In a groundbreaking experiment, Harvard physicist Dr. Lene Hau achieved what was once thought utterly impossible.

In 1999, she famously slowed down the speed of light to just 17 meters per second—slower than a bicycle—using a unique state of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate, an extremely cold cloud of atoms.

Then, in 2001, she went even further by completely stopping a light pulse, holding it perfectly still for a moment before releasing it again without any loss of information.

This feat was akin to literally “catching” a photon and trapping it.

Dr. Hau’s work opened new doors in quantum physics, optical communications, and our fundamental understanding of the nature of light itself.

It demonstrated that light, the ultimate symbol of speed, could be controlled and manipulated, promising revolutionary applications in information storage and processing.