CHECK THIS OUT!!! SCIENTIST EXCEED SPEED OF LIGHT!!! WHA?

[bones10]

That NYT article seems to contradict itself. Here is says:


<< The backward wave, traveling at 300 times c, arrives at the near side of the chamber just in time to meet the incoming wave. The peaks of one wave overlap the troughs of the other, so they cancel each other out and nothing remains. What has really happened is that the incoming wave has &quot;paid back&quot; the cesium atoms that lent energy on the other side of the chamber. >>



Which seem to indicate that there is this backward light wave traveling at 300 times c. It's a light wave because it cancels out the incoming light wave.

Then it says:


<< The cesium chamberhas reconstructed the entire pulse shape, using only
the shape of the precursor. So for most physicists, no fundamental
principles have been smashed in the new work. >>



Hmm, how does a wave travelling at 300 times c not &quot;smash&quot; fundamental physics principles? Perhaps I just don't understand the article.

- bones

 

[UG]

My take on it is that it isn't light traveling at -300c, but wavelength clustering propogating backward at 300c. Clustering is neither material, or field-ish, but statistical, and thus not constrained by <=c.

Clustering going in, meets clustering coming back, negating, and leaving signal intact.

Not my field of expertise, so I'm perhaps interpretively-challenged.

[edit]Well, field wavelength-clustering is field-ish, but not in the mathematical sense to which I was alluding.

Gustavus, we could use your able assistance. [/edit]

 

[KDOG]

Could it be used for long range space communication? I mean think about being able to real-time talk to our astronauts in orbit around Jupiter or Saturn!!! I certainly don't understand the physics of this, but it would be a shame not to DO something with it.

 

[UG]

In the vacuum of space the speed limit is c. The >c effect required the gaseous medium (analogous effects have been observed in crystal latices regarding the propogation speed of electrons) with which the light could interact to create the circumstance of certain information preceding its ~c-speed carrier.

My interpretation is that particles are comprised of localized bundles of interfering, slightly dissimilar wave-length waves. They interact with one another by exchanging other localized bundles of interfering, slightly dissimilar wave-length waves. Under certain conditions, it seems that a secondary effect of the exchanges is the transmission of a qualitative facsimile of particle-carried information through a particle population faster than a particale can carry it.

[edit]Analogous to someone's reputation preceding them into a place they have yet to reach.[/edit]

 

[stomp]

I'm surprised this got more media coverage than the visible discovery of the tau neutrino - which has a very very very small mass and travels at the speed of light. These things ain't light, but travel at c...

 

[UG]

Nuetrino's of mass seem to only very weakly interact with the still conjectural Higgs fields, carried by the Higgs Bosons but they don't interact with the fields of other Bosons (photon's, W's &amp; Z's, gluons) nor do they with the other Fermions (electrons, muons, nuetrinos, quarks, etc.), unless they run right into them or their assembleges. BLAM! :Q

The Higgs Boson is what eveyone is aiming for because matter's interactions with its field is thought to convey to matter the property of mass/inertia.

 

[DataFly]

Damn, it looks like I got that answer wrong on my Physics test yersterday.:|

 

[RSI]

Damn UG!!

Well this looks pretty cool, I wonder what will come of it.

 

[zippy]

I heard about this back in May/June. Get with the times man...

 

[ltk007]

Wow, I wonder if we'll be able to send matter faster than the speed of light in my lifetime.