Peter Woit: "As far as this stuff goes, we're now not only at John Horgan's "End of Science", but gone past it already and deep into something different." http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=7266

This "something different" is an insane but all-powerful ideology paralyzing any rational action - only absurd and confusing behavior is permitted. See this:

"For generations, physicists believed there is nothing faster than light moving through a vacuum -- a speed of 186,000 miles per second. But in an experiment in Princeton, N.J., physicists sent a pulse of laser light through cesium vapor so quickly that
it left the chamber before it had even finished entering. The pulse traveled 310 times the distance it would have covered if the chamber had contained a vacuum. Researchers say it is the most convincing demonstration yet that the speed of light --
supposedly an ironclad rule of nature -- can be pushed beyond known boundaries, at least under certain laboratory circumstances. [...] The results of the work by Wang, Alexander Kuzmich and Arthur Dogariu were published in Thursday's issue of the journal
Nature." http://www.cbsnews.com/news/faster-than-the-speed-of-light/

Things are straightforward but then the insane ideology solves the problem. Einstein's relativity "seems to survive" because "the effect could never be used to signal back in time to change the past":

"A pulse of light that passes through a transparent chamber filled with specially prepared cesium gas appears to be pushed to speeds of 300 times the normal speed of light. That is so fast that, under these peculiar circumstances, the main part of the
pulse exits the chamber even before it enters. [...] But Einstein's theory, and at least a shred of common sense, seem to survive, the physicists explain, because the effect could never be used to signal back in time to change the past and, in the
example, avert the accident." https://www.nytimes.com/2000/05/30/science/faster-than-light-maybe-but-not-back-to-the-future.html

Another example. LIGO fakers explain why the speed of gravitational waves is equal to the speed of electromagnetic waves:

LIGO fakers: "The fact that the speed of gravitational waves is equal to the speed of electromagnetic waves is simply because they both travel at the speed of information." https://discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/why-does-gravity-travel-at-the-speed-of-
light

Theoretical physicists know that "speed of information" is not defined in physics and therefore the explanation is idiotic, but immediately go into crimestop mode:

George Orwell: "Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest
arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity."

See more here: https://twitter.com/pentcho_valev

Pentcho Valev

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Experiments regularly show that both superluminal motion (not necessarily of light) and subluminal motion of light in a vacuum are possible. However the scientific community cannot react properly because Einsteinians bombard it with idiotic and confusing
explanations, often involving "group velocity" and "phase velocity". Experimentalists are forced to include such explanations in their articles - otherwise there would be no publication. Sometimes "group velocity" and "phase velocity" turn out to be
insufficiently confusing and Einsteinians resort to the ultimate weapon - the speed of something called "information" (as if Einstein had based his 1905 second postulate on the speed of information, not on the speed of light). This speed solves any
problem of the Einstein cult:

Robert W. Boyd, Daniel J. Gauthier, Controlling the Velocity of Light Pulses: "So why do laboratory results of fast light not necessitate the superluminal transfer of information? It is believed that the explanation lies in the distinction between Vg [
group velocity] and the information velocity. The group velocity can take on any value. However, the information velocity can never exceed c and, according to many models, is always equal to c." http://science.sciencemag.org/content/326/5956/1074.full

The scientific community is so confused and paralyzed that heretic discoveries fatal for Einstein's relativity can be published in prestigious journals - Einsteinians are sure that after the publication the heresy will be completely forgotten.

If it were not for the idiotic atmosphere created by the Einstein cult, both superluminal motion and subluminal motion of light in a vacuum would be established experimental facts:

"Spatially structured photons that travel in free space slower than the speed of light" Science 20 Feb 2015: Vol. 347, Issue 6224, pp. 857-860 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/347/6224/857

"Physicists manage to slow down light inside vacuum [...] ...even now the light is no longer in the mask, it's just the propagating in free space - the speed is still slow. [...] "This finding shows unambiguously that the propagation of light can be
slowed below the commonly accepted figure of 299,792,458 metres per second, even when travelling in air or vacuum," co-author Romero explains in the University of Glasgow press release." http://rt.com/news/225879-light-speed-slow-photons/

"The speed of light is a limit, not a constant - that's what researchers in Glasgow, Scotland, say. A group of them just proved that light can be slowed down, permanently." http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2015/01/23/Scientists-slow-down-light-particles/
1191422035480

"Although the maximum speed of light is a cosmological constant - made famous by Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity and E=mc^2 - it can, in fact, be slowed down: that's what optics do." http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/417655/scitech/science/
exclusive-this-pinay-physicist-can-slow-down-light-without-touching-it

Nature 406, 277-279 (20 July 2000): "...a light pulse propagating through the atomic vapour cell appears at the exit side so much earlier than if it had propagated the same distance in a vacuum that the peak of the pulse appears to leave the cell before
entering it." http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v406/n6793/full/406277a0.html

"Researchers at the University of Ottawa observed that twisted light in a vacuum travels slower than the universal physical constant established as the speed of light by Einstein's theory of relativity. [...] In The Optical Society's journal for high
impact research, Optica, the researchers report that twisted light pulses in a vacuum travel up to 0.1 percent slower than the speed of light, which is 299,792,458 meters per second. [...] If it's possible to slow the speed of light by altering its
structure, it may also be possible to speed up light. The researchers are now planning to use FROG to measure other types of structured light that their calculations have predicted may travel around 1 femtosecond faster than the speed of light in a
vacuum." http://phys.org/news/2016-03-optical-slower.html

"Speed of light broken with basic lab kit. Electric signals can be transmitted at least four times faster than the speed of light using only basic equipment that would be found in virtually any college science department. Scientists have sent light
signals at faster-than-light speeds over the distances of a few metres for the last two decades - but only with the aid of complicated, expensive equipment. Now physicists at Middle Tennessee State University have broken that speed limit over distances
of nearly 120 metres, using off-the-shelf equipment costing just $500. [...] While the peak moves faster than light speed, the total energy of the pulse does not. This means Einstein's relativity is preserved, so do not expect super-fast starships or
time machines anytime soon." http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2796

"Light that travels... faster than light! [...] This is exactly what the EPFL team has demonstrated. Using their Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS) method, the group was able to slow a light signal down by a factor of 3.6, creating a sort of temporary
"optical memory." They were also able to create extreme conditions in which the light signal travelled faster than 300 million meters a second. And even though this seems to violate all sorts of cherished physical assumptions, Einstein needn't move over -
relativity isn't called into question, because only a portion of the signal is affected." http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-08/epfd-ltt081905.php

"Light Pulses That Travel Faster Than Light Created [...] The technique developed at NIST is called four-wave mixing, and it works by altering some parts of each individual light pulse. This makes the light move forward faster than it normally would when
traveling through a vacuum. [...] The physicists explain that the new research does not violate Albert Einstein's theory on general relativity - which states that the speed of light in a vacuum is the fastest achievable in the Universe. They say that a
sort of loophole exists in this theory. By careful tuning of the light source and advanced calculations, it is possible to nudge portions of the light pulses so that they arrive at their destination ahead or behind the main pulse. [...] With four-wave
mixing, the NIST investigators produced laser pulses that arrived at their destination a full 50 nanoseconds faster than photons traveling through a vacuum." http://news.softpedia.com/news/Light-Pulses-That-Travel-Faster-than-Light-Created-267499.shtml

"Light hits near infinite speed in silver-coated glass. A nano-sized bar of glass encased in silver allows visible light to pass through at near infinite speed. The technique may spur advances in optical computing. [...] In a vacuum the refractive index
is 1, and the speed of light cannot break Einstein's universal limit of 300,000 kilometres per second. Normal materials have positive indexes, and they transmit at the speed of light in a vacuum divided by their refractive index. Ordinary glass, for
instance, has an index of about 1.5, so light moves through it at about 200,000 kilometres per second. The new material contains a nano-scale structure that guides light waves through the metal-coated glass. It is the first with a refractive index below
0.1, which means that light passes through it at almost infinite speed, says Albert Polman at the FOM Institute AMOLF in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. But the speed of light has not, technically, been broken. The wave is moving quickly, but its "group
velocity" the speed at which information is travelling is near zero." http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23050-light-hits-near-infinite-speed-in-silvercoated-glass.html

More here: https://twitter.com/pentcho_valev

Pentcho Valev

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)