They Stopped Light

They stopped light. Well I'll be damned.

Dead in its tracks, you understand.

Not exactly like slamming the brake on your car,

more like trapping a bug in a marmalade jar.

Unscrew the lid and the bug flies back out,

like light in these studies I'm talking about.

They halted the light with rubidium gas,

and a beam from a laser through which it will pass,

and shrink and grow dim and then finally stop,

imprinting its spin (not the spin of a top)

on the atoms that linger about on the scene,

so it stops (even I don't know quite what that means)

As if that's not bizarre enough, there's more than one scheme

to frustrate the process of this sort of beam.

You can set your refigerator down real low

(that's if it'll go to absolute zero)

and shine what amounts to a flashlight into it.

Voila! That's the alternate method to do it.

Once you've stopped light in this way, it's a snap

to restart it, just take off your laser's lens cap.

Or fling open the fridge and stand clear of the door.

The question remains, so what is this all for?

Just what is the use of this awesome invention?

A phone that connects to the fourteenth dimension?

Or cool tinted windows and laser gun shooters?

No, say the geeks, it's for quantuum computers.

Which means that we're left to the very same fates

as before: "Let there be light!" quoth our lord Bill Gates.