The only thing about being faster than light

It is only the most spectacular example of work by a wide range of researchers who have recently produced superluminal speeds of propagation in various materials, in hopes of finding a chink in Einstein's armor and of using the effect in practical applications like speeding up electrical circuits. Lijun Wang of the NEC Research Institute in Princeton, N.J., has been submitted to Nature and is undergoing peer review. That is so fast that, under these peculiar circumstances, the main part of the pulse exits the chamber even before it enters.ДЄ paper on the experiment, by Dr. In the most striking of the new experiments a pulse of light that passes through a transparent chamber filled with specially prepared cesium gas appears to be pushed to speeds of 300 times the normal speed of light. Einstein's theory survives, physicists say, but the results of the experiments, they agree, are mind-bending.

Using a combination of atomic and electromagnetic effects, researchers have produced light beams in the laboratory that appear to travel much faster than the normal speed of light. Two new experiments have demonstrated how flexible or misleading that comfortable wisdom can be in the right circumstances.

Nothing can travel faster than that speed, according to freshman textbooks and conversation at sophisticated wine bars if anything could, Einstein's theory of relativity would crumble, and theoretical physics would fall into disarray. The speed at which light travels through a vacuum, about 186,000 miles per second, is enshrined in physics lore as a universal speed limit.

The only thing about being faster than light