Scientists have apparently broken the universe’s speed limit.
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, N.J., 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. “This effect cannot be used to send information
back in time,” said Lijun Wang, a researcher with the private
NEC Institute. “However, our experiment does show that the
generally held misconception that ‘nothing can travel faster
than the speed of light’ is wrong.” The results were published
in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature.