Frezing light

scott1

at the Univeisty of Austrilla they found a way slow down lightThey slowed it down from 670 millies per hour to 670 miles per hour
http://www.sciencentral.com/articles...e_id=218392702

inha

What exactly is so shocking about this?

scott1

I'am confused how are you soppesed to slow light Einstien said you couldn't

Just some guy

I haven't read the link but I'm assuming they aren't - the light is travelling at c but it's continually absorbed and emmitted by electrons in the medium it's being passed through, so it takes significantly longer to get from A to B, effectively 'slowing' the speed the light takes to travel the distance.

That's why the speed of light in air is slower than the speed of light in a vacuum (iirc particles produced by high energy cosmic rays can actually travel faster than light in air, producing some kind of shockwave akin to that of a sonic boom)

caribou

Yup, it's called Cherenkov radiation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_effect

Morbid Steve

The idea of puting the nuclear spin usage into computesr is inegnious. I mean, you think we have fast comptuers now, just think about getting the computations that take several minutes today, take less than a millionth of a second! Shwew!

HallsofIvy

No, he said the speed of light in vacuum is the same to all observers, irrespective of how fast they are moving relative to one another. That's a completely different thing from what's happening here.

michael879

the speed of light is the same in any medium. The reason it appear slower is because of absorption and the reemition of a new ray.

Hooloovoo

In other words, light only travels in a vacuum. A single photon does not push through matter.

Transparent matter lets light through, because its particles absorb the photons as they come in, then emit another one out the other side.

This absorbing and emitting takes time, and the resulting slowdown is called the "refractive index" of the matter.

But the light itself, the photons, only ever travel at full lightspeed.