Posted by Rick [Rick] on April 06, 1999 at 18:26:41 {JK6FUAMFdMctB9oBIfGcFMFBt36Xyc}:
This news story invoked some thoughts about one major argument of Armageddon's nearness. At least by our CO's reckoning in various talks, Armageddon can't be too far off because Jehovah has to prevent mankind from "going 'too far' scientifically." The argument went something like this, that mankind would use advanced laws of physics to have "god-like" powers over the masses, thus upsurping God's authority. The Tower of Babel was often used analogously to God placing an invisible "ceiling" or barrier on modern scientific efforts in achieving powers beyond man's ability to responsibly control.
It seems the most "sacred" constant of physics, space and time, the speed of light, is now within man's grasp to alter. Does this mean God will allow mankind to achieve whatever limits possible without interference (as in God's interference at Babel)?
Enough of the commentary, now for the exciting news story released today:
Harvard physicist takes speed out of speed of light
"{...} Lene (pronounced LEE-nuh) Hau, at 39, is rapidly reaching the top of her profession, her colleagues agree. On Feb. 18, the prestigious scientific journal Nature selected for its cover article a paper of which she was the leading author, and it caused a mild sensation. In their paper, Hau, with Steve E. Harris of Stanford University and two of Hau's Harvard students, reported the results of their experiment in which a beam of laser light was slowed to the astonishingly low speed of 38 mph. By comparison, light in a vacuum travels about 186,000 miles per second. The technique had been invented in Harris' Stanford laboratory, where graduate student Athos Kasapi had earlier succeeded in slowing light to 1/160th its customary speed. But by transferring the method into a very peculiar kind of matter, called a Bose-Einstein condensate, Hau was able to reduce the speed of light ten million-fold, a pace slower than that of her bicycle. {...} The collaborators are now working to slow light even further, by perhaps 100-fold -- ``so slow you can just watch it move,'' as Harris put it. For theoretical reasons, it is impossible to bring light to a dead stop."
Rick