Well I never claimed to be a physicist; I'm just a guy who reads a lot. When I read that Australians are doing some interesting things with light, I thought "hey, maybe we don't know as much about light as we think we do." That is the beauty of
real science is that as we gather more and more evidence about the Universe we live in, whether our current theories are either proven or disproven, new ideas, new theories are developed based on the evidence.
Considering some of the things that "science" used to hold as true, which later was revealed to be false, the idea of the speed of light being a constant, in my hallucination, could be one of those things. Here are some examples of "science" that later turned out to be false:
Spontaneous Generation - the idea that an old blanket or and old pair of underwear and some wheat grains could "spontaneously generate" mice. Or meat would spontaneously generate maggots and flies. Muddy soil gave birth to frogs, worms and beetles. This was "science" until the 18th century.
The "tongue map" where certain parts of the tongue are responsible for different types of tastes - bitter, sour, salty and sweet being different parts of the tongue (heck I remember being taught this in 8th grade biology) has recently been proven to be false.
Physicists used to believe that the space between the earth, the sun and the other planets was something called "aether."
At the beginning the industrial revolution, when trains were first invented, physicians and psychologists wrote medical journals explaining how traveling too much on a train would cause insanity as the jarring motion of a train damaged the brain. There was also discussion on whether or not people would be able to breath at higher speeds.
Mercury was once considered a safe disinfectant, laxative and cure for syphilis.
in the mid 1800's when a physician from Hungary suggested that doctors should wash their hands after examining a patient his peers literally mocked & laughed him into an asylum as he suffered from a nervous breakdown due to their response.
Also before the mid 1800's disease was thought to be spread by "miasma" (poisonous air rising up from the ground as a result of decaying organic matter).
So with everything we have learned from science over the years, including the things we thought were true that turned out to be not true. Could it be that "the Speed of Light" is something that we have misunderstood, especially considering what modern science is doing with light?
Two years ago we slowed it down to 38 miles an hour now weve been able to park it then bring it back up to full speed. Lene Hau isnt talking about a used motorbike, but about light &mdash that ethereal, life-sustaining stuff that normally travels 93 million miles from the sun in about eight minutes.
news.harvard.edu
They may not be wearing the robes of Jedi warriors, but Australian scientists have created their own version of a Star Wars scene by stopping light in a cloud of very cold atoms, a development that provides a essential building block for quantum computing.
www.abc.net.au
