Question :)

So does this mean that you could see a measurable difference in pain reaction between a person with reaaaallly long legs that hurts a toe or some other distal part of the body, compared to a shorter person? (in regards to the traveling speed of our neurons)

"Rory E. from Kingston Canada" is exactly right. Light is not being slowed at all. Radio Lab has most definitely not shed any light on this subject!

It's sad Professor John Mainstone didn't get to see the pitch drop. That was a great show, thanks for sharing.

The drop that was captured on video today occurred at Trinity College in Ireland, not at the University of Queensland in Australia (which was featured in the podcast.) Seems there is more than one experiment. Who knew.

Australia got scooped by those Buggers in Ireland!

So I listened to the podcast yesterday, and today I googled "pitch drop". Turns out it did. Earlier today. I missed it. Had to watch the video!

Fantastic episode.

So if you can store light in a bottle... Can't you make a light saver??

Got it:
The song at ~26:00 is "Ruckzuck" by Kraftwerk, which was one of the theme songs to the PBS show Newton's Apple.

TO THE FOLKS TRYING TO RECOGNIZE THE SONG AT THE ~26:00 mark: I BELIEVE it was the theme to Newton's Apple on PBS, but I'm not sure, I haven't been able to find that version of the theme on YouTube. Wish someone could confirm this :-)

After hearing this program, I wrote a piece called Pitch Drop for Triangles and Electronic. Please check it out and let me know what you think: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHLNDlgfW6I

Thanks for the great podcast!
Dave

Most unfortunate that you did not mention this very recent work on the amount of time it takes the brain to accumulate visual information sufficient to lead to an accurate motor output.

Stanford TR, Shankar S, Massoglia DP, Costello MG, Salinas E. (2010) Perceptual decision making in less than 30 milliseconds. Nat Neurosci. 2010 Mar;13(3):379-85. doi: 10.1038/nn.2485. Epub 2010 Jan 24.

Questions from a non-scientist here... So the photons in the linear beam begin to slow down the moment they hit the sodium..do they start to pile up like traffic, becoming more concentrated with photons and energy before/during its passage thru? Is there a limit to the amount the beam whose edges are contained by the cold and won't allow stray photons to escape, can handle before the photons slowly push/drill the beam across the space and the stored energy resulting from the pileup might act like a cannon firing the photons out of the other end of the sodium with enough energy to resume its normal speed? I feel like Penny from The Big Bang Theory here....

I wonder, is it possible that we are looking at those starts millions of light years away through clouds of really cold atoms? That would suddenly put them at arm's length...

The story Million Dollar Microsecond was great. It is amzing what "lengths" business will go or remove to make money.

BEST RADIOLAB YET!

OMG,storing light

Hey quill. Its not the light in the medium being slowed its the rate at which the energy propagates that is slowed as it is absorbed and re-emitted by the atoms in the medium. In between atoms the photons travel at good-old light in a vacuum speeds. Its the variation in abortion/emittion speed and how often this happens that effects the rate of energy transfer.

It took me .02 seconds to think of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_finance
Now a days you must diversify... and have a D Wave One.

Here's what I don't get. When the light is slowed in the cloud, when it pops out on the other side and resumes 186,000mps, where does its velocity come from???

Josh, it's Eric Whitacre's Lux Aurumque:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vi2kZtHk8mM

I'm not sure if it was in a movie, but Whitacre used it in his "virtual choir" experiment.

That angelic sound at 49:50 sounds like it's from a movie, but I'm not sure which.. Anyone familiar? It's not long enough for me to shazam but I believe I've heard it before... Wish I knew!

The last one woah. How does light speed back up after it exits the atom cloud? Wow.

Dear Radiolab,

PLEASE name your podcast mp3s with the date in YYYY-MM-DD format so that they sort chronologically!

The cool story about slowing down light reminds me of the science fiction story "Light of Other Days" by Bob Shaw.

Jad missed the chance at making a great joke when interviewing Mike Beller. Jad should have asked: "So what it is like when your teen-age daughter misses her curfew by a few milliseconds? Is she -- like -- grounded for being SOOO late?"

Of course there is a way to limit high-frequency trading and the problems it can cause. A tiny tax on each trade will nullify the fractions of a penny that are made on each trade. Isn't it worth it to stop this valueless activity?

The fascinating segment on slowing down light reminds me of the Alan Moore short story The Unbearableness of Being Light which won an Eisner years ago. In it the boy genius Jack B. Quick is thinking about the phenomenon of light and concludes that photons must be drunk. And of course they are moving at the speed of light, which is much too fast for Queerwater Creek! Together with the village's police officer, Jack arrests the photons. They are convicted and sentenced to move just at 30 mph from now on.

This leads to exactly the sorts of scenarios Jad and Robert imagine with their cycling faster than light idea. People arrive at their destinations long before they can be seen to do so, multiple images of things get stacked up, large areas of town are turned into lightless voids. Check it out, it's a very quick and amusing read. First published in Moore's Tomorrow Stories.

Relax guys, I remembered the theme music. It was from Newtons Apple. IN fact I even found a link for it on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIu2Fr2nIhI&feature=related

As a follow on from your first segment about the time lag in your brain as information shoots around. Benjamin Libets book "Mind Time" talks about how you brain lies to your mind about that time lag so that you always feel as though you are in the present, even though you are living in the past.

Does Lene's sodium pool heat up as she fires light into it ?

I am racking my brain to remember where I've heard the music around 26:25! I see I'm not the only one. Could you let us know the track name, or help me figure out which 80s kids show associated with it? It had to be something on PBS... 3-2-1 Contact, or Square One, or something. Aaahhh! I can't place it...

well, starts at 43:34

That's the instrumental version of Raymond Scott's "lightworks" at 44:20.

Lol did you hear the Busta Ryhmes instrumental at 20:30?

Good episode :)

Constructive criticism time, team Radiolab: everybody loves your music choices, so you should be publishing a track list along with each episode.

This is driving me crazy - what's the name of the song at the end of the Kraft segment, at 26:57 or so.....
It was on a kids TV show in the eighties, (played during the credits maybe) - it's so familiar!

Also, great show - can't wait to hear it every week!

I am in agony trying to figure out the name of the music in the background of the section about the algorithms buying Kraft at 22:53 (in the full episode).

Shazam can't find it, I will donate 5 bucks in the name of the person who can ID it for me.

Wonderful, fantastic show! One question, though: with reference to a comment made at 36:57 (correct me if I'm wrong please), isn't 10 microseconds one hundred times faster than a millisecond instead of ten times faster as was stated in the show? I just want to make I'm getting my orders of magnitude prefixes correct.

Thanks for this, and all of the other wonderful shows!

Quick question. If light as the constant has all of its energy directed toward motion through space (traveling at the maximum speed possible in theory) and therefore none of its energy directed toward movement through the fourth dimension of time...what happens to those photons when their motion through space stops? Do they begin moving forward in the fourth dimension of time? Do they age?

This episode BLEW ME AWAY!!

Now, my knowledge is extremely limited, and my capacity to grasp all these things debatable, but I thought the speed of light was a constant with fundamental significance to Relativity. So how does it affect that? And if you can slow down light and capture it, then the obvious question is: can you fling it and make it go faster?

What is the name of the accordion track that begins at 33:56, and who is the musician? I want to hear the entire track so badly and I cannot get Shazam to recognize it!

Great inspiration..! Like we say in spanish Maravilloso..!!!

Absolutely fantastic podcast, definitely one of my favourites.

I enjoyed this podcast very much, but please tell me your tongue was firmly in your cheek when you spoke about capturing the light surrounding President Obama for future generations.

awesome, AWESOME!
i throe laughing

Trapping light... doesn't that violate the laws of thermodynamics?

I love the part where Lena says, "that's right, I am a curious lady."

That being said, I agree with other posters - this was an AMAZING episode! I actually don't have any episodes I don't like - just ones that are better than others. I actually felt kinda guilty after I listened to it because I haven't donated in a while!

Everyone, whip out your wallets QUICK!

When I fantasize about winning the lottery (which I never play), I imagine giving millions of dollars to Radiolab. Could not even fathom what they could do with virtually unlimited resources.

I'm going to be a high school teacher someday, and I can't wait to use Radiolab for discussions in class!

Surprised no one brought up the idea of future quantum entangled "radios" which would make cabling between the stock exchanges obsolete!

Also, I think that missing from the discussion of being "in the moment" is the question of who exactly are you when you are "in the moment" or, rather, who is it that can be or not be "in the moment" - as if there's some kind of "true" moment outside of us from which we're disconnected.

I fell in love with the outtro music to the high-speed trading segment in the middle. (42:30 to 43:30)
Does anybody recognise it, or can you provide a track listing?
Thanks!

The download through the iTunes app came through okay, but the 'cast itself is glitched. It cuts around, repeats itself, etc. throughout. No problems with other 'casts on my iPhone.

Given that Lena can store light and turn it on and off, does that mean she has created an entirely sustainable light source that could replace light bulbs and the need for electricity for light? How bright and far reaching is this light source? Of because it is frozen, can it not glow outside of the cloud?

Also, what else can these clouds replicate? Can they also replicate matter? Could you put a leaf, for example, into the cloud, let it drift out, and then "turn on" the leaf like an after image? It honestly reminds me of photography. I want to see it in person..!

I hhave so many questions about the light in the last ten minutes! Like how much light could be stored, and if light carries information like images. like if you captured like that relected off an object??

I wonder if Lene's research could lead to ACTUAL LIGHT SABERS! CMON, THINK ABOUT IT! :-)

I really liked this episode. I felt you guys were in a lull there for a bit.

Hi John,

Lene got her sodium atoms down to around a billionth of a degree above absolute zero.

Best,
Soren.

Has anyone ever heard of float therapy? http://www.float-therapy.com/

This is the attempt to eliminate senses to give you the sensation that you are floating and all that you are concentrating on is your thoughts. To me, it is the closest you can be to "being in the moment." Thoughts?

Haha, came here to make the same comment as everyone else. "Speed" is not so much.

If cold is the lack of movement within atoms, how close is this process to absolute zero?

The podcast on 'Speed' is DLing at an incredibly slow pace. Oh, the irony:)

DL from website and android app not working fellas.

Keep the podcasts coming guys!! Love em nothing better than radiolab! radio now adays is a joke! Wish there were more shows out there like NPR n u guys!

Greetings from Miami Florida!!

Having downloading troubles as well. DLing now but it's v...e.....r....y s......l.......o.........w

Hey Dudes/Dudets,

Your Speed .mp3 file does not download. Do you think you can fix that?