Editor's Blog
Paging Dr. Sarfatti…
"Physicists have developed a new metamaterial structure that successfully demonstrates reverse Cerenkov radiation. They have directly observed a reverse shock wave of light in a specially tailored structure known as a left-handed metamaterial. Although it was first predicted over forty years ago, this is the first unambiguous experimental demonstration of the effect…
"Now a team of physicists at Zhejiang University in China and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed a new metamaterial structure that successfully demonstrates reverse Cerenkov radiation. Instead of injecting faster-than-light particles into their metamaterial, they created an optical analogue of particles moving at twice light speed…"
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3 Comments
I was taught that the speed of light was “the speed limit of the universe” as Einstein put it. So, how can particles travel at twice that speed?
The limit is the speed of light in a vacuum. Light travels more slowly through a medium with an index of refraction. Cherenkov radiation is generated whenever a particle moves through a medium at a speed faster than light in that medium, but (necessarily) still slower than light in a vacuum.
Thanks that was very helpful!