Light Experiments at IAP, Darmstadt: Einstein's Speculations

  • Context: Graduate 
  • Thread starter Thread starter ConformalGrpOp
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Experiments Light
Join the discussion
Ask a follow-up here, or get your own question answered by working scientists, mathematicians and engineers — people, not an autocomplete.
Real named experts · corrections over time · the nuance an AI answer skips
2 replies · 1K views
ConformalGrpOp
Messages
49
Reaction score
0
The news threads and press releases I have read of the work of Halfmann and his colleagues at the IAP, Darmstadt, report that they were able to bring "light" to a "standstill" within a material for about a minute. I haven't had the chance to read the groups published papers on the subject yet, but, it did bring to mind Einstein's speculations and effort to imagine (theoretically), what one would "observe" traveling at the speed of light. The thought begged the question:

Is there a material difference between (a) the mathematics for bringing two disparate inertial frames of reference into coincidence (a continuous Lorentz transformation) and (b) the equations necessary to physically represent the act of causing light to come to a standstill within our frame of reference?
 
Last edited:
Physics news on Phys.org
Thank you DaleSpam. That's what I thought.