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Researchers in Switzerland have succeeded in breaking the cosmic speed limit by getting light to go faster than, well, light. Or is it all an illusion? Scientists have recently succeeded in doing all sorts of fancy things with light, including slowing it down and even stopping it all together. Now a team at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland is controlling the speed of light using simple off-the-shelf optical fibers, without the aid of special media such as cold gases or crystalline solids like in other experiments. “This has the enormous advantage of being a simple, inexpensive...

Work completed by physics professors at Rowan University shows that light is made of particles and waves, a finding that refutes a common belief held for about 80 years. Shahriar S. Afshar, the visiting professor who is currently at Boston's Institute for Radiation-Induced Mass Studies (IRIMS), led a team, including Rowan physics professors Drs. Eduardo Flores and Ernst Knoesel and student Keith McDonald, that proved Afshar’s original claims, which were based on a series of experiments he had conducted several years ago. An article on the work titled "Paradox in Wave-Particle Duality" recently published in Foundations of Physics, a prestigious,...

SYDNEY (Reuters) - A team of Australian scientists has proposed that the speed of light may not be a constant, a revolutionary idea that could unseat one of the most cherished laws of modern physics -- Einstein's theory of relativity. The team, led by theoretical physicist Paul Davies of Sydney's Macquarie University, say it is possible that the speed of light has slowed over billions of years. If so, physicists will have to rethink many of their basic ideas about the laws of the universe. "That means giving up the theory of relativity and E=mc squared and all that sort...

I speak with physicist Hamed Tarawneh at his cramped, dingy temporary office at UNESCO's headquarters in Amman. Tarawneh, a tall, broad-shouldered chain-smoker with a disarming smile, left years ago to get his Ph.D. in Sweden and returned to Jordan just a few months prior to our meeting. He is in the process of assembling a staff of engineers and technicians for SESAME (Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East), an international laboratory organized around a machine that has wide applications in physics, biology, medicine, and archaeology. Only a handful of these versatile light generators exist, and this...

Physicist Donald Marolf of the University of California, Santa Barbara, says the finding would be strengthened if it turned up in other models of quantum gravity, such as string theory. "No one has good control over this physics in any approach to quantum gravity," he says, "and it is important to explore a broad range of models and ideas."

The 'Pioneer anomaly' – the mystifying observation that NASA's two Pioneer spacecraft have drifted far off their expected paths – cannot be explained by tinkering with the law of gravity, a new study concludes. The study's author suggests an unknown, but conventional, force is instead acting on the spacecraft. But others say even more radical changes to the laws of physics could explain the phenomenon. Launched in the early 1970s, NASA's Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft are drifting out of the solar system in opposite directions, gradually slowing down as the Sun's gravity pulls back on them. But they are...

NASA is funding the development of lasers that could be placed on the Moon to check for subtle deviations from the standard theory of gravity. Lasers have been used to make very precise measurements of the Earth-Moon distance since the Apollo era, when astronauts left reflectors at three sites on the lunar surface. A fourth reflecting device is attached to a robotic lunar lander launched by the Soviet Union. To pin down the Moon's distance, scientists bounce light from Earth-based lasers off of these reflectors and measure how long it takes to return. Because the Moon's motion is governed by...

Gravity waves analysis opens 'completely new sense' PRESS RELEASE Washington University in St. Louis St. Louis, MO. -- Sometime within the next two years, researchers will detect the first signals of gravity waves -- those weak blips from the far edges of the universe passing through our bodies every second. Predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity, gravity waves are expected to reveal, ultimately, previously unattainable mysteries of the universe. Wai-Mo Suen, Ph.D., professor of physics at Washington University in St. Louis is collaborating with researchers nationwide to develop waveform templates to comprehend the signals to be analyzed. In...

1 The placebo effect DON'T try this at home. Several times a day, for several days, you induce pain in someone. You control the pain with morphine until the final day of the experiment, when you replace the morphine with saline solution. Guess what? The saline takes the pain away. This is the placebo effect: somehow, sometimes, a whole lot of nothing can be very powerful. Except it's not quite nothing. When Fabrizio Benedetti of the University of Turin in Italy carried out the above experiment, he added a final twist by adding naloxone, a drug that blocks the effects...

Amateur mathematician's time theories published at last 31.07.2003 11.04 am University drop-out Peter Lynds, 27, of Wellington says he has further plans for mathematical and philosophical explorations after publication of his theories on the nature of time. Mr Lynds, who studied at university for just six months, said his paper, Time and Classical and Quantum Mechanics: Indeterminacy vs Discontinuity, was being published in the August issue of a Dutch-based journal, Foundations of Physics Letters. The journal specialises in rapid dissemination of research in theoretical or mathematical physics, or the philosophy of science. Now a broadcasting school tutor, Mr Lynds said...

To see quantum effects in large objects, they must be cooled to near absolute zero. Such low temperatures can only be reached by keeping objects as motionless as possible. At absolute zero (0 Kelvin, -273 degrees Celsius or -460 degrees Fahrenheit), atoms lose all thermal energy and have only their quantum motion... the researchers report that they lowered the temperature of a dime-sized mirror to 0.8 degrees Kelvin... But in order to observe quantum behavior in an object of that size, the researchers need to attain a temperature that is still many orders of magnitude colder, Mavalvala said. To reach...

According to the researchers, if black holes exist, information formed in the initial state would disappear in the black hole through a burst of thermal radiation that carries no information about the initial state. Using the functional Schrodinger formalism, the researchers suggest that information about the energy from radiation is long evaporated before an event horizon forms. "An outside observer will never lose an object down a black hole," said Stojkovic. "If you are sitting outside and throwing something into the black hole, it will never pass over but will stay outside the event horizon even if one considers the...

For you physics lovers - this is really clever!

Neil Turok, professor of mathematical physics at Cambridge University. He is the co-author of the new book, "Endless Universe: Beyond the Big Bang."Alan Guth, professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of "The Inflationary Universe: The Quest for a New Theory of Cosmic Origins."Janna Levin, professor of physics and astronomy at Barnard College. She is the author of "How the Universe Got Its Spots: Diary of a Finite Time in a Finite Space."

MR. GRIFFIN: I have no doubt that global -- that a trend of global warming exists. I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with. To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of earth's climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn't change. First of all, I don't think it's within the power of human beings to assure that the climate does...

...what if the equivalence principle (EP) is wrong? Galileo's experiments were only accurate to about 1 [per cent], leaving room for doubt, and skeptical physicists have been "testing EP" ever since. The best modern limits, based on, e.g., laser ranging of the Moon to measure how fast it falls around Earth, show that EP holds within a few parts in a trillion (1012). This is fantastically accurate, yet the possibility remains that the equivalence principle could fail at some more subtle level. "It's a possibility we must investigate," says physicist Clifford Will of Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. "Discovering...

The new state is a solid filled with a collection of energy particles known as polaritons that have been trapped and slowed, explained lead investigator David Snoke, an associate professor in the physics and astronomy department in Pitt's School of Arts and Sciences. Snoke worked with Pitt graduate students Ryan Balili and Vincent Hartwell on the project. Using specially designed optical structures with nanometer-thick layers-which allow polaritons to move freely inside the solid-Snoke and his colleagues captured the polaritons in the form of a superfluid. In superfluids and in their solid counterparts, superconductors, matter consolidates to act as a single...

For a long time, Itzhak Bars has been studying time.. Einstein's theory of gravity and quantum theory don't fit together. Some piece is missing in the picture puzzle of physical reality. Bars thinks one of the missing pieces is a hidden dimension of time... With two times, Bars believes, many of the mysteries of today's laws of physics may disappear. Of course, it's not as simple as that. An extra dimension of time is not enough. You also need an additional dimension of space... Other dimensions could exist, however, if they were curled up in little balls, too tiny to...

...More than 100 scientists from across the globe are descending on McMaster University today... just 5 per cent of the universe is made up of matter we've long known about -- atoms, light, etc. The rest is mysterious dark matter (25 per cent) and the more recently discovered dark energy (70 per cent)... "For the first time in the history of man, it's possible to figure out the total energy in the universe, and the big news is that atoms are at most 5 per cent of what's out there," says Cliff Burgess, Mac professor of physics and astronomy, and...

IT HAS long been accepted, at least in theory, that other universes might exist and might even collide with ours. Yet the idea that we would ever be able to see the aftermath of such collisions, and so find evidence of other universes, has seemed beyond the scope of science. That is set to change. Anthony Aguirre of the University of California, Santa Cruz, thinks the proof of cosmic collisions could be all around us, as imprints in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) left over from the big bang. According to the standard model of cosmology, our universe underwent a...