Is it possible to exceed the speed of light?
Check out this London Sunday Times news article:
http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/2000/06/04/stifgnusa01007.html
The first few paragraphs read:
" Eureka! Scientists break speed of light
Jonathan Leake, Science Editor
SCIENTISTS claim they have broken the ultimate speed barrier: the speed
of light.
In research carried out in the United States, particle physicists have
shown that light pulses
can be accelerated to up to 300 times their normal velocity of 186,000
miles per second.
The implications, like the speed, are mind-boggling. On one
interpretation it means that
light will arrive at its destination almost before it has started its
journey. In effect, it is
leaping forward in time.
Exact details of the findings remain confidential because they have
been submitted to
Nature, the international scientific journal, for review prior to
possible publication.
The work was carried out by Dr Lijun Wang, of the NEC research
institute in Princeton,
who transmitted a pulse of light towards a chamber filled with
specially treated caesium
gas.
Before the pulse had fully entered the chamber it had gone right
through it and travelled a
further 60ft across the laboratory. In effect it existed in two places
at once, a phenomenon
that Wang explains by saying it travelled 300 times faster than light.
The research is already causing controversy among physicists. What
bothers them is that if
light could travel forward in time it could carry information. This
would breach one of the
basic principles in physics - causality, which says that a cause must
come before an effect.
It would also shatter Einstein's theory of relativity since it depends
in part on the speed of
light being unbreachable. "
There's lots more. The Science article should be interesting.
-- --Bill Yates --billyates@billyates.com --wtyates@aol.com --http://www.billyates.com/ --Moderator, Writer's Club Christian Writer's Workshop --Editor, WorldVillage.com's Believer's Weekly --Theron Services: Web Design, Editing, Writing
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