Damn, figure YOU would read it closely!

Make that 1 foot per nanosecond.

(Never trust the bright kids... :rolleyes:)

Electrical pulses break light speed record
22 January 2002

Pulses that travel faster than light have been sent over a significant distance for the first time. Alain Haché and Louis Poirier of the University of Moncton in Canada transmitted the pulses through a 120-metre cable made from a coaxial 'photonic crystal'. The achievement raises hopes that data could travel through electronic communications systems at almost the speed of light (A Haché and L Poirier 2002 Appl. Phys. Lett. 80 518).

Interesting. Is this from Woody's link? I still can't get it to work but this must refer to so-called "group velocity" which is well known and does not violate the law that nothing travels faster than light in a vacuum. It's also kinda useless, since what is travelling "faster than light" cannot really be used to transmit signals, in fact what causes this is actually avoided in practice beacause it distorts the original signal. I'm not sure why they say it raises hopes of speeding trasmisson, we can already do that with fiber optics.

Yes, Sparky. It's from Woody's link
Since I estimate a lot, I figgered "186,000 mps?" was close enough for the 100' of wire that electricity had to travel.
Still pretty quick, I think,
While turning off the light switch and jumping into bed, it's always dark before I get there.
mick

Gotcha. I imagine unless your bedroom is the size of Canada even at 10ns per foot of wire the dark would beat you :) But there are times when that 2ns/ft is a killer. :(

Where is everyone getting 186 000 m/s? The speed of light in a vacuum is just slightly under 3 x 10^8 m/s.

186,000 miles per second, vs. 3 x 10^8 meters per second, maybe?

Hey Mark, you didn't work on the Hubble, did ya? ;)

Actually, that was the Pathfinder mission to Mars. Dynes + Newtons = big mess!


Don't tell Padgett this, but apparently the past 2 1/2 years of collegiate level science classes have metrified me. :eek:

Kids! :rolleyes:
We're using miles not meters.
Call it both ways !