Originally posted by: Cogman
heres an interesting question then, Scientists have made light travel FASTER then the speed of light (something to the effect of 350x the speed of light), So how does that work? after all the speed light in a vaccum was supposed to be the Ultimate speed limit correct?
That's just the sensationalist headline in the newspapers
Normally, photons look sorta like this:
..::||::..
They blur in, have a meaty part, and blur out. When you try to detect a photon, it's a probability function for what part of the photon you have to see in order to detect it. Some photons get detected with the first . some with the last . but most are detected when the || part hits the detector. Now, when you pass a photon through a very very thing barrier (mica for instance), the photons tunnel through the mica and sometimes emerge looking like this:
...:::||:.
So the meat of the photon is shifted forward. It's frontmost point is still in line with the one from above, but as you can see, it's more likely to be detected earlier than the upper photon I drew.