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Harvard Physicist Totally Pwns Einstein
Albert Einstein's theory of relativity (the special or the general, or both, I can never remember) states, among other things, that the speed of light is constant and that nothing can exceed that speed.
Harvard physics professor Lene Hau suspects old Alby was using some kind of showboating Globetrotter algebra (all razzamatazz).
"Two years ago we slowed it down to 38 miles an hour; now we've been able to park it then bring it back up to full speed." Lene Hau isn't talking about a used motorbike, but about light – that ethereal, life-sustaining stuff that normally travels 93 million miles from the sun in about eight minutes.
Hau, 41, a professor of physics at Harvard, admits that the famous genius would "probably be stunned" at the results of her experiments. Working at the Rowland Institute for Science, overlooking the Charles River and the gold dome of the state Capitol in Boston, she and her colleagues slowed light 20 million-fold in 1999, to an incredible 38 miles an hour. They did it by passing a beam of light through a small cloud of atoms cooled to temperatures a billion times colder than those in the spaces between stars. The atom cloud was suspended magnetically in a chamber pumped down to a vacuum 100 trillion times lower than the pressure of air in the room where you are reading this.
"It's nifty to look into the chamber and see a clump of ultracold atoms floating there," Hau says. "In this odd state, light takes on a more human dimension; you can almost touch it."
She and her team continued to tweak their system until they finally brought light to a complete stop.
In addition to fooling your friends and sticking it to Einstein, the parlor trick holds the promise for some useful applications as well, like quantum computing, unhackable communications, and possibly a thin premise for a Real Genius sequel.
"Wouldn't that be nifty!" Hau says.
(HT: Not So Fast)
Handcrafted by Flip on February 8, 2007 |
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Comments
That is a very cool experiment, but being a geek I think I see two errors in quoting what Ol' Einy-boy actually said that work to his credit: "speed of light _in a vaccuum_ is constant" and "nothing _can cross_ that speed of light". Hau et. al. are doing very cool stuff (go team!), but not in a vaccuum, and Tachyons are the theoretical particles that _only_ go faster than the speed of light and cannot cross it to be slower. I don't know if that means we can now find Tachyons going 39 mph in their chamber... Thanks for the cool story!Posted by: Quadko | Feb 8, 2007 5:39:08 PM
You wrote: "Albert Einstein's theory of relativity (the special or the general, or both, I can never remember) states, among other things, that the speed of light is constant and that nothing can exceed that speed." In fact, Einstein's theory is an inconsistency (based on two incompatible principles) and this allows it to draw support from various tests. So when in 1960 Pound and Rebka measured the gravitational redshift factor 1+V/c^2 this confirmed Einstein's theory because the factor was consistent with Einstein's true principle of variability of the speed of light c'=c(1+V/c^2) advanced in 1911. If Pound and Rebka had measured no redshift (factor=1) this would again have confirmed Einstein's theory because the result would have been consistent with Einstein's false principle of constancy of the speed of light c'=c advanced in 1905. Relativity would have been abandoned long time ago (all clever relativists know it is a fraud) but this theory is a money-spinner and clever relativists have not yet found a new money-spinner to replace the old one. Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.comPosted by: Pentcho Valev | Feb 18, 2007 2:54:36 AM
I can't rmemember hearing anything about slowing down light ;) As far as i know Einstein just gave the absolute speed of light. Light slows down in lot's of substances, f ex water..Get your facts straight, don't fall ino pseudotrapsPosted by: yoron | Feb 21, 2007 4:05:49 PM
I can't rmemember hearing anything about slowing down light ;) As far as i know Einstein just gave the absolute speed of light. Light slows down in lot's of substances, f ex water..Get your facts straight, don't fall ino pseudotrapsPosted by: yoron | Feb 21, 2007 4:06:32 PM
HOW FRAGILE SCIENCE IS. At first sight, Einstein's crime is a small crime. Initially he adopted the emission theory of light, c'=c+v, where c' is the speed of photons as measured by an observer, c=300000km/s is the CONSTANT speed of the photons RELATIVE TO THE LIGHT SOURCE and v is the relative speed of the source and the observer. Then he realized it would be more profitable for him to become a divine creator of miracles (time dilation, length contraction etc.) and accordingly introduced the false principle of (absolute) constancy of the speed of light, c'=c: http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001743/02/Norton.pdf (John Norton, "Einstein's Investigations of Galilean Covariant Electrodynamics prior to 1905"). In the end Einstein realized the false principle of (absolute) constancy of the speed of light was too dangerous and partially restored the truth by recognizing that the speed of light varied with the gravitational potential (see Chapter 22 in his "Relativity"). However his miracles killed theoretical physics (it was already half dead since entropy miracles had been ravaging for 50 years). So nowadays Einsteinians make money essentially in two ways. On one hand, they continue to destroy human rationality by teaching Einstein's miracles; on the other, they constantly "improve" Einstein's theory by camouflaging the antecedent of the miracles, the false principle of (absolute) constancy of the speed of light. Einsteinians can even go so far as to say Einstein's special relativity is wrong: http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_4.3/smolin.htm Lee Smolin: "Quantum theory was not the only theory that bothered Einstein. Few people have appreciated how dissatisfied he was with his own theories of relativity. Special relativity grew out of Einstein's insight that the laws of electromagnetism cannot depend on relative motion and that the speed of light therefore must be always the same, no matter how the source or the observer moves. Among the consequences of that theory are that energy and mass are equivalent (the now-legendary relationship E = mc2) and that time and distance are relative, not absolute. Special relativity was the result of 10 years of intellectual struggle, yet Einstein had convinced himself it was wrong within two years of publishing it." Scientists would not react to Einsteinians' discovery that special relativity is wrong. They know: just another original way of making money. Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.comPosted by: Pentcho Valev | Mar 5, 2007 3:19:15 AM
THE IDIOCY IN THE WORLD OF EINSTEIN. http://www.itnews.com.au/newsstory.aspx?CIaNID=47047&src=site-marq : "In the experiment a beam of light was passed through a specially prepared caesium atomic chamber. The beam of light arrived at the far end 62 nanoseconds sooner than would be expected under normal conditions. "Our experiment is not at odds with Einstein's special relativity, but it does show that the generally held misconception that nothing can move faster than the speed of light is wrong," the laboratory reported. "The statement only applies to objects with a rest mass. Light can be viewed as waves and has no mass. Therefore, it is not limited by its speed inside a vacuum." In the world of Einstein, except for a few "crackpots", nobody would see anything idiotic in the above quotation. Rather, Einsteinians would resume their endless discussion about group and phase velocity and, after disentangling some initial confusion, would reach again the most important conclusion: "In sum: phase and group velocity may exceed c, but frontal velocity cannot exceed c." Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.comPosted by: Pentcho Valev | Mar 7, 2007 2:29:11 AM
RELATIVISTS MAY ALLOW THE SPEED OF LIGHT TO VARY. But: http://physicsweb.org/articles/world/15/9/7/1 : "Even if we have to allow the speed of light to vary, it doesn't mean that we will have to completely abandon the theory of relativity - it would mean that it would be good under almost all circumstances and we could embed it in some theory that is not too different from what we understand." Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.comPosted by: Pentcho Valev | Mar 21, 2007 4:12:44 AM
RELATIVISTS GUESS WHY DIVINE ALBERT ABANDONED THE EMISSION THEORY. http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teaching/HPS_0410_2007/lectures/origins/index.html John Norton, "Origins of Special Relativity": "We know from later recollections what one of Einstein's modified versions of electrodynamics looked like. In that version, the velocity of light is a constant, not with respect to the ether, but with respect to the source that emits the light. Such a theory is called an "emission" theory of light and, if the other parts of the theory are well behaved, will satisfy the principle of relativity. Einstein later recalled that the theory he developed was essentially that developed later by Walther Ritz in 1908.....It was a lovely theory. But it didn't work. WE CAN ONLY GUESS WHAT THE PROBLEMS WERE. BUT WE KNOW HE FOUND MANY. Indeed Einstein seems to have expended considerable energy finding trying to figure out if any emission theory might work. His later recollections are littered with different reasons for why no emission at all could do justice to electrodynamics." Relativists' reasoning is straightforward: since Divine Albert found many problems, the emission theory had to be abandoned. True, relativists still do not know what those problems were but that is normal when you deal with Divine Albert. You can know what Divine Albert did but CAN ONLY GUESS why he did it. Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.comPosted by: Pentcho Valev | Mar 23, 2007 4:13:12 AM
CRITICISM IN THE WORLD OF EINSTEIN. http://www.phil-inst.hu/PIRT.Budapest : "Mathematics, Physics and Philosophy in the Interpretations of Relativity Theory" - Budapest, Hungary, 7-9 September 2007. Objectives: "While the organizing committee encourages critical investigations and welcomes both Einsteinian and non-Einsteinian (Lorentzian, etc.) approaches, including the recently proposed ether-type theories, it is assumed that the received formal structure of the theory is valid and anti-relativistic papers will not be accepted." Ignatius of Loyola: "That we may in all things attain the truth, that we may not err in anything, we ought ever to hold it a fixed principle, that what I see white I believe to be black if the Romish Church define it so to be". http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/ George Orwell "1984": "In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense. And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable what then?" Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.comPosted by: Pentcho Valev | Mar 24, 2007 5:31:18 AM
EINSTEINIANS WILL REFUTE EINSTEIN IN 2015. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17260859 : "LISA is scheduled to launch in 2015. "No one has detected gravitational waves yet. If LISA flies and works properly, it will detect gravitational waves from astronomical sources," Richstone said. "If it doesn't, then Einstein's theory of general relativity is wrong." In fact, Einsteinians tried to refute Einstein in 1960 but failed. At that time Pound and Rebka had measured a frequency shift f'=f(1+V/c^2) and many Einsteinians suspected that this result confirmed Einstein's 1911 equation according to which the speed of light is variable: c'=c(1+V/c^2). However simultaneously Einsteinians discovered that nothing can refute Einstein's theory, even Einstein's own equations. Refutation is only possible in the distant future but, surprisingly, as the distant future approaches, it stops being a distant future and refutation becomes impossible again. Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.comPosted by: Pentcho Valev | Mar 29, 2007 9:12:08 AM
WHEN EINSTEIN REALIZED HE WAS WRONG. http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_4.3/smolin.htm "Einstein's Legacy -- Where are the "Einsteinians?", Lee Smolin: "Quantum theory was not the only theory that bothered Einstein. Few people have appreciated how dissatisfied he was with his own theories of relativity. Special relativity grew out of Einstein's insight that the laws of electromagnetism cannot depend on relative motion and that the speed of light therefore must be always the same, no matter how the source or the observer moves. Among the consequences of that theory are that energy and mass are equivalent (the now-legendary relationship E = mc2) and that time and distance are relative, not absolute. SPECIAL RELATIVITY WAS THE RESULT OF 10 YEARS OF INTELLECTUAL STRUGGLE, YET EINSTEIN HAD CONVINCED HIMSELF IT WAS WRONG WITHIN TWO YEARS OF PUBLISHING IT." http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers/OntologyOUP_TimesNR.pdf "What Can We Learn about the Ontology of Space and Time from the Theory of Relativity?", John D. Norton: "In general relativity there is no comparable sense of the constancy of the speed of light. The constancy of the speed of light is a consequence of the perfect homogeneity of spacetime presumed in special relativity. There is a special velocity at each event; homogeneity forces it to be the same velocity everywhere. We lose that homogeneity in the transition to general relativity and with it we lose the constancy of the speed of light. Such was Einstein's conclusion at the earliest moments of his preparation for general relativity. ALREADY IN 1907, A MERE TWO YEARS AFTER THE COMPLETION OF THE SPECIAL THEORY, HE HAD CONCLUDED THAT THE SPEED OF LIGHT IS VARIABLE IN THE PRESENCE OF A GRAVITATIONAL FIELD; indeed, he concluded, the variable speed of light can be used as a gravitational potential." Note that the fact that THE SPEED OF LIGHT IS VARIABLE IN THE PRESENCE OF A GRAVITATIONAL FIELD has made Lee Smolin conclude that SPECIAL, not general, relativity is wrong. That is what Einstein discovered in 1907 and what a small number of clever relativists have known since then. All other relativists have been hypnotized by Einstein's camouflage in Chapter 22 in his "Relativity". Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.comPosted by: Pentcho Valev | Apr 7, 2007 4:48:02 AM
in fact it is fantastics , 'cos of I read all of his minds and now I'm working on them .Posted by: Melika | Apr 8, 2007 10:24:15 AM
WHY RELATIVISTS SING. Relativists often imagine themselves as observers occupying various places in the universe; observers who observe light coming from various celestial bodies and measure its speed. This speed is always constant c=299792km/s because Divine Albert has said so. Apart from being always constant c=299792km/s, the speed of light is always variable - e.g. 299794km/s, 299790km/s etc. The variability is due to the fact that the ubiquitous Divine Albert has said that the speed of light varies with the gravitational potential. Relativists know Divine Albert was absolutely right about the constant speed of light, absolutely right about the variable speed of light and absolutely right about any other speed of light. Love fills their hearts and they sing: http://www.bnl.gov/community/Tours/EinsteinPics/Einsteine.jpg xxxxx http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-58/iss-7/images/devine_einstein.mp3 xxxxx http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=706444693144627950&q=lubos+motl xxxxx http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1742604 Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.comPosted by: Pentcho Valev | Apr 10, 2007 2:21:20 AM
DIGNITARIES AND THE DEATH OF THEORETICAL SCIENCE. It seems dignitaries now believe that the century old money-spinner called "I WORSHIP EINSTEIN" should be abandoned: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2057529,00.html "Few scientists need the final results, which will be revealed in December, to convince them of Einstein's genius. 'From the most esoteric aspects of time dilation through to the beautiful and simple equation, e=mc2, the vast bulk of Einstein's ideas about the universe are standing up to the test of time,' said Robert Massey, from the Royal Astronomical Society. He said the mission was 'legitimate science' to test a theory and confirm its brilliance, but others have criticised the costs and length of the study, claiming that what was announced had already been shown. Sir Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, said the announcement would 'fork no lightning'." Dignitaries even have some ideas about the new money-spinner whose name will undoubtedly be "I IMPROVE ON EINSTEIN": http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/519406/posts : "A GROUP of astronomers and cosmologists has warned that the laws thought to govern the universe, including Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, must be rewritten. The group, which includes Professor Stephen Hawking and Sir Martin Rees, the astronomer royal, say such laws may only work for our universe but not in others that are now also thought to exist.....AMONG THE IDEAS FACING REVISION IS EINSTEIN'S BELIEF THAT THE SPEED OF LIGHT MUST ALWAYS BE THE SAME - 186,000 miles a second in a vacuum.....Rees, Hawking and others are so concerned at the impact of such ideas that they recently organised a private conference in Cambridge for more than 30 leading cosmologists." The only problem is the deductive nature of theoretical science. Just change a single initial assumption and the whole theoretical castle collapses. What makes things worse is that, at the end of his life, the divine juggler suddenly became honest and made awful confessions: Einstein: "If the speed of light is the least bit affected by the speed of the light source, then my whole theory of relativity and theory of gravity is false." Einstein again: "I consider it quite possible that physics cannot be based on the field concept, i.e., on continuous structures. In that case, nothing remains of my entire castle in the air, gravitation theory included, [and of] the rest of modern physics." Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.comPosted by: Pentcho Valev | Apr 20, 2007 2:23:08 AM
I have read much about Einstein with interest. I have also read the above blog and some of the comments, and I say this. The point has been grandly missed. The speed of light is constant in general or natural conditions. In the above blog it took excessive and unnatural conditions to alter the speed of light. Read it again! Proving something is false by altering the general parameters reflects nothing but absurdity. Nothing is falsified. Suppose we say, for speed of discussion, that a cat always lands on its feet. Well, Hau would say, perhaps, and for discussion's sake ( this is not an ad-hominum); well, this is not true if we saw its feet off and throw it in a swimming-pool with a helium balloon tied to its head. It would be better to say that given natural conditions, the speed of light is constant. Given mutant and unnatural conditions, it is not: and given the ingenuity of man, the speed of light can be made to do donuts (doughnuts). But in the cosmos as we know and experience, naturally, the speed of light is constant. Given the wealth that Hau has at his disposal to create unnatural experiments; it could be asserted that wardrobes are not made for clothes but for elephants, given that we chop the wardrobe in half, add metal bars, cover an area with straw, carve a little window, and make the walls elastic and so on... I do not know so much about this matter as Hau: but I do notice scientific stupidity when I see it. I am just as delighted about discussing this matter as anyone here. But a seed of common sense, Please. Perhaps we can say something like this: mutated light CAN BE MADE travel at any speed. Fair enough. No-one would disagree with this. But unmutated generally proffers constant qualities. Otherwise your experiement is great, but reallyhas nothing to do with the (natural) speed of light. Be frank and be honest, and the general public and lay scientists will always support your funding. PS: Because there is instability in Israel, can we move the Einstein library to somewhere safer,such as New-Zealand or Norway or wherever? Now this task would be something worth invesitigating. A thousand dollar explosion in the Jerusalem Library could obliterate the work of Einstein. And that would be a loss that would certainly put the world in mourning.Posted by: yangpu6 | Jun 19, 2007 12:44:06 AM
Describing and supermodeling without refuting relativistic forces; In [a]* special as well as generalized medium. In a descriptive manner In a dramatic example; an atomic explosive detonation, forces 'of this [explosive device]' travel at the speed of light. I hasten to "illuminate" the breaking of the luminal barrier is a matter of liminality and concurrent action of the life of matters that are linked between atoms (on earth) and forces (em, cosmic rays) in space. (How relativisticly small do we assume and define the human being, how do you define your body and do you consider yourself one with the universe (a part of it, detraction or addition is relevant in this specific modelling.) Special relativity is a communicative attempt at "molding", for lack of a better term; minds to a perspective that could be inversely and proportionally be used to deduce the incommunicable (which is "unknown".) Reflection and introspection [and introspective comparison to body of universe and your own body] are key, as one demonstrates symmetry, the other chirality. Some will argue this as lateral thought; througout time nascient partition is argued over and semantically challenged through dualistic form. thus defining a fourfold interaction; two parties of dualistic [opposing polar sense] sense challanging debate [with one and the other party]. this seems to be an idiomatic sensical way of statement; as there is is not an actable form [2]** of which or [3]** on which predicative form may act. Thus bridging special and general relative mathematics through semantic interruption. (As speculation on the nature of 2 distinct forms is interruption) As a particle is a wavelength as well, a constant force must be generated to 'keep particles in place'; thus the generative force of energies, typically defined as imperceptible, sub-liminal waves are the slowed version of the potential superpositioning of particles. To speculate about form of communication, it is intensely necessary and definitely miscommunicative to be exclusive in the form of a hierarchical form such as submodality expressive terms as "view"; which implies vision, imparting an anthropomorphism, thus contaminating the model in question. In meta-description, when not dealing with the model but with a "metaphysic" such as semantics, it is possible to use the model upon itself with no effect; effect in this sense as in the sense of particle-energetic reaction (of which there is no participle in energetic radius, as still remains outside our sensing devices and innate, biological sensors; this does not imply sensical, or average intelligent to sensing devices and to biology; there is definite differential, through which can be defined in two shapes, be they people or dramatically illustrated as a square and a chiral mirror of said square; through description a differential can be derived and from the very existance of this differential a measure of relative containment in these two shape-bodies. As a shape is a shape until transitionary differential is found upon which, using empircal means characteristics of a descriptive nature may be defined of the seperate "bodies". *a is used in brackets to suggest a seperation of the two, as is currently modelled via a void in the concurrence of briding the special and general relativistic theories. ** of which, implying one transition *** on which, implying another transition (I make no assumption as to the "chicken and the egg" of which is such keen debate, in the inversive nature of space-time and self) Author's note: I do not use direct quotes from Einstein's or other work relevant to this matter so as not to be seemingly "twisting" meaning by paraphrase and conjunction of this great mind's legacy. Flip Enough For Ya Folks?Posted by: Demonsthene Delphi | Sep 13, 2007 9:30:11 AM
