Comments on: Freezing images in an atomic vapor!

By: yoron

yoron — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 14:35:45 +0000

But you’re not having ftl here, are you.
You are just slowing it.

That is if ftl is defined as from a vacuum.
But it is a very interesting question.

As ftl is a ‘barrier’, just like the event horizon.
And by manipulating density and ‘internal motion’ we get ‘strange’ results.
In fact
Maybe I should just write ‘internal motion’?
As that seem to be ‘density’

By: skullsinthestars

skullsinthestars — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 15:56:57 +0000

IronMonkey: I’m glad it made sense! As I said, this was significantly outside of my specialization, so the compliments are appreciated.

By: IronMonkey

IronMonkey — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 14:05:35 +0000

Now I understand the implications and applications of the paper much better. Thanks for the clear description.

By: skullsinthestars

skullsinthestars — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 18:02:28 +0000

stuwat: Thanks for the comment! Yeah, I doubt one will be able to store significant amounts of information for significant periods of time due to diffusion. I'm sure this has some potential in fibre optics systems, though. I'm not so good at the application side of such technologies, but a 30 microsecond delay could be used to replace a lot of optical delay line.

By: stuwat

stuwat — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 21:50:48 +0000

I read this paper when it was first published last month, but I don’t think I fully understood it or appreciated its implications, until after I read your post. Thanks for the detailed explanation.

At the end of the paper, the Israeli researchers suggest that “it should be possible to store more elaborate temporal shapes, thus storing three-dimensional information” and they allude to the possibility of storing “movies”. I suspect the diffusion of the atoms would make this rather unfeasible, although there may be some limited practical uses (not a full-length DVD!).