In the past few years, scientists have found ways to make light go both faster and slower than its usual speed limit, but now researchers at the University of Rochester have published a paper today in Science on how they've gone one step further: pushing light into reverse. As if to defy common sense, the backward-moving pulse of light travels faster than light.
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Light travelling backwards is faster than light.
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Sorry, but this doesn't make any sense.
Speed (including light speed) is non-directional. If it had direction, then it would be velocity, not speed.
For example, a train going 50 m.p.h. north is going the opposing velocity of a train going 50 m.p.h. south, but both trains are travelling at the same speed.
Speed goes from zero to "C" (according to Einstein) ...but there is no negative speed. Light cannot travel backwards... If it tried, it would just be light going in the opposite direction.
Q.E.D.
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Doesn't make sense. A photon traveling at the speed of light is not traveling in time by its own frame of reference. Therefore, it can be anywhere in the universe. Its vector becomes irrelevent. Things get even weirder at speeds above light (theoretically speaking, of course). The would photon then appear to travel backwards in time."And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man." -- JFK Inaugural, 1961
"Extremism in the defense of liberty is not a vice." -- Barry Goldwater, 1964 GOP Nomination acceptance speech (not George W. Bush 40 years later...)
2004 Presidential Candidate
2008 Presidential Candidate (for what its worth)
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How can you go slower than slow?"Wait a minute..this isn''t FAUX dive, it's just a DIVE!"
"...Mangy dog staggering about, looking vainly for a place to die."
"sauna stories? There are no 'sauna stories'.. I mean.. sauna is sauna. You do by the laws of sauna." -P.
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Re: Light travelling backwards is faster than light.
Originally posted by Sn00py
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So there.
12-17-10 Mohamed Bouazizi NEVER FORGET
Stadtluft Macht Frei
Killing it is the new killing it
Ultima Ratio Regum
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I suppose there's probably some useful work to be done in optics using these types of experiments. But there's no fundamentally new physics here.12-17-10 Mohamed Bouazizi NEVER FORGET
Stadtluft Macht Frei
Killing it is the new killing it
Ultima Ratio Regum
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Originally posted by Kuciwalker
KH beat me to it12-17-10 Mohamed Bouazizi NEVER FORGET
Stadtluft Macht Frei
Killing it is the new killing it
Ultima Ratio Regum
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Originally posted by Kuciwalker
12-17-10 Mohamed Bouazizi NEVER FORGET
Stadtluft Macht Frei
Killing it is the new killing it
Ultima Ratio Regum
Comment
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"But he's now taken what was once just a mathematical oddity—negative speed—and shown it working in the real world."
What is this pre-existing 'mathematical oddity' called negative speed?
I've never heard of it. Is this a reporter created term?"Wait a minute..this isn''t FAUX dive, it's just a DIVE!"
"...Mangy dog staggering about, looking vainly for a place to die."
"sauna stories? There are no 'sauna stories'.. I mean.. sauna is sauna. You do by the laws of sauna." -P.
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Originally posted by Seeker
I've never heard of it. Is this a reporter created term?"And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man." -- JFK Inaugural, 1961
"Extremism in the defense of liberty is not a vice." -- Barry Goldwater, 1964 GOP Nomination acceptance speech (not George W. Bush 40 years later...)
2004 Presidential Candidate
2008 Presidential Candidate (for what its worth)
Comment
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Originally posted by Seeker
"But he's now taken what was once just a mathematical oddity—negative speed—and shown it working in the real world."
What is this pre-existing 'mathematical oddity' called negative speed?
I've never heard of it. Is this a reporter created term?12-17-10 Mohamed Bouazizi NEVER FORGET
Stadtluft Macht Frei
Killing it is the new killing it
Ultima Ratio Regum
Comment
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