Supersolid: Scientists turn light into a solid that flows like liquid for first time

Interesting Engineering ^ | 3/05/25 | Kapil Kajal

[DennisR]

Color me skeptical.

[Libloather]

[DIRTYSECRET]

My friends. If your son is serving on an aircraft carrier wouldn’t you want this weapon available?

[Wuli]

Many many years ago, in a poem, I used the term “solid starlight”.

Had no thought of it being real; just poetic license.

[SunkenCiv]

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[TangoLimaSierra]

Photons are massless. How does having a bunch of them make mass?
Kinda like zeroes. No matter how many you have, it's still zero.

[bayliving]

How soon before Light Sabers are a real thing?!

[catnipman]

how about a liquid light SHOW instead?

[1FreeAmerican]

It is interesting though - you can concentrate all of the nothing - zeros if you will - into a beam and cut steel.

When something has no mass how does it create energy?

[TangoLimaSierra]

When something has no mass how does it create energy?

Same way it gives us a sunburn, I guess.

[Bikkuri]

I wonder if it will make my hair more solid?

[mouske]

I don’t understand all I know about this.

[Pikachu_Dad]

Sounds like complete and utter BUNK !

[telescope115]

More like the Ghostbusters’ energy weapons crossing the streams…

[telescope115]

One thing I do know for sure, is that I just like looking through my telescope at the Sun, Moon, and planets- quantum physics and all of that stuff is as far over my head as the edge of the universe is.

[GOPJ]

Glass is a very slow moving liquid too...

[Pikachu_Dad]

Indeed !

[Pikachu_Dad]

He said light has no mass. He didn’t say it has NO energy.

Light has energy.

[Pikachu_Dad]

I got 30 plus years glass panes that are still in their frames... So nope.

Apparently that myth has been busted.

“To finally put this idea to rest, Jing Zhao, Sindee Simon, and Gregory McKenna analyzed a 20 million-year-old chunk of preserved amber... The team observed that the amber relaxation times did not diverge — meaning that it couldn’t possibly be a kind of fluid.”