Word: beams
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...company marketed I-Beam directly to consumers, since it had been used on the original and highly popular Bronco. But the Bronco II became a nightmare for Ford, which by the late 1980s faced more than 800 lawsuits that stemmed from accidents involving rollovers. That didn't deter Ford from using the same suspension on the new Explorer, which allowed the automaker to build the SUV on the same assembly lines as the Ranger pickup...
...Ford engineers could hardly wait to replace the Explorer's outmoded front suspension. In another 1989 memo, engineer Charles White noted the start of discussions "to revise the Ranger and [Explorer] suspension due to out-of-date performance of the Twin I-Beam." White added that although Ford had planned to replace the Twin I-Beam in 1998, "it was agreed that we would look at earlier incorporation of a new front suspension out-of-cycle for the reasons stated above, not safety...
...Ford had finally replaced the Explorer's unloved Twin I-Beam with a short-and-long-arm suspension but didn't act on previous recommendations to lower the engine and widen the chassis. And since the new suspension weighed less than the Twin I-Beam, the change raised-not lowered-the SUV's center of gravity...
...apparently been pulled off by two independent teams of physicists, one led by Dr. Ronald L. Walsworth and Dr. Mikhail D. Lukin of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the other by Dr. Lene Vestergaard Hau of Harvard, who made similar headlines two years ago when she slowed a beam of light down to a nearly pedestrian 38 miles an hour. Walsworth's work will be published in the Jan. 29 Physical Review Letters; Hau's in the journal Nature, sometime soon...
...Unsurprisingly, it's complicated. But the closely related techniques used by the two teams both involve canisters of chilled gas - Walsworth's team used rubidium, treated with a pair of laser beams that rendered it transparent - into which the light can enter without being absorbed. Instead, the first beam leaves its mark on the gas particles while the second beam is slowly turned down by the physicists. As that happens, the first beam grinds to a halt - and goes dark...