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Faster than the speed of light

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"The pair say they have conducted an experiment in which microwave photons - energetic packets of light - travelled "instantaneously" between a pair of prisms that had been moved up to 3ft apart."
Only 3ft? I'm sure it looked instantaneously. How can you possibly measure this?
Fez: I am so excited about Star Whores.
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Using sensitive, and expensive, scientific equipment. I'm sure they weren't just looking at it.
F Scale score - 3.3333333333333335

You are disciplined but tolerant; a true American.

Pissing off Rob since August 2007.
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Originally posted by: lordjedi
I'm sure they weren't just looking at it.

LOL
But still, it only takes the light about 0.000000003 seconds to travel 3ft.

Fez: I am so excited about Star Whores.
Hyde: Fezzy, man, it's Star Wars.
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Here is another article on this that make a little more sense.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html?in_article_id=475587&in_page_id=1965
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That does make more sense But I'm not convinced yet.
Fez: I am so excited about Star Whores.
Hyde: Fezzy, man, it's Star Wars.
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Originally posted by: Arnie.d
Originally posted by: lordjedi
I'm sure they weren't just looking at it.

LOL
But still, it only takes the light about 0.000000003 seconds to travel 3ft.


Which is longer than instantaneous. Pretty cool that it was a couple of Germans that discovered this. Seems like they made all the major breakthroughs of the last century (jet flight and atom bomb are two that come to mind).
F Scale score - 3.3333333333333335

You are disciplined but tolerant; a true American.

Pissing off Rob since August 2007.
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Wouldn't it be ironic if faster-than-light travel began as a lowly evention in an early 21st century German lab years before it had any practical application instead of one huge outer-space breakthrough along the lines of Star Trek's Zephram Cochran.

4

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Here's an even better explanation:

Scientists have finally exceeded the speed of light, causing a light pulse to travel hundreds of times faster than normal.

It raced so fast the pulse exited a specially-prepared chamber before it even finished entering it.

The experiment is the first-ever evidence of faster-than-light motion.


The NEC Research Institute lab

The result appears to be at odds with one of the basic principles of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, that nothing can go faster than the speed of light in a vacuum, about 186,000 miles per second.

However, Lijun Wang, one of the scientists from the NEC Research Institute in Princeton, N.J., says their findings are not at odds with Einstein.

She says their experiment only disproves the general misconception that nothing can move faster than the speed of light.

The scientific statement "nothing with mass can travel faster than the speed of light" is an entirely different belief, one that has yet to be proven wrong. The NEC experiment caused a pulse of light, a group of waves with no mass, to go faster than light.
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For the experiment, the researchers manipulated a vapour of laser-irradiated atoms that boost the speed of light waves causing a pulse that shoots through the vapour about 300 times faster than it would take the pulse to go the same distance in a vacuum.

Light travels slower in any medium more dense than a vacuum, which has no density at all. For example, light travelling through glass slows to two-thirds its speed in a vacuum. If the glass is altered, the light can be slowed even further.

The NEC team produced the opposite effect. Inside a chamber, they changed the state of a vapour in a way that light travelling through it would travel faster than normal.

When the pulse of light travelled through the vapour, the pulse reconfigured as some component waves stretched and others compressed. As the waves approached the end of the chamber, they recombined, forming the original pulse.

The key to the experiment was that the pulse reformed before it could have gotten there by simply travelling through empty space. This means that, when the waves of the light distorted, the pulse traveled forward in time.

The NEC researchers published their results in this week's issue of the journal Nature.

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

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Wouldn't it be ironic if faster-than-light travel began as a lowly evention in an early 21st century German lab years before it had any practical application instead of one huge outer-space breakthrough along the lines of Star Trek's Zephram Cochran.


Usually it is the small way that precedes the bigger application.

Couple this with the breakthrough in levitation, we're in for a fun ride into the next century here...
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I read that in 3 to 10 years we will be able to create artificial life. If I can find the article I'll show you.
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Originally posted by: sean wookie
I read that in 3 to 10 years we will be able to create artificial life. If I can find the article I'll show you.


Sex bots. I'm holding out for sex bots.