Originally posted by: silverpig
It was a laser pulse fired through a super low pressure ionized cesium gas IIRC.
It doesn't actually go faster than light, it's all about phase waves and constructive/destructive interference that make it seem as though the wave went through faster than light. Radio waves do this cool effect in the ionosphere where they hit the ionized gas and they set up phase waves which go faster than light, but it's all due to interference patterns.
Throw a stone into a pond. You will see the initial outermost ring travelling outwards from the splash at a certain speed, and then you will also see waves inside the ring travelling outwards much faster than the initial wave, however, they can never "pass" that first outer wave. What's more, these waves aren't really caused by the rock, but they are just the resulting wave forms that are generated by the addition and subtraction of the peaks and troughs of the other waves that the stone caused. Same sort of thing with the radio waves in the ionosphere, and same sort of thing with the light and cesium.
