Researchers slow light to 245 meters/second

by seattleniceguy 20 Replies latest jw friends

  • Ingenuous
    Ingenuous

    Very cool. Seems a much more efficient way of slowing light than the quantum pattern imprint process - if slowing down light is all you want to do.

  • Robdar
    Robdar

    Fascinating.

  • damselfly
    damselfly

    That's amazing it was at room temp!!

    Inner geek coming out.......... must move on

    Dams

  • M.J.
    M.J.

    Wow. Didn't know that was possible. I thought the speed of light was one of those constant things of the universe you could count on. Guess I was wrong.

  • seattleniceguy
    seattleniceguy
    I thought the speed of light was one of those constant things of the universe you could count on. Guess I was wrong.

    The speed of light we all know and love is the speed of light in a vaccuum, which is its top speed in the universe and appears to be an unchanging "speed limit." However, light naturally moves at different speeds in different media (water, glass, etc), and (now apparently) different environmental conditions in those media can affect it as well.

    SNG

  • Leolaia
    Leolaia

    And did you see this? A Swiss team has also made light go faster than the speed of light:

    http://www.physorg.com/news5929.html

  • chrissy
    chrissy

    ...that's cool.

    now shouldn't you be enjoying the outdoors instead of buried in your laptop, studying physics and whatnot?

    it's japan!! which i hear is super nice in the fall. hope you are having a blast.

    ;)chrissy

  • tetrapod.sapien
    tetrapod.sapien

    And in a releated news story, a scottish man was arrested today for public indecency in the capital of edinburgh. he was quoted as saying:

    "but i didn't think the light would travel that fast..."

    he he he, LOL

  • enigmatic
    enigmatic

    thanks alot seattle i know what i will be thinking bout while trying to go to sleep tonight.....

  • seattleniceguy
    seattleniceguy

    Leolaia,

    Thanks for the related article. I remember reading that before, but I couldn't remember the details. When I re-read it just now, I remembered why: the portion where they describe raising the speed of light is handled in only two semi-informative sentences! :-)

    A faster-than-light signal certainly has interesting implications. Can anyone say, "subspace communication"?

    SNG

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