Light picks up the pace...
Scientists have finally exceeded the speed of light, causing a light pulse to travel hundreds of times faster than normal.
Comments:
This sounds like they are using the fact that the phase velocity of an electromagnetic wave in some media can exceed the speed of light in a vacuum. It is a nice technological feat but not new fundamental physics and doesn't violate Special Relativity in any way, which prohibits both matter and any signal or effect (I think this latter prohibition is also from Special Relativity) from exceeding the speed of light in a vacuum. The article reads as a bit sensationalistic.
did anybody notice that this article was written in Nov of 2000. That's 7 years ago.<br>Access the article...not just the write up on astromart.<br>David
No, it isn't the phase velocity, at least as far as I can tell, it's the group velocity. (btw, the original article is published just this week in Nature).<br><br>There isn't any actual faster than light movement going on here, just the appearance of it. What moves faster than light is the apparent position of a pulse, and the effect is created by interference effects between many photons. The photons themselves don't move faster than light, just the center of the interference.<br><br>Just my 2c, obviously. I'll need to read a little more carefully to make sure I'm interpreting it right... <img class='' src='http://new.astromart.com/astromart/javascripts/sceditor/emoticons/wink.png' alt='wink' title='wink'/>
Pardon my ignorance, but isn't light manifested by photons? Would a photon detector yield a speed that exceeded Einstein's limit using the method described?.<br>
Seems like the implications are endless: how does this effect the cosmological constant?...dark energy?...red shifts...age of the universe (or megaverse)? Is it possible the light we see from distant quasars (at a similar real distance) may have started on its way at different times in different locations with different intervening materials?...could what we portend happened eons ago maybe just happened yesterday, or tomorrow?
This new article in Nature must be a revisit of something that was published by the same group on July 20, 2000. The authors have a very nice discussion of the implications, and the fact that special relativity is in fact not violated.<br><br>http://www.nec.co.jp/press/en/0007/images/1901.pdf<br><br>They go on to say that a potential application is to allow electroic signals to increase their speed closer to C, but no information transfer can exceed C. They appeared back then to be a bit dismayed that the media would put such a sensationalistic bent on their findings.<br><br>Hope this helps!<br><br>Cheers, <img class='' src='http://new.astromart.com/astromart/javascripts/sceditor/emoticons/smile.png' alt='smile' title='smile'/> <br><br>Bob Campbell
Funding Member
