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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhoa! A team of Scottish scientists have slowed the speed of light
A team of Scottish scientists has made light travel slower than the speed of light.
They sent photons - individual particles of light - through a special mask. It changed the photons' shape - and slowed them to less than light speed.
The photons remained travelling at the lower speed even when they returned to free space.
The experiment is likely to alter how science looks at light.
The collaborators - from Glasgow and Heriot-Watt universities - are members of the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance. They have published their results in the journal Science Express.
The speed of light is regarded as an absolute. It is 186,282 miles per second in free space.
Light propagates more slowly when passing through materials like water or glass but goes back to its higher velocity as soon as it returns to free space again.
Or at least it did until now.
Two and a half years ago, the experimenters set out to see if they could slow down light just a little - and keep it moving more slowly.
In a laboratory at Glasgow university, Dr Jacquiline Romero, Dr Daniel Giovannini and colleagues built what amounts to a racetrack for photons, the individual particles of light.
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More: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-30944584
If true....
Can this be replicated?
Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)kept the change.
(Please forgive me, St. Andrew)
pinboy3niner
(53,339 posts)Erich Bloodaxe BSN
(14,733 posts)I don't remember which book I read it in, but in one story or set of stories, there was a substance called 'slow glass', that allowed you to 'see the past', because light traveling through it traveled so slowly that you had to wait years or even decades to see something that had just happened on the other side.
Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)postulater
(5,075 posts)agent46
(1,262 posts)I think it was at MIT, using a Bose Einstein condensate. I don't remember the details now but I distinctly remember reading about this over ten years ago.
Response to Are_grits_groceries (Original post)
GummyBearz This message was self-deleted by its author.
Surya Gayatri
(15,445 posts)http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026126912