Posted on 07/25/2006 10:13:18 AM PDT by Ben Mugged
Physicist Costas Soukoulis and his research group at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory on the Iowa State University campus are having the time of their lives making light travel backwards at negative speeds that appear faster than the speed of light.
~snip~ This backward-bending characteristic of metamaterials allows enhanced resolution in optical lenses, which could potentially lead to the development of a flat superlens with the power to see inside a human cell and diagnose disease in a baby still in the womb.
~snip~ In addition, Soukoulis and his University of Karlsruhe colleagues have also shown that both the velocity of the individual wavelengths, called phase velocity, and the velocity of the wave packets, called group velocity, are both negative, which Soukoulis said accounts for the ability of negatively refracted light to seemingly defy Einstein's theory of relativity and move backwards faster than the speed of light.
Elaborating, Soukoulis said, "When we have a metamaterial with a negative index of refraction at 1.5 micrometers that can disperse, or separate a wave into spectral components with different wavelengths, we can tune our lasers to play a lot of games with light. We can have a wavepacket hit a slab of negative index material, appear on the right-hand side of the material and begin to flow backward before the original pulse enters the negative index medium."
Continuing, he explained that the pulse flowing backward also releases a forward pulse out the end of the medium, a situation that causes the pulse entering the front of the material appear to move out the back almost instantly.
"In this way, one can argue that that the wave packet travels with velocities much higher than the velocities of light," said Soukoulis.
(Excerpt) Read more at spacedaily.com ...
That's unlikely to affect this research, any more than it affects research on superconducters.
It's not a cop-out.
It's that the universe fundamentally operates in ways a lot different that our extremely narrow perceptions indicate.
It's that "waves" and "particles" are in fact the same thing, just showing certain facets more promenantly than others (kinda like the outside of your head looks a lot different than the inside).
The Wright brothers were asked a similar question.
I guess it's sort of like when you see movies of automobiles and the wheels look like they are turning backwards. Of course, they aren't really turning backwards, but because the shutter speed of the video or movie camera is different from the speed that the wheels on the vehicle are rotating, they look like the wheels are moving backward.
Very rough analogy, but I don't know how else to explain it.
I've illustrated the "photonic bandgap" problem as a long train leaving Washington D.C. for Baltimore, where the length of the train is a significant fraction of the distance between the cities. The train is not said to "leave" or "arrive" until the center of the train gets to the station. Just as the train is approaching Baltimore, the engine detaches from the rest of the train, and it "arrives" in Baltimore when the center of the engine gets to the station, which happens to be in record time.
"Give me a practical application that will help the common man.......in the next 7 years."
Did you read the article? No? Well why should we do your work for you?
Nice try. I'm not sure that would clear it up to the average guy, though.
Another way I've heard it explained is in reference to water waves... Drop a stone in the water and watch the waves. It's not just one wave, but several ripples which spread out in concentric circles from the point of impact. The wave front moves at a specific rate of speed, which is the group velocity analogous to the speed of light, but if you look at each ripple in the group, and follow it carefully, then you will notice that each ripple starts at the inside of the circle of waves, then slowly moves up the pack until it is on the outside of the wave packet. Obviously, the ripples are each moving faster than the wave packet as a whole. That is the phase velocity.
But it's still a little esoteric for the Bud Light crowd.
If you did you would have seen that I did read the article and saw no practical application affecting the common man in the next X years.
I'm not saying the research shouldn't be done.
Great things have come out of research that no one thought was important.
I wanted to know if anyone saw a practical application for this in the next 7 years.
If you did you would have seen that I did read the article and saw no practical application affecting the common man in the next X years.
I'm not saying the research shouldn't be done.
Great things have come out of research that no one thought was important.
I wanted to know if anyone saw a practical application for this in the next 7 years.
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.
Sorry about the double post, my PC hiccuped.
Time warp due to a negative index of refraction.
Would that be in the next 7 years, or the past 7 years? (jk) ;^)
mark it for later
186,000 miles per second. Its not just a good idea, its the law.
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