It's Slow Light

It's now possible “to halt light and bottle it”:

A FUNDAMENTAL law of physics says that nothing can go faster than light, which zips along at around 300m metres a second. But light can also travel at a more leisurely pace, slowed, for example, by air or water. This week a group of researchers led by Ortwin Hess of the University of Surrey, in England, announced a plan to stop light completely and store it, using materials that possess some odd properties. If the plan works, halting and hoarding light in this way could eventually lead to better computers.

If only Bob Shaw were still alive.