The speed of light is a universal physical constant that is important in many aspects of physics. Light travels at a continuous and finite speed of 186,000 miles per second. But did you know that you can manipulate the speed of light?
Danish physicist Rene Howe was the first to slow the speed of light to 60 km/h in 1999. After that she was able to stop, control and move it completely. Rene House’s study of the speed of light
In 1999, after years of hard work, Howe mastered the art of riding a bicycle at the speed of light. Instead of speeding her up, she slowed the lights down to a staggering 60 kilometers per hour, achieving this impressive feat. She did something even more amazing, stopping the light in her orbit.
Light travels at just 186,000 miles per second. Howe knew this, but she never thought she would break the low speed record for the speed of light. Shortly after arriving there, she begins a new research project.In search of a completely new state of aggregation, the Bose-Einstein condensate.
Atoms are very temperature sensitive. At temperatures a million times higher than absolute zero, they lose their individuality and merge.
This assembly can behave like a single superatom at very low temperatures. It is called Bose-Her Einstein condensate, after two of her senior physicists who conducted research that predicted its existence in 1924.
“We were very excited to see what this new state of matter looked like. We were very happy. We’ve had success.” Rene Vestergaard Howe, Physicist
The Bose-Einstein condensate was finally formed in June 1997 after Howe and her teammates successfully cooled the atom.
After making it, Howe and her colleagues began looking for uses for the condensate. They found that by precisely manipulating with a laser beam, they could pass light through the previously opaque condensate. They found that no material had ever been identified that could delay light as efficiently as mass condensates.
A cigar-shaped condensate with a length of 0.2 mm was suspended inside a vacuum chamber using an electromagnet. They used a precisely aligned laser beam to illuminate the cigar from the side before firing a pulse of laser light along the longitudinal axis.
When she boarded a plane to Copenhagen that summer, she found herself moving much faster than a ray of light. She published her research in the fall that allowed her to move around easily at the pace of her bike.
Her team advanced this year by successfully blocking all light in Bose-Einstein condensates. The scientists turned off the coupling laser as soon as the light pulse was completely compressed and trapped in the condensate. After this change the lights were locked inside. When they turned the coupling laser back on, the first pulse of light came out the other side.