My Brain Hurts - physicists needed

[Dignified Pauper]

So... Light travelling faster than c turns out to be possible?

http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/light...rds-10590.html

http://physicsweb.org/articles/world/13/9/3/1


Science buffs, especially physics buffs, please inquire and enlighten me on what this is and why this is happening?

[Captain Maxx Power]

Light can, and has been, made to go slower and faster than c, as is explained in the articles you linked to. As to why light acts in the "reverse direction" as explained, you can't get much better than "because it does". You can create analogies to explain what's happening, but there's no explination as to why. These experiments to me say that light is in fact a physical substance, though I could be wrong I'm a casual physist at best.

[fire_of_avalon]

I don't know because that ain't what I do, but I'll send these to my friend Alli as she's a physics major and maybe she can explain!

[Raistlin]

*makes a note to ask smarter people about this*

[Old Manus]

speedhax!

[Dr Unne]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_o...nd_experiments

[-N-]

I can't explain the whole backwards light thing without resorting to some mass-energy idea which is probably wrong. But yeah, light can move faster or slower than c. Information transfer, however, is limited to c. That is, even if a light pulse were to exceed c, you wouldn't notice it any sooner than if it were traveling at c. I think.

[Big D]

Holy nuts that's cool. It's really pushing to the edge of what I understand, but the first article's explanation clarifies things pretty well. The second one mainly serves to set the record straight - that nothing's actual moving faster than the speed of light, and the universal speed limit is still good.[q=Teh Neel]That is, even if a light pulse were to exceed c, you wouldn't notice it any sooner than if it were traveling at c. I think.[/q]That's what the second article's lighthouse analogy was getting at, I think - the sweeping beam from a lighthouse could, theoretically, move faster than the speed of light; but the light that is shone on a single point is still moving only at the speed of light, and no faster.

Sad part is, though, this is the kind of thing that the mainstream media will ignore - if they even notice at all. Most likely, newspapers would have minor headlines like "Einstein was wrong" along with semi-informed mention of the speed of light "theory" being debunked.