The Speed of Light Equals Zero

news.bbc.co.uk...

anouther link for you to look at also theres outher sub links on the page to

The speed off light has been slowing down right from
the beganing of time. Which means that the equation
e=mc2 is wrong and has never been right.

Originally posted by Raptor
The speed off light has been slowing down right from
the beganing of time. Which means that the equation
e=mc2 is wrong and has never been right.

Uhhh...evidence? Sources? And not just the pseudo-logical explanation that because the universe is slowing down since the big bang, so is light, because light from all directions, toward the source of the big bang and away travels at the same speed...

I think this makes it to the "post of the week" contender status, folks. Lots of nice info here!

Think about what a lightbeam might look like when slowed down or stopped: could you even see it? I mean won't it slow down reaching your eyes also? If not, then you'd actually see a slow beam just move through the location it's beamed through?

Lightsabers are too primitive and too dangerous anyway: without a jedi a slight misturn or accidental wobble the wrong way cuts off a piece of your body, so not worth the risk Though they COULD make even better star wars movies then.. poor stunt doubles :|

Oh and there is no "law" of physics that claims you cannot slow down light, there's the "THEORY" of relativity, but it doesn't have to hold true in a real experiment! It's a theory based on mathematical calculations, not actual physical experiment.. sometimes the two don't match. Maybe scientists will accidentally stumble on a time machine? If they manage to get something to travel through the antimatter universe, they'd effectively bend space/time while doing so, and just as effectively have a time machine.. but how does this relate to slowing down light? Well.. apparently if you reach light speed, time is supposed to stop, and if you go beyond that speed, does this mean you go backwards? In a relative sense, yes. But does slowing down light mean the same as reaching light speed? What happens to the time that's experienced BY the photons that are being slowed down.. interesting.

This is all very interesting to me. Please someone help me out if I'm drawing up the right conclusion here:

Scientists can stop light right? This means that you can't see it right? When light hits a black hole, it stops cuz the medium is so dense from gravitational force that even light cant penetrate it. The result is that black holes are invisible right? So does this mean we could apply this new discovery of how to stop light to make cloaking mechanisms for people jets or whatever you want to put it on? Am I getting this right, because IF I AM THIS IS FREAKIN AWESOME!!! If it is true, I bet the military already has some rudimentary cloaking technology! But, I coiuld just be retarded, so let me know.

Its a little way off from that yet ST, plus the mechanism isnt really that which would be useful as a cloaking device. Its more like trapping the light between two mirrors extremely close to each other. It can currently only be done for a very short time under specific conditions.

As far as black holes, the theory is the gravitational field is so intense that light cannot escape. But they are still detectable and do emit some radiation (Hawking radiation I think?).

[Edited on 15-12-2003 by Kano]

[quote]In quantum physics, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle states that one cannot simultaneously know both the position and the momentum of a given object to arbitrary precision. It furthermore precisely quantifies the imprecision. It is one of the cornerstones of quantum mechanics and was discovered by Werner Heisenberg in 1927.

So if they have slowed it down until it stopped that would mean that the "momentum" is known 100% positive as Zero. But according to the Uncertainty Principle doesn't that mean that it's "position" is known 0% positively as a result. If so then how do they know it's really trapped inbetween the reflective gas particles??

Originally posted by junglejake

Originally posted by Raptor
The speed off light has been slowing down right from
the beganing of time. Which means that the equation
e=mc2 is wrong and has never been right.

Uhhh...evidence? Sources? And not just the pseudo-logical explanation that because the universe is slowing down since the big bang, so is light, because light from all directions, toward the source of the big bang and away travels at the same speed...

This is how it goes it is impossible for the universe to be at spread out as it is, from the universes age 13 billion years old matter traveling at our speed of light couldn't have reached the edge of the universe, so the only answer to this is that the speed of light started slowing down after the formation of the universe.

and thats that.

[Edited on 17-12-2003 by Raptor]

E = m c2
Energy = Mass * Speed of light2

what do you say, why is it e=mc2 instead of e=msol2. this is where the flore in the equation lies. You see Instein put c or constant believing that light was one of the few constant in the universe.


link

I have seen the comment made before about the universe being too vast now that we know the 'exact' age of it. This relies on the assumption that the age is correct, and that the universe did start from a specific point and that the general laws and theories of physics as we discuss them here applied at that time. It is possible that any or all of those are incorrect. As for the article on the BBC site, they say "As the regenerated signal pulse tries to continue on its way through the glass cylinder, the photons bounce back and forth, but the overall signal pulse remains stationary. The light beam was essentially frozen." From that it reads to me that the actual photon was not frozen, but just delayed by the mirror method metioned earlier. In the paragraph before on that same article it talks of making an image of a photon then recreating it to send it on its way therefore not the same photon just a copy. Without knowing more about what was actually done it looks like the photon was never actually slowed to motionless.

[Edited on 20-12-2003 by StoneHook]

one fact that everyone seems to be leaving out is light has mass.....and any mass can be slowed down by friction

ummm.... someone please correct me if i'm wrong, but last i checked, light(photons) had no (at least measurable)mass.

Originally posted by chimpchimp
one fact that everyone seems to be leaving out is light has mass.....and any mass can be slowed down by friction

Photons (and therefore light) have no mass.

Originally posted by lilblam
Oh and there is no "law" of physics that claims you cannot slow down light, there's the "THEORY" of relativity, but it doesn't have to hold true in a real experiment! It's a theory based on mathematical calculations, not actual physical experiment.. sometimes the two don't match. Maybe scientists will accidentally stumble on a time machine? If they manage to get something to travel through the antimatter universe, they'd effectively bend space/time while doing so, and just as effectively have a time machine.. but how does this relate to slowing down light? Well.. apparently if you reach light speed, time is supposed to stop, and if you go beyond that speed, does this mean you go backwards? In a relative sense, yes. But does slowing down light mean the same as reaching light speed? What happens to the time that's experienced BY the photons that are being slowed down.. interesting.

Relativity is a very well tested theory. It was actually created after the Michelson-Morley experiment proved the speed of light is constant. Chris Hillman wrote a great article about Observational and Experimental evidence for Relativity.
It's impossible to reach the speed of light if you have mass, unless you have infinite energy. If you go near the speed of light the amount of energy needed to increase your speed increases really fast.

Does light have mass?
The short answer is "no", but it is a qualified "no" because there are odd ways of interpreting the question which could justify the answer "yes".

math.ucr.edu...

Light can be 'beaten' in velocity by nothing and has become standard of 'time' (albeit time is conceptual measure and incidentally pi is actually a fraud because there IS a perfect circle: Time. An hour is an hour) because light actually is 'motivator unto cause to incur casuality. Thus, light is any speed you place it at surrounding all other fractioned principalities or 'physics' which are merely proportionates to the momentuum/staticuum dy-nametrically oppositional diametricality. It moves as quick as one can imagine it as doing so.
"Think or do, think or do not."-The human condition.

E=MC2 is as to M/C=E-2

There was an article on thgis topic in Popular Science about one year ago. I think this is the first big step to uncover how to find the speed of light, as in a way to help with our space craft.