light backwards is faster than light
Nov 14th, 2008 by Brad
As if light wasn’t mystical enough… imagine light traveling backwards a a speed faster-than-light just to fit the other laws of light. Yes strange indeed.
Light traveling backward faster than the Speed of light, copyright University of Rochester
Yes, current theories did predict this bizarre possibility that Robert Boyd discovered. Einstein, as it turns out, didn’t say nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, he said that “information can’t travel faster than light.”
This effect was created using exotic techniques and materials.
Boyd explains, “The pulse of light is shaped like a hump with a peak and long leading and trailing edges. The leading edge carries with it all the information about the pulse and enters the fiber first. By the time the peak enters the fiber, the leading edge is already well ahead, exiting. From the information in that leading edge, the fiber essentially ‘reconstructs’ the pulse at the far end, sending one version out the fiber, and another backward toward the beginning of the fiber.” “The backward pulse meets and cancels out the initial pulse, so only the final pulse remains.”
To read all about these strange behaviors see: http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=2544
Check out this animation: http://www.rochester.edu/news/photos/backward_light.mpg
