Light goes faster in reverse

[soulxtc]

A group of US physicists funded by the US Department of Energy have made a material capable of making light travel backwards, at speeds "that appear faster than the speed of light", at the smallest wavelength ever.

The work, led by Costas Soukoulis at Iowa State University, could pave the way for a "perfect lens", and could even have implications for the basic laws of physics. Soukoulis himself says: "Snell's law on the refraction of light is going to be different; a number of other laws will be different."

No natural material is capable of refracting light negatively, so scientists working in this area have to use so-called metamaterials, which can be engineered to have a negative refractive index. Normal materials have positive refractive indices, meaning that light bends to the right of an incident beam. Metamaterials can have a negative index, bending light backwards, to the left of the incident beam.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/24/laser_metamaterial/

[WonderNerd]

For light to travel backwards, it would have to enter a 5th dimension. If this does happen, however,

and the light goes faster than light travelling in the 3 dimensions, the fast light would, in theory,

go back in time, because time stops at light speed. It may be possible, but I cannot imagine how these

guys were able to measure something that exists in a plane beyond comprehension of our puny human

minds, not to mention, something that has wizzed out into space before the experiment has even

taken place. :icon_bril

[black_magiic]

I'm pretty sure it ends up in the twilight zone

[Crazy Horse]

Dammit !! That's where all my socks have been going !!

Seriously...It will be interesting to see where this technology leads and the implications that will follow.

[Slycktom]

Space, the final frontier...

[Lord_of_the_Dense]

Buckaroo Bonzai anyone?

[mountain_rage]

I thought they have already managed to make light tavel faster then the speed of light in certain material already???