Stunning Revolution in Physics or dumb Newspaper?

Lyuokdea

Ok, I was looking through technocrat and I saw a link to this article which claims, that physicists have not only succeeding in slowing down, but also in speeding up the speed of light. I assume it is actually talking about the speed of light in the medium or something, but the article doesn't seem to claim that, does anybody know what was actually accomplished, I doubt the laws of physics were suddenly overturned with this little fanfare.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releas...-ltt081905.php

~Lyuokdea

MalleusScientiarum

Being in an optical fibre my guess would be "in a medium"

Pengwuino

Sounds like its in a medium or the world would have gone insane. I suppose we need to determine how important is it in context then we can figure out what they meant by speeding up light. I guess if all experiments so far have simply been to slow down light, it would be very exciting if they were able to speed it back up again after its been slown down.

And by taking 10 more seconds to continue reading, I stumbled upon this.

What does that mean?

Nenad

Its probably a fibre that changes properties upon a given signal, such as electric current. This change in properties can either speed up or slow doen light. As for the claims that they can make it go faster than the speed of light in a vacum, (if they do claim that at all) I dont believe it.

Regards,

Nenad

Lyuokdea

Looking around I found a more in depth article that seems to argue that it has to do with changing the phase velocities for the different frequencies of light moving through the cable. I think they are talking about this illusion coming from quantum mechanical phenomena, but does it actually allow particles to move faster than the speed of light?

http://www.livescience.com/technolog...fastlight.html

~Lyuokdea

Tide

Yes, it is phase velocity they are talking about.

Chronos

Tide is correct, they are talking about phase velocity [which is irrelevant]. Relativity is not imperiled until useful information is communicated at superluminal velocities.