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Time travel: Light speed results cast fresh doubts

28 pointsby gps408almost 14 years ago

2 comments

btillyalmost 14 years ago
It should be noted that this result was completely expected. It turns out that light traveling through a medium can have 3 different velocities: phase, group and signal. Typically the latter two are the same and we can think of the group velocity as being the real "speed of the particle", but that is not always true. See <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_velocity#Physical_interpretation" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_velocity#Physical_interpr...</a> for more.<p>This experiment manages to measure the signal velocity for the leading photon and verifies what we already knew for larger signals.
hugh3almost 14 years ago
Kudos to the journalist here, it's hard to write a story on the subject "Thing, once thought to be completely fucking impossible, turns out to be completely fucking impossible".