I thought I had a pretty solid understanding of 0 Kelvin—it’s the temperature at which molecules stop vibrating. What broke my brain was [this](https://www.livescience.com/coldest-temperature-ever) Live Science article says that “light becomes a liquid that can literally be poured into a container” near absolute zero. Is that true? I am skeptical, given that light isn’t a gas or something that can take on another state of matter. The article links a [study](https://www.nature.com/articles/nphys4147.epdf?utm_medium=affiliate&utm_source=commission_junction&utm_campaign=CONR_PF018_ECOM_GL_PHSS_ALWYS_PRODUCT&utm_content=textlink&utm_term=PID100052172&CJEVENT=38280146bcaf11ec839f005a0a82b821) that I can’t possibly decipher, so I was hoping someone smarter than me could help me understand this…
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They are discussing entangled bosons in semiconductors, a exciton-photon pairing, in a special material that can form electron holes. The science behind it is called cavity quantum electrodynamics, one application being quantum computers that operate with a single photon. Not light as you know it.
No, it cannot. Like most pop-sci articles, that is extremely misleading to the point of just being totally incorrect. I tried to think of a way to eli5 this but I genuinely don’t think it’s possible because this is somewhat advanced quantum physics. The best I can do is say that they’re interacting light with a special kind of matter with weird properties that you make at extremely close to absolute zero, but that’s the best I can do. Suffice it to say that that article is wrong and light does not become a liquid nor can it be poured into anything.
Since light is massless and do only follow the gravitational lines in spacetime, will you never be able to pure light into anything, not even a black hole. All you do is to release photons in a direction, and all you are doing is bending gravity in an infinitesimal small amount with the container.
It can’t. Absolute zero refers to the thermal energy of a substance being 0, meaning that all the random vibrations we perceive as temperature aren’t happening. Light isn’t a function of those vibrations (and doesn’t act like normal matter anyway) so it doesn’t have a temperature. Absorbed light can heat things up and emitted light can cool things down, but you can’t hear or cool light on its own.
Light can be poured into any container. Light does not become a liquid.
Light obeys gravity. If you have enough gravity at the bottom of a container, light will be poured into the container. That would mean having a black hole at the bottom of the container.
But liquid is a state of matter. Light is not matter and is not in any state of matter.
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