Mind Blown: E=M?^2

Nerd board

U rite

Yes, but "C" becomes a standard velocity (299,792,458 m/s) rather than a natural constant. To me, that's a significant adjustment to special relativity.

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I'm not able to hold a worthwhile conversation in that regard with you. I can do math and have dabbled in some physics.

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I bet you could - I bet you could do a lot more than you think can.

What the frick is this thread about?

So is light is no longer a constant, it varies depending on the shape of the photons?

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So is light is no longer a constant, it varies depending on the shape of the photons?

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I'm really not sure. In air, something like "shape" can change surface area which alters friction and, thus, velocity ... but in a vacuum. Again, getting my head around it.

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Well weve known that light can be bent by gravity, but we haven't known how to bend light to our will, until now. Interesting..

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Bent, yes. Slowed, no.

(but, you are getting into my physics wheelhouse - gravitational lensing is an interest of mine)

Thanks for the link. I seem to remember reading about this experiment somewhere else. IIRC the two photons would be only 5 seconds apart if they raced across the entirety of the Universe.

While that's an incredibly small difference, it does indicate that the speed of light can be altered and the implications are profound.

One aspect of the photons was not clear. Were they entangled in the experiment? If so, I would think both would be slower than the constant when projected back into free space.

Here's a link to Science Express, the magazine that first published the paper about the experiment. Is this where you read the article?

I'm going to purchase the PDF and read it tomorrow. It's fascinating.

Here's the abstract:

That the speed of light in free space is constant is a cornerstone of modern physics. However, light beams have finite transverse size, which leads to a modification of their wavevectors resulting in a change to their phase and group velocities. We study the group velocity of single photons by measuring a change in their arrival time that results from changing the beam’s transverse spatial structure. Using time-correlated photon pairs we show a reduction of the group velocity of photons in both a Bessel beam and photons in a focused Gaussian beam. In both cases, the delay is several micrometers over a propagation distance of the order of 1 m. Our work highlights that, even in free space, the invariance of the speed of light only applies to plane waves.