Hi, Gumbie.

--- Barb Jernigan  wrote:

> > If lightspeed is impossible, then how does light do it?
> 
> Then there's the recent Russ posit: OK, you CAN slow light down
> through
> certain substances (like bending it when it goes through water and
> lenses
> and so on), so how does it get back on up to light speed upon
> exiting?

My call on it is that the speed at which light is measured to travel
through a substance is the average speed.  Consider: two photons are
launched parallel to each other through a vacuum one light second in
depth.  One photon encounters and interacts with a hydrogen atom; it
is absorbed and then re-emitted in 200 millionths of a second.  The
first photon arrives at the target that much sooner.  Photon number
two travelled at 300,000 Km/sec for the whole time of its existence,
and cannot travel at any other speed, but for that 200 millionths of
a second, it did not exist at all except as potential in the excited
energy state of the hydrogen atom.

Now extend this postulation to a substance with a very high density
and very low temperature and the length of time of interaction is
probably greatly lengthened.  However, the photon, while it exists,
continues to transit the spaces between atoms at light speed.

=====
Fear of corrupting the mind of the younger generation is 
the loftiest of cowardice. --Holbrook Jackson

>From the Lair of Fang-Face DreamWeaver
and The Encyclopedia Michael Nellis
http://www.angelfire.com/scifi/dreamweaver/index.html

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com

--- Rachel's Little NET2FIDO Gate v 0.9.9.8 Alpha