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Physics

Laser pulses travel faster than light without breaking laws of physics

27 May 2021

�鶹��ý. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine. — No laws of physics were broken, but light seems to have moved faster than its speed limit
SAKKMESTERKE/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

The speed of light may not necessarily be constant. Light travelling through a plasma can appear to move at speeds both slower and faster than what we refer to as “the speed of light” – 299,792,458 metres per second – without breaking any laws of physics.

at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and his colleagues accomplished this using a pair of lasers fired into a jet of hydrogen and helium plasma. One laser, called the…

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