If true and interpreted correctly. does this phenomenon have any relation to a "black hole"?

thought 1: Ok, so Einstein basically says that c is a constant. I know that mediums of different densities slow light down, but this medium is essentially a very diffuse matter cloud...so any diffraction should be minimal, correct?
If so, doesn't that imply that within the cloud time has slowed drastically and if the 'properties' can be 'tweaked' to stop light doesn't that imply that time has stopped for those photons? It didn't seem that they were talking about some sort of internal refraction but that the light actually stopped.
thought 2: could this mean that theoretically the surface (if that term can be used) of an old, very cold neutron star (which would necessarily be near 0K because of gravitational forces restricting motion) acts as a recorder of all the light that hits it and could be used as an information bank for astronomy?
thought 3: Since photons either are absorbed, reflected, or don't interact at all with normal matter and these photons are doing none of those things doesn't that imply some other unknown force of interaction between matter and energy?

So what does it look like? Does a frozen ray of light glow? I would assume not, since that would mean it's still moving. Then what? If I looked at this something with the appropriately powerful microscope, what would I see?

Another way to approach this might be thus: If light is both particle and wave and the wave's movement is stopped, is there a thing that is captured? Something with mass, as the word "particle" suggests to a non-scientist like myself? (This quickly gets to the subject of Radiolab's wonderful "Solid as a Rock" segment.)

@georger1998
All waves move. When you see a standing wave on a string it is because the waves traveling back and forth match in frequency and amplitude. They constructively and destructively interfere to form what you see as a stationary wave.
Light can be expressed as changes in the electromagnetic field. Space-time and the electromagnetic field can be thought of as like a tight membrane. When one part of the field is disturbed, the parts around it move as a result. This process propagates outwards and form what we call light. If you have ever plucked a long string, you can observe this effect. Since every part of the string is connected to adjacent portions, when you disturb one part, the disturbance spreads out and you see a moving wave.

@georger1998

Because light is also a particle.

OK could we back up here a second (or at least a light-second :-) Could someone explain why light moves at all. For example a vibrating string has a frequency and a wave length but it just sits there and does its thing. Why cant light (or electromagnetic radiation of any frequency) do this. Why does it HAVE to move through space? I have a rough understanding of special relativity and I have read about how the speed of light is the same for every observer (unlike sound) but that still begs the question: WHY DOES IT MOVE IN THE FIRST PLACE?

Paul- The choral piece used a couple of times is Lux Aurumque by Eric Whitacre. The rhythmic mallet piece during the credits is Music for 18 Musicians by Steve Reich. Not sure about the others.

@Jeff from Berkeley
Your thoughts are (almost) right on target. The uncertainty principle, more accurately stated, is that you can't know both position and velocity to high precision at the same time ("exact" is not involved here since no real measurement is ever exact- there's always a margin of error or level of uncertainty in our knowledge of a physical quantity). At very low temps, velocity is very low, so it's high precision since there's a bottom limit of 0, so it's limited between "very low" and 0. So the position must be uncertain, so the atoms essentially blend together and act like one big atom (Lene said the cloud was contained within 0.1mm, but that's not at all "precise" on an atomic scale.) This is the Bose-Einstein condensate that the other commentor Daniel Barkalow mentioned.

The light doesn't actually go slowly in a instantenous-velocity way. It goes slowly in that it doesn't make any progress through the trap. Light is like a very fast, very distractable puppy: it's always running at a very high speed, but it doesn't run straight ahead if there's stuff around. In a vacuum, it gets a light-second each second; in air, it doesn't manage to cover that much distance in the same time, because it's bouncing off of stuff a little bit. In a Bose-Einstein condensate, it can still be in the same place second after second, even though it has a velocity of 186000 miles per second. To be a little more precise, light is actually like a pack of puppies; when some puppies veer left, others veer right, and they all stay pretty close together, so the pack goes straight overall despite individuals not going straight, which is why a beam of light going through glass will exit later than it would in vacuum even if it goes out straight. (The pack is an uncollapsed wavefunction, and it's all eigenstates of a single photon; but it moves like a group moves rather than like you'd expect an individual to move, because quantum is weird like that.)

This was wicked cool. I am telling everyone I know about this, including my very close friend Mary K. Jones. :) I love fascinating science. If Lene doesn't win a Noble prize for this, the selection committee should all resign.

Who did the music used in this segment?

Radiolab never ceases to amaze me. That was riveting.

But the whole time she was explaining the experiment, I really wanted know... Can you see this beam of light travelling at 15 miles per hour? Could you witness a beam slow down like that? I assumed not, because that would require the light to travel fast enough, and in a different direction of the experiment itself, to hit your eyes. Thoughts anyone?

Does what Lene did nullify any principles of quantum physics?

If I remember my college physics correctly, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle states that you can't know a particles position and velocity at the same time. But if you 'trap' light, you know exactly where the photons are and their velocity is zero.

I'm sure I'm missing or confusing something. Can anyone shed some more light on this? (I couldn't help myself!)

Is it just me or did the last guy reading the credits (Bill from South Bend, Indiana) sound exactly like Kermit the Frog?! Is Kermit in the witness protection program or something? I'm onto you "Bill"!

This is the stuff of science fiction literature and imagination that is absolutely amazing. I could not believe my ears as I listened to this. Really, really fascinating.

I can't remember the last time I was so totally immersed, mesmerized, simply sitting still, listening closely to a riveting piece of science unfolding right before my ears. You've gotten my attention as a new hooked-on-Radiolab listener.