Comments on: Comments on 1877

Post number 1877

cCranium — Tue, 30 May 2000 11:42:40 -0800

THAT'S a speeding ticket... Scientists push light up to 300 times the SPEED OF LIGHT. I just got a floaty-glowy feeling. Some interesting interesting stuff is happening in our world. My favorite quote from the article: "That is so fast that, under these peculiar circumstances, the main part of the pulse exits the far side of the chamber even before it enters at the near side. " [Note: link is for NYT, free registration req'd]

By: cCranium

cCranium — Tue, 30 May 2000 11:46:36 -0800

The article made my brain hurt a bit as I was going through it; dealing with time travel and other FTL consequences can do that to me. I'm rereading it again (yes, this is the third time I'm reading the article) and starting to get a grasp on the topic. Maybe.

By: baylink

baylink — Tue, 30 May 2000 11:57:03 -0800

Here's the version of the link to the story that doesn't require a login; thanks to Jorn for the rule.

By: sonofsamiam

sonofsamiam — Tue, 30 May 2000 11:58:37 -0800

They also slowed light down a bit back, 38 mph!

By: sonofsamiam

sonofsamiam — Tue, 30 May 2000 11:59:54 -0800

They also slowed light down a bit back, 38 mph! Apples and oranges, but it's also interesting.

By: lbergstr

lbergstr — Tue, 30 May 2000 12:06:03 -0800

Here's the Slashdot thread with plenty o' useful info 'n' links.

By: mkn

mkn — Tue, 30 May 2000 14:41:26 -0800

As opposed to slowing down and speeding up light, scientists have also teleported individual photons. Granted, that doesn't mean that the days of "Beam me up, Scotty" transportation are near, if at all possible. Still interesting though - and I'm sure there are some technological applications out of all this.

By: snarkout

snarkout — Tue, 30 May 2000 14:55:01 -0800

As I recall from yammering with a physics major friend in college, teleportation--or, as physicists like to call it, "tunnelling"--is theoretically possible even on a macroscopic level, just vanishingly improbable. I wish they'd provided more details about the microwaves being transmitted faster than light, as the cesium chamber experiment was at least somewhat comprehensible when I thought about it long enough.

By: ZachsMind

ZachsMind — Tue, 30 May 2000 15:02:09 -0800

Okay maybe this wouldn't allow one to travel back in time and change events. Who wants to mess with that anyway? What a headache. Perhaps with more research and effort however, this will allow one to capture glimpses of the near future or recent past. It'll take a few more generations, and would be little more than a novelty, but think of a camera... okay maybe that's a bit too scifi. Then again, rockets used to be scifi, too. And the early planes would explode when they hit the sound barrier. They used to think no one could travel faster than that. If anything this could give some aspiring writer something to use for a really badly concieved sequel to the Quantum Leap tv series. That could be fun.

By: baylink

baylink — Tue, 30 May 2000 15:49:21 -0800

On a related topic, in two different directions: does anyone have an opinion on whether the Scientific American article on 'quantum teleportation' was an AFJ?

By: starduck

starduck — Tue, 30 May 2000 16:13:40 -0800

"Dr. Guenter Nimtz [[umlaut over u]] " they can write an article on speeding up the speed of light, however they can't use ascii

By: SilentSalamander

SilentSalamander — Tue, 30 May 2000 17:21:34 -0800

Actually, superliminal backward wave propigation has been around since Feynman`s time... more indepth information about this can be found in James Gleick`s excellent book, Genius : The Life and Science of Richard Feynman

On a related note: if you shoot subatomic particles through a substance faster than light travels through that medium, it emits light - an optic boom. Cool!

By: flestrin

flestrin — Tue, 30 May 2000 21:07:58 -0800

The light effect is why radioactive stuff underwater glows (blue, not green as sci-fi would have you believe). Known as the Cerenkov effect.