Perhaps they are referring to being able to vary the speed while it is below the speed of light. That is, slowing it down to 1/10th the speed of light, and then speeding it up to 1/5th the speed of light. Steve Brown ----- Original Message ----- From: "Fergie (Paul Ferguson)" <fergdawg@netzero.net> To: <nanog@merit.edu> Sent: Saturday, August 20, 2005 10:40 AM Subject: Semi-on-topic: Light that travels faster than the speed of light?
Man, I knew I should've gotten in on the ground floor in any effort to speed up light -- someone's going to be rich beyond their wildest dreams. :-)
(Thanks to a post over at Slashdot) the Science Blog reports that:
[snip]
A team of researchers from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) has successfully demonstrated, for the first time, that it is possible to control the speed of light - both slowing it down and speeding it up - in an optical fiber, using off-the-shelf instrumentation in normal environmental conditions. Their results, to be published in the August 22 issue of Applied Physics Letters, could have implications that range from optical computing to the fiber-optic telecommunications industry.
[snip]
http://www.scienceblog.com/light.html
- ferg
-- "Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson Engineering Architecture for the Internet fergdawg@netzero.net or fergdawg@sbcglobal.net ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/