Slowing down light

Scientists find a way to slow the speed of light as it travels through a vacuum.

Miles Padgett and his team at the University of Glasgow with Daniele Faccio of Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, designed an experiment that can prove that light under “spatial structure” travels slower than regular light in a vacuum.

Prof Miles Padgett said:

“What makes our experiment different, and what has brought clarity to this, is that rather than looking at a light pulse which contains many, many, many photons we’ve reduced the experiment down to a single photon.

So we measure the speed of a single photon as it propagates. And we find it’s actually being slowed below the speed of light.”

via physicsworld

source sciencemag