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'Superluminal' Laser Questioned

Posted by michael on from the smoke-and-mirrors dept.

mreece writes: "Recently on Slashdot there was a discussion about researchers who claimed to have observed superluminal propagation of a laser pulse. Three researchers from the Naval Research Laboratory, Plasma Physics Division, in Washington D.C., claim that this is not a valid interpretation, and that the propagation was not superluminal. The preprint is available in PDF format from http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0010033. IANAP (yet), but it looks valid."

1 of 10 comments (clear)

  1. Nice animation by edboas · · Score: 3

    Even though the peak of the light pulse travels faster than c, no information actually travels faster than c. This animation nicely demonstrates the difference: http://www.netspace.net. au/ ~gregegan/APPLETS/20/20.html