Light Made Solid

A Journey Through Glass 

By Charles Jarboe

In early March 2025, a group of researchers published a paper in the journal Nature describing how they converted light into a quantum supersolid, something never before achieved.1 By shooting laser light at a piece of gallium arsenide, the researchers demonstrated that, under the right conditions, photons could be transformed into a new, exotic state of matter, simultaneously solid and liquid with zero viscosity.

This remarkable breakthrough stands to help us better understand the nature of supersolids and other quantum states of matter and pave the way for further research in the field.

The matter we experience in everyday life typically exists in one of three distinct phases: solid, liquid, or gas. Quantum states of matter, including supersolids, exist outside the boundaries of this system of definitions. For supersolids to be created, near-absolute-zero temperatures are required. However, there is a material that we interact with daily that also fails to neatly conform to the rigid binary classification of solid versus liquid. That material is glass.

Glass is an amorphous (non-crystalline) solid that, as a function of temperature, undergoes a gradual transition from solid to liquid without ever fully inhabiting one state or the other. When cooled to room temperature and at typical observation timescales, glass certainly seems to be a solid. It has mechanical rigidity and elasticity and is scratchable and breakable.

Figure2: “Black Mirror No. 3”; black glass, silver nitrate, lacquer; 7.5” diameter x 2”; 2024.

But, when observed at much longer timescales, even at room temperature, glass continues to exhibit viscous flow similar to a liquid.2 And if you’ve ever watched Blown Away on Netflix, or had the pleasure of taking a glassblowing class, you’ve observed a material constantly changing state, shape, temperature, and viscosity, much to the advantage of skilled makers who manage to harness the fascinating physical properties of glass.

Besides being thermodynamically unstable and constantly slipping from one state to another, glass also possesses unique optical properties. Its transparency, high index of refraction, and ability to be cut, ground, and polished into optical devices has made glass indispensable for scientists, engineers, artists, and just about anyone interested in reconfiguring light.

In the book Stuff Matters, Mark Miodownik aptly describes glass as the “laboratory accomplice in unraveling the mysteries of the world.”3 Beyond enabling us to make microscopes and telescopes, glass has also served as a tool for exploring the nature of light itself. No other material harbors, reconfigures, and reconstitutes light in such a way as glass. And so, in a sense, nature has been making light into a solid since well before humans existed through geologic processes (obsidian), as well as lightning and meteorite strikes (fulgurites and Libyan Desert Glass, respectively).

Figure 3: “Delivered Presence”; glass thread, void, LED light, acrylic paint, wood; approximately 7’ x 5’ x 10’; 2024. Still frame image of an installation in an out-of-use mailroom in the Tyler School of Art lobby. The glass thread suspended in the light chamber appeared merely as a thin streak of light revealing the individual colors of light mixing together within the empty space.

The first man-made glass objects date to at least 2500 BC in Mesopotamia.4 In my case, the discovery of glass happened much more recently. It was during a visit to the Corning Museum of Glass in January of 2022 that my “Aha!” moment occurred. My wife and I were strolling through the contemporary art wing of the museum when we came upon a pair of large, kiln-cast works by the famous Czech husband-andwife duo Stanislav Libenský and Jaroslava Brychtová.

One in particular, Red Pyramid, had me truly awestruck. The ways in which it glowed, and the color of the glass transitioning from blood-red at the thickest point to sizzling yellow at the thinnest point, gave the sculpture an energetic presence unlike any art object I had previously experienced. I simultaneously felt a mix of conflicting emotions: wonder and joy from experiencing something so extraordinary, combined with despair and regret from realizing that I was only then becoming aware of the magic of light and glass.

I felt that I had just found the material singularly capable of encapsulating my fascination with the phenomenal qualities of light, color, form, and texture. Where had glass been all my life?

To make up for lost time, I enrolled in the Master of Fine Art program in Glass at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University. It felt like the only way to immerse myself in working with glass in an environment in which I could leverage my previous experience with light and develop my research and practice as an artist.

To date, I had spent about ten years working with light in various contexts, from theatrical lighting design in New York City to architectural design and laboratory experimentation at the Lighting Research Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute where I completed my Master of Science in 2015. I knew that working with glass would challenge me to work with light in entirely new and exciting ways.

And so it has. These past two years at Tyler have launched my investigations into how glass reveals the ephemeral characteristics of light, unlocking a new horizon within which I can capture light’s essence. I developed a series of mirrored, black glass forms that layer reflection upon reflection (Figure 2). I suspended a thread of glass in a ganzfeld of slowly modulating light to facilitate chance encounters with uncertainty and fragility (Figure 3). And, for my thesis exhibition, I fabricated luminous discs coated in glass reflector beads to create an immersive, luminous environment inspired by the neurophysiology of vision, color perception, and the movement of celestial bodies (Figure 4).

Figure 4: “In Totality”, retroreflective glass microspheres, acrylic paint, foam, steel, LED light, computer controller; each disc: 46” x 46” x 14”; 2025. Still image from my MFA thesis exhibition which included four discs, one centered on each wall, emitting light from behind and coated in glass reflector beads. The light from each disc would reflect in the surface of the others, and, as the light in the space slowly changed color, intensity, and distribution, the discs would constantly shift in appearance. The lights changed on a 30-minute cycle. Photo credit: Neighboring States

This new work utilizes glass and light as a means of situating viewers in a complex relationship between themselves, their perception, and the objects of their experience, unveiling the peculiarities of a material that touches so many aspects of our lives.

So, while converting light into a quantum supersolid in the laboratory is no doubt a stunning breakthrough, it bears remembering that we come into daily contact with an exotic material—glass— that not only makes light solid but also brings us into contact with the wonders of world when we look through it in the right way.

Notes

1. Trypogeorgos, D., Gianfrate, A., Landini, M. et al. Emerging supersolidity in photonic-crystal polariton condensates. Nature 639, 337–341 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08616-9

2. Zanotto, Edgar D., Mauro, John C. The glassy state of matter: Its definition and ultimate fate, Journal of Non-Crystalline Solids 471, 490-495 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnoncrysol.2017.05.019

3. Miodownik, Mark. Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Manmade World. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, (2014).

4. Henderson J. Early Glass in the Middle East and Europe: Innovation, Archaeology and the Contexts for Production and Use. In: Ancient Glass: An Interdisciplinary Exploration. Cambridge University Press, 127-157 (2013).

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