materials other than ruby to control the slowing of light
pulses, will be developed under the grant.
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- [1] Original source for Robert Boyd's work was a previous
publication in Currents.
- [2] Partial extract from University of Rochester's "Currents"
publication, Vol 33, No. 01 (Jan. 2005)
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