New Crystal Enables Faster Than Light Travel !!!

Light travels in a vaccuum at around 186,000 miles per second (okay, okay, around 300,000 kilometers per second), which, of course, can easily be demonstrated with yummy marshmallows. (If you’re not hungry or want to use fancier equipment, you can always use a telescope and go look at Jupiter instead.) As far as we know right now, nothing can travel faster than the speed of light in a vaccuum. However, light itself can travel more slowly than its vaccuum speed if it’s traveling in something else – water, for example. Although this “slower light” can lead to some neat visual effects, (including some that don’t require a nuclear reactor), don’t kid yourself – the light in these cases hasn’t really slowed down by very much at all compared to its vaccuum speed.

So…if water and prism glass can slow light down a little, are there other substances that can slow light down a lot? As scientists have discovered in just the past few years, the answer is yes. As reported by Belle Dum, Science Writer at PhysicsWeb, previously super-slow light had only been observed at cryogenic temperatures or in complicated experimental set-ups. Now physicists have created “slow” and “fast” light in a crystal at room temperature for the first time. The team at the University of Rochester in the U.S. used an ‘alexandrite‘ crystal to reduce the speed of light to just 91 metres per second and also to make a laser pulse travel faster than the speed of light. The new technique could be used for applications such as optical data storage, optical memories, and quantum information devices (M Bigelow et al. 2003 Science 301 200).

Light travels at a speed of 300 million metres per second in a vacuum, but in recent years physicists have managed to slow laser pulses down to speeds of metres per second – or to bring them to a complete halt – in ultracold gases. In similar experiments physicists have observed superluminal or faster-than-light pulse propagation. These effects have also been observed in crystals at cryogenic temperatures and in “hot” gases. Now Matthew Bigelow, Nick Lepeshkin and Robert Boyd have observed the same effects in a much simpler system – a crystal at room temperature. “If that [cryogenic methods] was the world’s hardest way to slow down light, then what we’ve found is the world’s easiest way to do it,” says Boyd. “We can slow light just as much in a space the size of a desktop computer.”

All the experiments exploit changes in the refractive index of an optical medium caused by quantum interference effects. Whereas previous experiments relied on a process known as “electromagnetically induced transparency,” the Rochester team exploited “coherent population oscillations” in the crystal. This involves shining two lasers – a pump beam and a weaker probe beam – at the crystal. Under certain conditions the probe beam experiences reduced absorption over a narrow range of wavelengths. The refractive index also increases rapidly in this “spectral hole,” which leads to a much reduced group velocity – the velocity at which a laser pulse travels – for the probe beam.

Earlier this year, the Rochester team used this technique to reduce the group velocity of a laser pulse to 58 metres per second in a ruby crystal at room temperature. Bigelow and co-workers have now repeated this feat in a crystal of alexandrite. Moreover, by using different wavelengths they can make a spectral “antihole” in which the absorption is higher and which leads to superluminal propagation. They observed light speeds of 91 metres per second for a laser with a wavelength of 488 nanometres and minus 800 metres per second for wavelengths of 476 nanometres. Negative speeds indicate superluminal velocities because the pulses appear to leave the crystal before they enter it under these conditions.

“Our technique is applicable to many solid materials, not just alexandrite,” Lepeshkin told PhysicsWeb. “Another important feature of our approach is the ability to cover a fairly broad range of optical frequencies.” The researchers will now investigate solid state materials with higher bandwidth to use in their system that are suitable for communication applications.

So…want to travel faster than the speed of light? Drive by the University of Rochester Optics Lab sometime, and you will be. And give the researchers there working in this area a cheer as you go by – this is probably the work that’s going to lead to faster-than-light “subspace” radio communications and maybe even “warp drive” where we learn to travel in a new kind of space where the mere vaccuum of ordinary space is just another kind of light-slowing alexandrite.

14 thoughts on “New Crystal Enables Faster Than Light Travel !!!”

  1. In the post it stated the following:

    “…and minus 800 metres per second for wavelengths of 476 nanometres. Negative speeds indicate superluminal velocities because the pulses appear to leave the crystal before they enter it under these conditions.”

    If you consider the crystal to be 1 cm long then light traveling at that speed (we’ll convert to cm…minus 800m/s = minus 80,000cm/s) we’ll have a time advance of a mere 1/80,000th of a second. Ok, so don’t buy your lotto tickets yet but suppose the output of one crystal with it’s 1/80,000th advance went into another crystal. The systems total output would be cumulitive. So take 80,000 of these in series and you’re a second ahead of the game. Insert a binary stream at the start, say the lotto winning numbers, and one second before the balls drop you already know. And perhaps there is a way to use the same crystal but have it loop back into itself so as to remove the need to have +80,000 crystal to have fun. Now I’m sure my logic is screwy, please help me see just how far off I am. But if not, I’m going back to the future with a ruby and a web cam!

    -thax in advanced

  3. alexandrite is a ferroelctric ore.

    Colossal Storage Corp. has patented " photon induced electric field poling" 5 years ago .

    Colossal has first ever patents in any field
    teaching something totally new using ferroelectrics.

    NY Uni. calls theirs " electro magnetic poling"

    http://www.colossalstorage.net

    Way too much similarity of NY concept to the
    original creation by Michael E. Thomas.

  4. Maybe not 80,000 Crystal what about a Loop of crystals or reflect through multiple times, i guess we’ll know if a few scientists start winning lotto. But seriously the key wording here is “appears” so we have a) experimental error b) equipment error c) limitations d) a real possibility of faster than light travel causes time travel

  5. The size of a PC?

    I can’t hang that from my rear view mirror! My car will never go FTL!

  6. I may have overlooked something, or not followed a link I should have, but I dont see how slowing light down allows superluminal travel.
    By defenition, you could travel faster than light, but that’s only because it’s slower than it was, not because you caught up with it.

    The way I percieve it is that I can out run the 100m dash Olympian Gold Medalist, if I can trick him into walking. But that doesent make me truely faster than him.

  8. I read a while back that early light speed alteration experiments were not really slowing or speeding up light but moving the photonic energy forward a bit or back. A photon is not a finite point of energy, it is more like a egg. The preverbial yoke is the measured energy and the white stuff is the potential yoke’s position, man i’m kinda hungry now. I can’t find the article I read this in but if someone knows what i’m talking about please post a link. anyways, I hope the 1/80,000th of a second advance is not due to this nudging of photons but it might be, donno.

  9. …and what happens when you intend to fire the laser into the crystal, the output pulse comes out, but you then don’t fire the pulse which caused the preceding pulse?

    Oh, yeah, the Universe is destroyed. I hate when that happens.

  11. NAW! The whole universe isn’t destroyed! A whole new universe is created at the point where the decision is made… I guess that means that if you’re indecisive you exist in a state of superposition in multiple universes…?

  12. Looking for what has happened to Colossal’s development. Recently heard on PBS that the inventor of FM was driven to suicide by RCA whom he was working for at the time. RCA stalled his development until they implemented their own. And of course remember the inventor of AC when Edison was pushing DC. He was “asked” for a pass on paying him royalties as Westinghouse couldn’t afford it. Ended up in a sleeping in a room and feeding pidgeons in the park. Of course, we honor his memory with a prize in his field which is the American way–always cheap.

    Ms Kate Sisco

  13. Looking for what has happened to Colossal’s development. Recently heard on PBS that the inventor of FM was driven to suicide by RCA whom he was working for at the time. RCA stalled his development until they implemented their own. And of course remember the inventor of AC when Edison was pushing DC. He was “asked” for a pass on paying him royalties as Westinghouse couldn’t afford it. Ended up in a sleeping in a room and feeding pigeons in the park, of course we now honor him with a prize in his field which is the American way–always cheap. Ms Kate Sisco

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