[Ben Mugged]

Einstein must be spinning like a top (all except his brain which wasn't buried with him).

Read the source article, this extract does not do it justice......

[Junior]

Ping.

[SuzyQue]

bookmark

[spunkets]

"""In this way, one can argue that that the wave packet travels with velocities much higher than the velocities of light,"

All this means is that the shape of the wave changed. The velocity of energy propagaiton in any material is always less than c. Here they are simply talking about phase velocities which are related to wave shape, not energy propagation.

[Fighting Irish]

Allow me to reply to this.










...there.

[FreedomNeocon]

I would suspect they are just observing some lesser understood quantum mechanic, and mis-characterizing it.

I never was totally comfortable with the whole "Light is both a wave and a particle" explanation. Seemed like a similar cop-out to the whole dark matter idea when calculating the mass of the universe, or the entire understanding of 'strong' and 'weak' nuclear forces.

[Just another Joe]

Give me a practical application that will help the common man.......in the next 7 years.

[Brilliant]

It's a little misleading to confuse the phase velocity with the velocity of light, though it's hard to explain the difference to someone who has not been formally trained in physics.

[robertpaulsen]

"the ability of negatively refracted light to seemingly defy Einstein's theory of relativity and move backwards faster than the speed of light."

That's nothing. I had some stocks recently that moved backwards faster than the speed of light.

[ctdonath2]

(Pointless tangent)

Reminds me of...

Prosecutor: "Did you check for breathing?"
Defendant: "No."
P: "Did you check his pulse?"
D: "No."
P: "Did you, in fact, do ANYTHING to confirm whether the victim was, in fact, deceased?"
D: "No."
P: "Then how could you know he was, in fact, deceased?"
D: "His brain was sitting in a jar on my desk."

[AdmSmith]

Einstein must be spinning like a top

No this is not strange.

Although somewhat counterintuitive, a negative index of refraction doesn't break any laws of physics because the math works out, said Schultz. In fact Russian physicist V. G. Veselago pointed this out in a little-known paper published in 1968, Schultz said.

All electromagnetic waves harbor both electric and magnetic fields. In order to have a negative index of refraction, a material must have both a negative electrical field, or permittivity, and a negative magnetic field, or permeability.

A material's index of refraction is the square of its permittivity times its permeability. The counterintuitive part is, because a negative number times a negative number is a positive number, it seems like the index of refraction is destined to remain positive. "When you go to take that square root, if you are a little sloppy you think of it also as positive. But because the negative of the square root can be positive or negative," it is mathematically possible to get a negative index of refraction, said Schultz.
http://www.trnmag.com/Stories/041101/Material_bends_microwaves_backwards_041101.html

[IronJack]

I'm proud to say that I passed Classical Physics at Iowa State. In my experience, the tests there were every bit as difficult to understand as this.

[PMCarey]

I disagree with the next post. Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light and you CAN'T travel back in time!!!

[PMCarey]

I think faster-than-light travel would be great and I look forward to travelling backward in time! Comments?

[mike70]

mark it for later

[LegionofDorkness]

186,000 miles per second. Its not just a good idea, its the law.

[AxelPaulsenJr]

Mark for later read:

[Conan the Librarian]

Everybody knows that the Scientist will one day increase the speedlimit on light so that ships can go faster without breaking the law. Saw it on Futurama...so it must be true.

[freeangel]

Just, wow!

[sauropod]

review

[mysterio]

Pretty neat, if genuine.