That's hardly new though. Opaque material normally absorbs light or reflects it. But the energy absorbed isn't normally re-emitted in the same form as the original light.dj357 wrote:From my vague understanding of the physics behind this and the phrasing of the article, it appears that the light was not reflected inside the crystal but was instead suspended inside the crystal. The effect mentioned induces transparency, this being the ability for light to pass through an object. If you make it so that all the atoms in the object turn from being transparent to being opaque, you don't get reflection necessarily, unless it is a reflective medium. If you shine a laser beam on a non-transparent medium the energy from the light doesn't simply vanish, the atoms of the medium react to this energy. It seems that the researchers have simply made a storage medium for light.
I would have liked to know what is actually happening to the light. Is it being absorbed and re-emitted, or genuinely "frozen" or just internally reflected. The piece doesn't really say.
Maybe it could lead to a new kind of battery, if you can store light energy, and later release it? Although storage time would have to go up a lot, from one minute.
