Light slowed down to 38 mph

Re:Light slowed down to 38 mph by ars on Friday July 31, 2009 @04:26AM (#734027)

Saying "the same" about light (and other subatomic particles) is meaningless. If the have the same state, then are the same, in the sense that they are indistinguishable.

So it was "just like" what was there, but not "the same" photon in the sense the photon did not exist for a while, and was recreated. And at the same time it was also "the same" photon, in the sense that the before and after photons are not distinguishable.

It should be noted that the "no cloning" theorem adds a twist: It says you can not copy a photon. This means that the matter that stored the photon can not be induced to create another one (like a hologram does).

So in that sense it was the "same" photon - because you can only ever create the original, and no additionals.

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Re:Light slowed down to 38 mph by noonespecial on Friday July 31, 2009 @04:39AM (#734043)

True, true. Saying a lot of things about subatomic particles is meaningless. Their behavior doesn't map to english very well. The point is that that information could be stored in the beam basically at the photon level, trapped in matter, and then pulled out later. That's as cool as ultracold atoms.

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