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A bit more interesting was the recent "slow light" demonstration, by Dr. Lene V. Hau of Harvard University. We've known for a hundred years that the speed of light is slower through solids and liquids than through empty space. The "slowest" natural substance is diamond, which bogs light down to about 0.4c, or 40% of its vacuum speed. But in 1999, Hau and her team went nature one better, using a cloud of ultracold sodium atoms, held in a "coupled" state by a laser beam, to slow the photons of another laser beam down to less than three meters per second. In subsequent experiments they were able to reduce this speed still further, until finally, last month, they were able to stop the beam completely.
Stopping light with an ordinary barrier--say, a lens cap -- destroys the photons irretrievably. If they were carrying a signal, too bad; the signal is lost forever. Hau's apparatus does something quite different: when the coupling laser is turned off, the energy and quantum state of the signal photons are stored as a "spin" in the gaseous sodium atoms. Later, when the coupling laser is turned back on, the reconstructed signal beam emerges from the cloud, unchanged from its previous state. This isn't a trick or gimmick; the light actually slows down, and actually stops. The implications for optical computing are huge.
But while this lets us travel--even walk!--faster than "the speed of light" through a Hau cell, it isn't much use for interstellar communication.
The OPERA measurement is at odds with well-established laws of nature, though science frequently progresses by overthrowing the established paradigms. For this reason, many searches have been made for deviations from Einstein’s theory of relativity, so far not finding any such evidence. The strong constraints arising from these observations makes an interpretation of the OPERA measurement in terms of modification of Einstein’s theory unlikely, and give further strong reason to seek new independent measurements.
Rail travel at high speed is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia.- Dr. Dionysus Lardner (1793-1859), Professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy at University College, London.
That's what science does-notice anomalies in data, and design a new experiment to address the anomalous data and see if it is anomalous. I see no problem with the reporting of the unanticipated data by AP or anyone else. Who, or what might be threatened by it, is a much more political question.