Einstein said that nothing could go faster than the speed of light. Most scientists agree with this statement because calculations show that it would take more energy than is currently in the universe to drive a ship past that mark. I am sure you have heard that there may be ways around this. Those exotic methods include going through worm holes and bending space and maybe even time. But was Einstein right or is it a case of not having discovered how to go faster than light? One has to remember that there have been various scientists throughout history that believed that flight was impossible or that breaking the sound barrier couldn't be done.

This brings us to some interesting experiments that were done at the University of Rochester. A professor there was working on an experiment with light. He knew that, in theory, you could send light backwards, but no one had ever succeeded in doing this. So far, light had been slowed down in the lab to only a fraction of it's speed and even this fact astounded many scientists. The scientist thought that if this could be done, who knows what else could be accomplished with light. It's funny, but every time I hear about experiments with light I think of those photon torpedoes that they used on Star Trek. I know it makes no sense, but there you go. It seems that light experiments are getting very popular or I am just hearing more about them lately? Some very strange things are happening with light. Things are getting so strange with light that most of the experts can't even understand why things are happening the way they are.

A recent experiment was successful in sending light backwards. But this was only the tip of the iceberg as they say. Before we get into the more complicated stuff, let's see how the experiment worked. An optical fiber was lined with an element called erbium. A pulse from a laser was split in two and one pulse traveled down the erbium fiber and the other down a different fiber. The pulse that traveled down the untreated fiber was known as the reference pulse. Light pulses travel in peaks and valleys. The light that was sent into the erbium fiber traveled backwards and so fast, that it was almost all the way through the erbium fiber before the other light pulse was even able to enter the normal fiber. This result was totally unexpected.

How could one pulse of light on an equal course travel much faster than another? Was there something that slowed down one course of light? No, this is not what happened during the experiment, what happened was that the light traveling backwards traveled faster than the speed of light. This is what Einstein said was impossible. If this were true then there were all sorts of ramifications. Light could be used to power ships that would break the light speed barrier making travel to other star systems practical. There might be other applications for this type of thing. Think of speeding up communications. It might be possible for instant communications. If light could be manipulated this way, maybe it was possible to speed it up many times faster. Give me warp 5 Scotty. This stuff just boggles the mind.

It gets a little deep here. The scientist that conducted the experiment was asked how light could travel faster than the prescribed speed and if it did, didn't this make Einstein wrong? Any ordinary person would have said that since the backward light did travel faster than 186,282.397 miles per second, then Einstein was wrong, but this is not the way it went. The scientist stated that the light that traveled faster didn't contain any information and that Einstein was only talking about light that did, when he set the limit. I admit it, I am having a very hard time with this because I have never heard this argument before. I have always heard that nothing, absolutely nothing, could travel faster than the speed of light. Could it have been that the humble scientist didn't want to be the one to say that Einstein was wrong? That is always a possibility because he knows that many of his peers might think that this guy is too big for his britches.

Will these experiments have a practical effect on us in the near future? Will super fast computers be coming out that almost always give instant results and operate on light, light that is traveling faster than Einstein said it could? Maybe our tvs will be improved in ways that we can't even imagine. Will light traveling this fast be able to create holographs in thin air that will look life like? What about medical devices? Will something like a cat scan come out that will be way more effective and much faster in detection? Could it be that we might even be able to have a portable medical device using this technique, in our homes for a small price? Look how cheap computers are getting, will we soon have cheap laser devices, on planes and ships, that will detect obstacles hundreds of miles away that can send back signals much faster than radar? Then there are other inventions that will come about because of this discovery that we haven't even thought of yet.

Breaking the light speed barrier could be one of the most significant things we have ever done. Just the fact that we can do it in the lab indicates that the beam may someday be capable of propulsion Einstein also said that for every reaction there is an equal and opposite reaction. Send out a beam of light traveling faster than 186,282.397 miles per second in space and the object that sent it should be eventually able to get pushed at that speed, if it has the correct technology. These are exciting times.

Here is the kicker, yeah there is always one! The scientist believes that if he designs a pulse without a leading edge, the faster than light effect will disappear along with the reverse light phenomena. He states that this is what Einstein has predicted. He is working on preparing this experiment now. Let's hope he is wrong.