Slow glass

From: James Ganong (JGanong@webtv.net)
Date: Sun Feb 21 1999 - 02:23:46 MST


Cool!


attached mail follows:



--------- Begin forwarded message ----------
From: Sco11@aol.com
To: ebo@aone.com, tonyblanc@juno.com, PWohl@aol.com,Dean P Shomshak
<dshomshak@juno.com>
Subject: Slow glass
Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1999 01:54:08 EST
Message-ID: <6d5af0d3.36cd0a90@aol.com>

There's a classic short story about "slow glass," glass that requires a
year
or more for light to travel through it. Look through a slow glass window
and
see what was happening a year ago. I didn't think that this story would
come
true, but they're getting closer. Light travels through empty space at
over
186,000 miles per second, but it travels more slowly through air, water,
or
glass. It's still thousands of miles per second through those materials.
They announced on NPR today that scientists have invented an exotic
material
that slows light down to 38 mph. Less than highway speed. They think
that in
the future they may be able to slow light literally to a snail's pace.
Their
immediate plans are to use the material for scientific tests, but they're
trying to think of technological applications for it. It may have
applications in optical computers, computers that use light instead of
electricity for computation.

It's 1999 all right. We'll have stardrives yet. Come to think of it, I
drove
faster than light today.

--Scott

--------- End forwarded message ----------

___________________________________________________________________
You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail.
Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com/getjuno.html
or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:03:06 MST