Scientists Trap Light In Nano-Soup

An anonymous reader writes "Physicists at the Bhavnagar University in Gujarat, India have trapped light in a nano-soup concoction. The chance discovery could pave the way for lab-on-a-chip devices for processing optical information. As of now there is no theoretical explanation for why the fluid has the effects it does on laser light."

No theoretical explanation?

[GammaKitsune]

Why do they claim that "As of now there is no theoretical explanation for why the fluid has the effects it does on laser light" when there's clearly a theory about why this happens right in TFA? Or is there some other definition used in the Scientific community for a "theoretical explanation" that I'm not aware of?

Re:No theoretical explanation?

[Daniel_Staal]

Why do they claim that "As of now there is no theoretical explanation for why the fluid has the effects it does on laser light" when there's clearly a theory about why this happens right in TFA? Or is there some other definition used in the Scientific community for a "theoretical explanation" that I'm not aware of?

Yes: One where the math has been shown to work.

Currently they have ideas, but haven't proven the math. If the math can't be made to work, either the underlying theory is wrong, or something else is happening.

Re:the message

[Jumphard]

RTFA, you wouldn't be able to *see* the Soup, all the light has stopped!

Re:No theoretical explanation?

[mr_mischief]

From TFA: "but the researchers believe that"

It's good to remember that "theory" and "hypothesis" are quite distinct in scientific circles. In science, a belief is not a theory. A belief is either a hypothesis that can be tested or an article of faith. Since these are research scientists and this has no clear ties to any religion I can see, I'm going to bet they'll want their hypothesis tested.

They'll want the experiment set up specifically with storage of the light in mind, since this was a surprise discovery this time. Then they'll want some way to prove, mathematically or empirically (preferably both) that the light is getting trapped consistently and how that's being done.

Then, they'll want others to repeat the experiment in other labs from their write-up and get consistent results.

Then, when scientists can use the explanation for the light getting trapped as a portion of further work and it become useful to just assume the explanation is true and move on to work based on it... then it's a theory.

Or... that's how I'd think of the words "hypothesis" and "theory" from my interested lay understanding of research science. In short, a hypothesis is an idea about something happening under certain circumstances or why something happens in those circumstances that has not been properly vetted by experiments and mathematics. A hypothesis can be right or wrong, and noone knows until it is tested. A theory is a hypothesis that has been proven reasonably correct by multiple individual teams and can be used as a basis for further work. A theory is sometimes wrong in part, like Newtonian mechanics, but should offer a good enough model to make more discoveries.

In even shorter terms, a scientist says "theoretically" only if the basis for the belief is tested and accepted. Otherwise, it's "hypothetically".

Re:"Storing photons"

[ajdecon]

I wonder if storing photons should be actually seen as storing their energy (say, as that of an electron in an atom), rather than "storing" the photons themselves, as particles.

It's not just the energy. If I understand the article properly, and it works like other photon-storage schemes, the phase, polarization, etc. of the photons are also preserved, so that the light which is released is equivalent to the original light. It's possible there could be some frequency-changing effects, as in non-linear optics, but that's speculation.