I can't believe you're not taken yet!

That is the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me. Thank you!

??? I was being totally serious ???
If that's the case, oh what I could whisper into your ear.

Yes I know and I was being totally serious too. Maybe I didn't word it right. I've been told that before, only I never took it as a compliment before. To me it was more of a pick up line and I didn't take them serious.

It is the sweetest thing, or one of the sweetest things anyone said to me because I know you meant it and I took it more as a compliment.



Blushing again, I can only imagine!

Well, I do have a knack for pointing out the best in people.

You're an amazing man Tom.

Now back to the OP, I just read the article and I was right, it is a little too scientific. Can you explain it in simpler terms? I don't understand the photons and quantum part..

What is the difference between quantum and photons?
A photon is the 'quantum' of electromagnetic radiation. The term quantum is the smallest elemental unit of a quantity, or the smallest discrete amount of something. Thus, one quantum of electromagnetic energy is called a photon. The plural of quantum is quanta.

Quantum mechanics is the body of scientific laws that describe the wacky behavior of photons, electrons and the other particles that make up the universe. It promises to demystify all the secrets of quantum physics, including Schrödinger's cat, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, and parallel universes.

Quantum mechanics tells us that light can behave simultaneously as a particle or a wave. However, there has never been an experiment able to capture both natures of light at the same time; the closest we have come is seeing either wave or particle, but always at different times, until now.

What they did was 'entangle' two photons as particles and released them as a wave. The wave streams then interact with each other from the particle masses. Essentially, making light bounce off light. The process holds great potention for applications like lasers and interactive communications. This science is the infant stages of what may one day power spaceships, allow quantum computers to work, possibly even create light paths we can walk on.

Cool. It's still a little confusing, but I kind of get it. I think actually seeing it would help me understand it better.

It would be pretty amazing to be able to walk on a beam of light.

I wonder if that photon cluster light is able to be lasered, or not. If it's a wave, it should reflect back like normal, just prob need to change the harmonic length of the laser unit for the slowness.
But the light's mass may interact with the lasers materials of manufacture, so possibly heating internally, it becomes a heat reactor; a power converter. Push that heat to the outside and shape it, Light Sabre.
A photon cluster laser would probably need new types of mirrors and other internals to cope with the new energies resulting from use.

Good point.
Or a new type of laser could result from the science.

I'm thinking a light bridge as a pathway.
Or, possibly using a beam as a guide rail like a monorail train?

The science is just beginning with this. When the first light bulb was invented I doubt they considered high intensity cutting lasers from its simple start.
Likewise, I think this science will create things that we can't even fathom.
But its nice to ponder the possibilities.

The picture from the article



Try a quick experiment: Take two flashlights into a dark room and shine them so that their light beams cross. Notice anything peculiar? The rather anticlimactic answer is, probably not. That's because the individual photons that make up light do not interact. Instead, they simply pass each other by, like indifferent spirits in the night.

Might be the organization that will produce the first application.

Other technological inventions, besides quantum computers and light sabres?

Consider what we are discussing. Light beams that interact with each other.
Light that is a particle and a waveform.

With advancements;

Holodeck emitters
Space elevator platform stabilizer
Space Station light tethers (connecting two or more stations)

With enough energy and particles it might one day be possible to push regular matter with light.

NASA has already invented an Ion Drive and it does work.
What if there was a light drive? Sure there isn't much mass in a photon particle but if it were multiplied and beefed up, who knows?

The next big step would be to entangle regular matter with a photon particle, say a carbon atom? The article states that the photon speed slows a bit while entangled but it still moves 66.6% of c. To accelerate a carbon atom to 66% of c would be a huge break thru.

While photons normally have no mass and travel at 300,000 kilometers per second (the speed of light), the researchers found that the bound photons actually acquired a fraction of an electron's mass. These newly weighed-down light particles were also relatively sluggish, traveling about 100,000 times slower than normal noninteracting photons.

Even at 50% of c would be astonishing. Plus if they could add a few bosons to the mix to create a bose-einstein condensate, the low temps would keep the carbon atom from burning up from resistance.

Then you have a carbon cannon at half the speed of light.
Our fastest machine ever propelled was Helios (0.0002 of c)

In 1974 and 1976, NASA launched a pair of German probes called Helios I and II. When their highly-elongated orbits swung them close by the sun, they reached speeds in the neighborhood of—get this—157,000 miles per hour (70 km/s). Helios II was the speedier of the two by a hair, making it the fastest man-made object in history. For all that unimaginable speed, the Helios probes traveled at only 0.000234 times the speed of light.

Maybe it's the answer to making a decent domestic 3D TV, or 360 deg. VR with realistic depth. A holodeck would be ultimate, maybe with the light's mass giving the experience some type of physical resistance at holographic surfaces - touch.

Apart from a hoverboard, I want made, that spherical crystalline recording player system in the David Bowie movie: The Man Who Fell To Earth. Some special light may make that type of information storage / retrieval happen.

Photons are as you well know , important in PET imagines, used to measure metabolism...

Oh ****

Don't these guys have anything else better to do with their time?.. we can't even cure the common cold nd these knuckleheads are playing with lights.

Yeah a similar comparison might be painting your bathroom walls and driving your car to the store.

This is physics and curing the common cold is biology.
By your reasoning, why are YOU not working on curing the common cold?

heh...no money in a cure...