Something revolutionary just happened

Waiting for the reddit scientists to explain this in a way my dumb monkey brain can appreciate.

Great now instead of flashlights I can just buy this in bulk at Costco and thaw it out when the power goes out

Can someone ELI5 this for me?

The title is grossly misleading. Nobody is ‘freezing’ light, they did something clever using polaritons which can couple light to electron oscillations in a material. In my photonics course, I always just saw it as ‘conducting’ light, in a sense.
These electrons move in a specific way as to keep the electromagnetic information of a light beam in tact, more or less. See it as a stadium with football fans doing the wave. The football fans are electrons, the wave is the light.
The scientists got these electrons to behave in a very specific way to lead to this supersolid. I’m only just learning about Bose Einstein Condensates, but creating one with this photonic approach is really incredible, its just very far from what the pop-sci articles suggest.

Neat! I don’t understand what this means or why they did it but it seems cool 🤷‍♂️

OP has no idea what happened or whether it’s revolutionary

To freeze light would be to freeze time right?

Scientists have figured out how to make light behave like both a solid and a liquid at the same time, which is something never seen before. Normally, light just moves in straight lines and doesn’t have a shape, but in this experiment, researchers managed to freeze it into an organized structure while still letting it flow smoothly.

How Did They Do It?

They used a special material called aluminum gallium arsenide (AlGaAs) a semiconductor often used in lasers and optical devices. By shining a precise laser beam into this material, they created conditions where photons (light particles) started interacting strongly with each other, which doesn’t usually happen.

As a result, the light formed a crystal-like structure, meaning it had a fixed shape, like a solid. But at the same time, the light particles could still move freely without resistance, like a liquid that never slows down this is what scientists call a supersolid state.

Can we use this to bolster our Abrams battle tanks?

Lightsabers when?

We just unlocked forerunner tech!

Lightsabers are one step closer brothers and sisters!

Italian scientists have recently achieved a groundbreaking feat by making light behave as a “supersolid,” a rare state of matter that combines properties of both solids and liquids.

What Was Done:

Researchers constructed a specialized semiconductor platform with microscopic ridges and directed laser light into this structure. This process generated hybrid light-matter particles known as polaritons. As the number of photons increased, they organized into patterns characteristic of a supersolid state, exhibiting both structural rigidity and frictionless flow.

Why It Matters:

This discovery opens new avenues in quantum physics and technology. Supersolid light could lead to more stable qubits, enhancing the performance of quantum computers. Additionally, it may revolutionize optical technologies by enabling the development of advanced light-based circuits and innovative methods for energy manipulation.

In essence, by inducing light to behave as a supersolid, scientists have unveiled new possibilities for understanding and harnessing the fundamental properties of light, potentially leading to significant advancements in various technological fields.

Damn if this is true, than forerunner technology is here sooner than I expected 😅

So when are we expecting this black hole?

Big if true

How much did it weigh?

Was it heavy, or just light?

Any actual use for this?

Ok, but can it be weaponized?

ELI5? ELI20? Damn, can’t understand this at all.