strubenuff

Sorry to make you guys do my work, but I'm not very good at finding updates.

" For generations, physicists believed there is nothing faster than light moving through a vacuum -- a speed of 186,000 miles per second.

But in an experiment in Princeton, New Jersey, physicists sent a pulse of laser light through cesium vapor so quickly that it left the chamber before it had even finished entering.

The pulse traveled 310 times the distance it would have covered if the chamber had contained a vacuum.

Researchers say it is the most convincing demonstration yet that the speed of light -- supposedly an ironclad rule of nature -- can be pushed beyond known boundaries, at least under certain laboratory circumstances. "

~http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/space/...t.ap/index.html"

Wounded King

I am assured by my physicist friends, of whom I have none, that this is simply a misunderstanding of the concepts of group velocity and phase velocity on the part of the creationists.

There is other theoretical work suggesting that light can exceed C in a Kasimir field, but such a field is more rarified than vacuum.

NumberTenOx

I couldn't follow your link, so here is one to a CNN article.

Check out this site made by the experimenters, specifically look at the FAQ.

They state clearly that this experiment is in complete agreement with Einstein's theory of relativity, and that they are not transmitting any information faster than the speed of light. This experiment does not show that light from stars, for example, can travel faster than c.

Shadowy Man

Yes, the group v. phase velocity issue is what is confusing things here.

I consider this dishonest reporting, though I find the scientists partly to blame for it. I know that it got them to the front page, but sensationalism like this does not help scientists' causes.

Craig

It can get very tricky when you start talking about "time" and "light" together.

There are so many ways that you could play with the numbers that it's hard to say what they are really proving.