Photo: Umberto / Unsplash / Reproduction
Light travels through a vacuum at a speed of 299,792,458 meters per second. To make the number more clear, it is possible to say that in just one second, a ray of light can travel 300,000 km – a little less than the distance from the Earth to the Moon.
Until then, this speed was only surpassed in science fiction stories such as “Star Wars” and “Star Trek. Now, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and the University of Rochester in New York have been able to make photons accelerate in the lab. faster of the speed of light.
Photons are elementary particles that make up light. The researchers manipulated these particles inside the hot plasma (ionized gas), making them run up to 30% faster than their terminal velocity. The full study was published in the scientific journal physical review messages.
The speed of a photon is determined by the network of electric and magnetic fields present in space. Electromagnetism cannot be changed, but photon pulses also generate groups of regular waves that, depending on the environment, allow scientists to slow down or speed up particles.
You may be wondering, what is the point of accelerating photons above the speed of light? To the dismay of many, this does not mean that we will be able to travel from one galaxy to another in a matter of seconds. not yet.
However, in theory, the experiment helps to deepen plasma physics and imposes new limitations on the accuracy of existing models. In practice, this technology will allow the creation of more powerful lasers, which can be used in particle accelerators or in the generation of clean energy through nuclear fusion.
