“A team from University of Darmstadt has managed to stop light for an entire minute .” To get a bit of frozen light “they took an opaque crystal and fired lasers into it to disturb the quantum states of the atoms within. By creating two quantum states within those atoms, they were able to make the originally opaque material transparent to a tightly defined frequency range of light. Then, they shot another laser beam of the right frequency through that newly transparent region, before turning off the disturbing laser beam to make the material once more opaque. The result: a laser beam, halted within the material. The beam was held in place for a whole minute—enough time for it to travel 18 million kilometers, or 20 round trips to the moon, if it had been left unimpeded.”
Dear Reader,
Can I be direct with you?
War abroad. Socialists on the rise. AI upending human life. Endless uproar online. The modern attention economy doesn’t want readers — it wants users enslaved to the tyranny of the present.
First Things is the antidote: literary excellence, timeless truths, and a fixed point of reference in a culture that has lost its bearings.
But we can’t do it without readers like you.
Our goal: Raise $150,000 by November 1 to sustain First Things in the year ahead.
Your gift anchors readers in the permanent things.
Make your Fall Campaign gift now using the button below.
If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact Giovanni Del Piero, Director of the Editor’s Circle, at gdelpiero@firstthings.com or 212-627-1985.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
The Church in the Age of Therapy
In 1966, Philip Rieff wrote in The Triumph of the Therapeutic that “Religious man was born to…
Canada’s Deadliest Blind Spot
On September 20, the Daily Mail ran a story with the provocative headline, “Our 83-year-old Christian grandmother…
The Faithful Joy of Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen
Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen seem to have had little in common. She favored rhinestones; he wore…
