^ Loved that movie!
I'm sure the way to remove thermal energy with the application of coherent wave energy will become a reality in the distant future. But will it require long wavelengths or short wavelengths? Physicists?
You'd need a HUGE number of frequencies applied just right to create all the needed standing-wave effects to counter all the various almost random vibrations of all the different compounds molecules and atoms in your average macro-scale object and "freeze" it.
Laser refrigeration uses the fact that laser light is monochromatic and almost exactly one single frequency to "chill" one specific element/atom or compound that responds to that frequency.
An analogy of laser refrigeration is this: Think of an atom and it's electrons as a girl jumping rope. You can "chill" the girl by yanking her jumprope (the laser's frequency) at just the right time to rob it's swing of it's energy and stop her jumping. The small sample of a certain atom such as Cesium is like all girls of the same age, height, and weight, all swinging the exact same size jump rope, so the same timing of the tug will stop all of them from swinging/jumping.
Trying to apply this a macro complex object, like say a hunk of meat you want to "laser flash-freeze" would be like a playground field full of billions of girls jumping rope all of different sizes, weights, ages, with different size ropes all swinging them and jumping at different speeds. In fact, lots of the girls are jumping in huge lines "double dutch" style with two or more ropes.
Trying to apply a certain tug (the laser) will only stop a small number of the girls, if any at all. The vast majority of them will all just pick up energy from your timed tugging, jostle one another and all just get "hotter".
So it's not something that's likely to work in the future, ever, no matter how advanced technology gets.
