Re:Scientists Capture a “Sonic Boom” of Light
by acqq on Tuesday January 24, 2017 @07:55AM
(#13470911)
> A "sonic boom" of light seems nonsensical
The experiment specifically used mediums, where the speeds are not the speed through through the vacuum, the report from which smithsonianmag took the info and provides the link is somewhat more precise:
"study lead author Jinyang Liang, an optical engineer at Washington University in St. Louis, and his colleagues designed a narrow tunnel filled with dry ice fog. This tunnel was sandwiched between plates made of a mixture of silicone rubber and aluminum oxide powder."
"Then, the researchers fired pulses of green laser light — each lasting only 7 picoseconds (trillionths of a second) — down the tunnel. These pulses could scatter off the specks of dry ice within the tunnel, generating light waves that could enter the surrounding plates."
"The green light that the scientists used traveled faster inside the tunnel than it did in the plates. As such, as a laser pulse moved down the tunnel, it left a cone of slower-moving overlapping light waves behind it within the plates."
The experiment specifically used mediums, where the speeds are not the speed through through the vacuum, the report from which smithsonianmag took the info and provides the link is somewhat more precise:
http://www.livescience.com/57572-ultrafast-camera-captures-s...
"study lead author Jinyang Liang, an optical engineer at Washington University in St. Louis, and his colleagues designed a narrow tunnel filled with dry ice fog. This tunnel was sandwiched between plates made of a mixture of silicone rubber and aluminum oxide powder."
"Then, the researchers fired pulses of green laser light — each lasting only 7 picoseconds (trillionths of a second) — down the tunnel. These pulses could scatter off the specks of dry ice within the tunnel, generating light waves that could enter the surrounding plates."
"The green light that the scientists used traveled faster inside the tunnel than it did in the plates. As such, as a laser pulse moved down the tunnel, it left a cone of slower-moving overlapping light waves behind it within the plates."