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Feb 26th, 2001, 07:04 PM
#1
Thread Starter
PowerPoster
Check this out! With this new technology I think i'd go buy a lottery ticket 
Breaking the Light Speed Limit
Once thought to be unbreakable, the speed of light as set by the laws of physics has been exceeded in two recent experiments, according to a New York Times news report. The speed of light in a vacuum, or empty space, is 186,000 miles per second. Exceeding this speed jeopardizes the entire theory of relativity, which rests on the idea that light speed is the universal limit to how fast anything can travel.
Scientists have found ways to break that speed limit. In one experiment performed by researchers at the NEC Research Institute in Princeton, N.J., a pulse of light was sent through a transparent chamber filled with specially prepared cesium gas and was pushed to travel at speeds of 300 times the normal speed of light. The light travels so fast that the main part of the light pulse exits the chamber even before it enters. Theoretically, this means that you could see a moment in time before it actually takes place.
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Feb 26th, 2001, 07:12 PM
#2
Frenzied Member
How is that possible?? Thats like cloning a light wave
Wave Barrier Exiting Wave
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So before it enters....the wave has already left....
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Feb 26th, 2001, 07:13 PM
#3
Thread Starter
PowerPoster
who are we to argue with boffins...
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Mar 1st, 2001, 05:07 AM
#4
i think the issue here revolves not around the existence of the particle/wave of light used in the experiment at given time frames, but of the flexibility of time itself. The light exits before it enters, but the light MUST enter to exit, therefore the past/future cannot be changed by the present.
actually, does this mean the future is fixed just like the past. This brings fatalism back as a viable theroretical model...
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