Sunday, January 25, 2015

Creation Moment 1/26/2015 - Light Undone

I form the light, and create darkness:
Isaiah 45:7
"A team of Scottish scientists has made light travel slower than the speed of light.
They sent photons - individual particles of light - through a special mask. It changed the photons' shape - and slowed them to less than light speed.

The photons remained travelling at the lower speed even when they returned to free space.
The experiment is likely to alter how science looks at light.


The speed of light is regarded as an absolute. It is 186,282 miles per second in free space.
Light propagates more slowly when passing through materials like water or glass but goes back to its higher velocity as soon as it returns to free space again.
Or at least it did until now.
Two and a half years ago, the experimenters set out to see if they could slow down light just a little - and keep it moving more slowly.
In a laboratory at Glasgow university, Dr Jacquiline Romero, Dr Daniel Giovannini and colleagues built what amounts to a racetrack for photons, the individual particles of light.

Light travelling at less than the speed of light. Whose bright idea was that?
It grew from a conversation between Prof Daniele Faccio at Heriot-Watt University and Prof Miles Padgett at Glasgow.

There are some practical implications. Light is used to make extremely precise measurements such as how far the Moon is from Earth.
The good news is that we are not in for any nasty surprises on that scale. But researchers using large aperture lenses to accurately measure very short distances may be forced to take a second look for tardy photons." BBC

Uhm...Doesn't that possibility of light not being constant possibly mess up all "scientific" measurements of time in cosmology? Just saying....