X-Message-Number: 13978
From: 
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 16:40:47 EDT
Subject: Re: about faster than ligth

In msg # 13960, George Smith said:

>In the 1950's it was commonly taught that brain cells die out over your life
> never to be replaced.  Now we know they do replicate.  Until last year we
> were told that the speed of light was impossible to exceed.  Now its been
> done at least three times in as many countrie >>
>
I think there is some misunderstanding about the recent experiments:
As I have said before about brain readers, electromagnetics radiations
(including light) are characterized by 3 lengths.

-The wavelength L1 (near half a micrometer for light).
-The length L2 where the wave packet has an amplitude not near zero,
this is at most ten times L1 for "ordinary" radiation (specialists call
it not unbunched).
-The length L3 of the wave packet. For ligth produced in a thermal
process as in the Sun, L3 is near 30 cm (1'). It may be up to 100m
in a laser.

In the ordinary case, L2 is near the center of L3 and forms a
single "bump". The square of the amplitude of L2 define the
presence probability of the photon.

When we speak about the celerity C of ligth, it is the so called
group velocity, the one of the L3 front. This velocity remains
unchallenged.

What has been observed is a distribution in "camel's back" of L2
with two widely separated bumps. Because these bumps can
be moved with an interference, they can move, in the limit of L3
at the unlimited phase speed of the wave. There I try a drawing:
   __________________|____________________

The horizontal line is L3, the very narrow L2 is the vertical
element.Here, L2 is in the center of L3, the common case.
In the new experiment, the ligth was such that:
   ______|______________________|___________

With L2 broken in two elements, then at least one of these
elements was moved at a phase velocity larger than C.
   ________________________|____|____________

Here, I can't draw the area under each L2 element. That value
defines the presence probability of the photon in each place.
If an interference process deflates a bump and inflates another
without moving them, thenwe have the so called tunnel effect
between one bump and the other. "Ordinary" tunnel effect is 
only between a side and the other of a single L2 bump, that is why
it works only on short distances. With the new double L2 bump,
there is the possibility to have a long range tunnel effect.

I have first written about that on Cryonet some years ago. I was
then defined as fully nutty. Now the experiment has spoken.

In memory of Giordano Bruno :-)

Yvan Bozzonetti.

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