The slower-than-c light is not exactly news. Light travels at less than c in glass, water, alcohol, oil, diamond,.... Of course, Lene's experiments slowing light down to less than the speed of a thrown ball were pretty spectacular, but they aren't relevant to this discussion.
As for the faster-than-c hype, when it comes down to it the lead experimenter was quite careful in his description, as per the link you gave: "Einstein said
information can't travel faster than light, and in this case, as with all fast-light experiments, no information is truly moving faster than light," says Boyd. "The pulse of light is shaped like a hump with a peak and long leading and trailing edges. The leading edge carries with it all the information about the pulse and enters the fiber first. By the time the peak enters the fiber, the leading edge is already well ahead, exiting. From the information in that leading edge, the fiber essentially 'reconstructs' the pulse at the far end, sending one version out the fiber, and another backward toward the beginning of the fiber."
Let me repeat: no signal traveled faster than c.
Mike W.
(published on 04/12/11)
