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Pastimes : The New Qualcomm - write what you like thread. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Snowshoe who wrote (1896)	7/21/2000 11:07:52 AM
From: slacker711	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 12231

This stuff makes my head spin.... Wednesday July 19 8:03 PM ET Light May Break Its Own Speed Limit By ALEX DOMINGUEZ, Associated Press Writer Scientists have apparently broken the universe's speed limit. For generations, physicists believed there is nothing faster than light moving through a vacuum - a speed of 186,000 miles per second. But in an experiment in Princeton, N.J., physicists sent a pulse of laser light through cesium vapor so quickly that it left the chamber before it had even finished entering. The pulse traveled 310 times the distance it would have covered if the chamber had contained a vacuum. Researchers say it is the most convincing demonstration yet that the speed of light - supposedly an ironclad rule of nature - can be pushed beyond known boundaries, at least under certain laboratory circumstances. ``This effect cannot be used to send information back in time,'' said Lijun Wang, a researcher with the private NEC Institute. ``However, our experiment does show that the generally held misconception that `nothing can travel faster than the speed of light' is wrong.'' The results of the work by Wang, Alexander Kuzmich and Arthur Dogariu were published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. The achievement has no practical application right now, but experiments like this have generated considerable excitement in the small international community of theoretical and optical physicists. ``This is a breakthrough in the sense that people have thought that was impossible,'' said Raymond Chiao, a physicist at the University of California at Berkeley who was not involved in the work. Chiao has performed similar experiments using electric fields. In the latest experiment, researchers at NEC developed a device that fired a laser pulse into a glass chamber filled with a vapor of cesium atoms. The researchers say the device is sort of a light amplifier that can push the pulse ahead. Previously, experiments have been done in which light also appeared to achieve such so-called superluminal speeds, but the light was distorted, raising doubts as to whether scientists had really accomplished such a feat. The laser pulse in the NEC experiment exits the chamber with almost exactly the same shape, but with less intensity, Wang said. The pulse may look like a straight beam but actually behaves like waves of light particles. The light can leave the chamber before it has finished entering because the cesium atoms change the properties of the light, allowing it to exit more quickly than in a vacuum. The leading edge of the light pulse has all the information needed to produce the pulse on the other end of the chamber, so the entire pulse does not need to reach the chamber for it to exit the other side. The experiment produces an almost identical light pulse that exits the chamber and travels about 60 feet before the main part of the laser pulse finishes entering the chamber, Wang said. Wang said the effect is possible only because light has no mass; the same thing cannot be done with physical objects. The Princeton experiment and others like it test the limits of the theory of relativity that Albert Einstein developed nearly a century ago. According to the special theory of relativity, the speed of particles of light in a vacuum, such as outer space, is the only absolute measurement in the universe. The speed of everything else - rockets or inchworms - is relative to the observer, Einstein and others explained. In everyday circumstances, an object cannot travel faster than light. The Princeton experiment and others change these circumstances by using devices such as the cesium chamber rather than a vacuum. Ultimately, the work may contribute to the development of faster computers that carry information in light particles. Not everyone agrees on the implications of the NEC experiment. Aephraim Steinberg, a physicist at the University of Toronto, said the light particles coming out of the cesium chamber may not have been the same ones that entered, so he questions whether the speed of light was broken. Still, the work is important, he said: ``The interesting thing is how did they manage to produce light that looks exactly like something that didn't get there yet?''

To: Snowshoe who wrote (1896)	7/26/2000 4:43:24 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12231

Snowshoe, you shouldn't worry one minute about melting ice raising the sea level. As it does so, you can just move uphill over a few decades. Even in a wheelchair you should be able to keep your head above water. However, you should not delay. You should move today [or in the next week or three]. The wetness you need to worry about is big rock things crashing into an ocean near you. Take a look at the moon through a telescope or something and you'll notice some craters. Those are caused by things bumping into the moon. Notice how many there are and how big so many of them are. When rocks and stuff bump into earth, they make a big splash [usually a splash because the place is so wet]. The wave travels quickly over the ocean to where you live. Humans should live 100m above sea-level [to improve survival prospects by 95% in the event of a random splash]. Most splashes would only cause teeny ripples. But every 100 years or two, there is quite a big thing bumps into earth. Every 1000 years, there is pretty hefty splashing going on in local areas. Every 10000 years, there are a LOT of people who wish they'd stayed up in the hills instead of taking up fishing on the coast. Los Angeles is a sitting duck. QUALCOMM is cunningly up on a mesa, well away from all but the largest waves. Irwin Jacobs sure is a cunning, forward-looking guy. Even his house has for decades been way up the hill [I believe]. When QUALCOMM has got Globalstar up and running and everyone has a WWeb device, oceanic level sensors will be constantly monitoring levels and reporting back to a wave-predicting computer. The computer will calculate the expected wave-height for everywhere, then transmit a "Time To Panic" signal to everyone in the splash zone. It will be able to do that because SnapTrack will know where all devices are. Suddenly, people will hear their WWeb device over-riding the 'Silent Switch' which keeps it quiet at movies, funerals and important meetings and it will scream "HEAD FOR THE HILLS - YOU HAVE 30 SECONDS TO GET HIGHER THAN 145 METRES ABOVE SEA-LEVEL". That will cause traffic jams on many Los Angeles freeways as everyone heads for the HOLLYWOOD sign. The price of helicopters will rise quickly. Melting ice is boring! Don't worry about it. Mqurice