More Research on Manipulating the Speed of Light
Researchers in Switzerland have succeeded in breaking the cosmic speed limit by getting light to go faster than, well, light.
Or is it all an illusion?
Scientists have recently succeeded in doing all sorts of fancy things with light, including slowing it down and even stopping it all together. Now a team at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland is controlling the speed of light using simple off-the-shelf optical fibers, without the aid of special media such as cold gases or crystalline solids like in other experiments.
Another piece on the same story [here]:
Slowing down light is considered to be a critical step in our ability to process information optically. The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) considers it so important that it has been funnelling millions of dollars into projects such as “Applications of Slow Light in Optical Fibers” and research on all-optical routers.
I realize that most of your readers will fail to comprehend the far reaching effects this research will have on humanity and securing the promise of a new era of peace an prosperity. For the few that do understand it, it would be impossible for them to explain it to those without a decade of advanced study in Cosmology and Theoretical Physics. 😉
What motion faster than light means for the foundations of physics is that special relativity needs to be modified slightly to accommodate an absolute frame of reference that must exist.
http://www.everythingimportant.org/relativity/simultaneity.htm
Although this appears to be a significant scientific breakthrough, it will undoubtedly sparks debate over whether this could in fact happen given that the Einstein’s general reletivity prohibits the light of speed from changing at all. If this “light faster than the speed of light” is true, the entire general relativity may be taken down to the point where it is meaningless. After all, the theory has to be able to explain how this “illusion” is possible, in order to survive.
I told you so!
Boy, if the maximum speed of light was higher we could make bigger bombs! Unfortunately, while the terms sounded like they got light going faster, it wasn’t the case. They were able to speed up an ensemble behavior. Similar to how you can have a “wave” of motion in traffic that can move faster than any individual car. Science as we know it has not been shattered, nor can we send messages into the past, or screw with casuality or whatnot.
According to the article itself, this is an illusion:
“By tweaking the relationship between phase velocities, it’s possible to adjust the group velocity and create the illusion that parts of the pulse are traveling faster than the speed of light.”
But I have a feeling this article is going to be sent around by a lot of people who didn’t actually spend the time to read it. :-/ (Typical of most interneters, I’m afraid).
People advocating Biblical creation use a changing speed of light to explain a young universe that appears old.