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Although people often say nothing travels faster than the speed of light, this cosmic speed limit only pertains to particles with information or mass.<\/p>\n
Darkness\u2014the simple absence of photons\u2014contains neither, and a new experiment confirms the 50-year-old hypothesis that dark can exceed 299,792,458 meters per second.<\/p>\n
Researchers confirmed this fact of physics by analyzing \u201cdark points\u201d within a single wavelength of a polariton, which travels roughly 100 times slower than light in a vacuum.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an oft-touted fact that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, but that\u2019s technically not true. As Albert Einstein originally stated in 1905, information can\u2019t travel faster than the speed of light<\/a>, but something that\u2019s both massless and devoid of information could technically blow past this cosmic speed limit\u2014something such as \u201cdarkness\u201d itself.<\/p>\n Of course, an international team of scientists (led by researchers at Technion\u2013Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel) wouldn\u2019t just go out and measure \u201cdarkness<\/a>\u201d\u2014or the absence of photons\u2014directly. Instead, they relied on \u201cdark points\u201d within light waves. You can think of these points as tiny holes in a wave structure where amplitude drops to zero, which is often why they\u2019re referred to as \u201czero points\u201d or \u201cnull points\u201d within light waves. They\u2019re points of complete darkness embedded within a light field.<\/p>\n These create what are known as vortices, and the authors describe this phenomenon as similar to the vortex<\/a> in a river overtaking the flow of water itself, in such a way that their speed is technically superluminal (a.k.a. faster than light). The results of the study were published in the journal Nature<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cTheory has long predicted that optical singularities can exhibit superluminal motion, particularly at moments close to their creation or annihilation, where their velocities can become unbounded,\u201d the authors wrote. \u201cWe monitor the ultrafast dynamics of optical<\/a> phase singularities with deep sub-wavelength spatial and deep sub-cycle temporal resolutions, revealing their acceleration near annihilation events.\u201d<\/p>\n Proving that darkness can outpace light wasn\u2019t easy, and it required a unique microscopy system. Using this advanced laser setup, coupled with a specialized opto-mechanical system, researchers gathered data at highly accurate spatial and temporal resolution. Additionally, the experiment relied on a thin hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) flake\u2014a material in which light transforms into \u201clight-sound waves\u201d known as polaritons<\/a>. This quasiparticle is essentially a light-matter hybrid that crucially slows down the speed of light by roughly 100 times compared to light traveling in a vacuum<\/a> (still much faster than the speed of sound).<\/p>\n It\u2019s in this state that \u201cdark point\u201d vortices can be seen surpassing the speed of light.<\/p>\n \u201cOur discovery reveals universal laws of nature shared by all types of waves, from sound waves and fluid flows to complex systems such as superconductors<\/a>,\u201d Ido Kaminer, senior author of the study from Technion, said in a press statement<\/a>. \u201cWe believe these innovative microscopy techniques will enable the study of hidden processes in physics, chemistry, and biology, revealing for the first time how nature behaves in its fastest and most elusive moments.\u201d<\/p>\n You Might Also Like<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links.” Here\u2019s what you\u2019ll…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":564661,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[246418,79,220103,172615],"class_list":{"0":"post-564660","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-light-waves","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-speed-limit","11":"tag-speed-of-light"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=564660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/564661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=564660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=564660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=564660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}