Scientists claim they have broken the ultimate speed barrier: the speed of light. In research carried out in the United States, particle physicists have shown that light pulses can be celerated to up to 300 times their normal velocity of 186,000 miles per second.
The implications, like the speed, are mind-boggling. On one interpretation it means that light will arrive at its destination almost before it has started its journey. In effect, it is leaping forward in time.
Exact details of the findings remain confidential because they have been submitted to Nature, the international scientific journal, for review prior to possible publication.
The work was carried out by Dr Lijun Wang, of the NEC research institute in Princeton, who transmitted a pulse of light towards a chamber filled with specially treated caesium gas.
Before the pulse had fully entered the chamber it had gone right through it and travelled a further 60ft across the laboratory. In effect it existed in two places at once, a phenomenon that Wang explains by saying it travelled 300 times faster than light.
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