In order to settle an (admittedly alcohol induced) contretemps, please could someone explain (preferably in idiot-speak) whether it is possible to exceed lightspeed
If this is a pub argument you can tell them YES it is possible and you can do it in you car..... but only if you slow down light....
http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/1....18/light.html
Physicists Slow Speed of Light
By William J. Cromie
Gazette Staff
Light, which normally travels the 240,000 miles from the Moon to Earth in less than two seconds, has been slowed to the speed of a minivan in rush-hour traffic -- 38 miles an hour.
An entirely new state of matter, first observed four years ago, has made this possible. When atoms become packed super-closely together at super-low temperatures and super-high vacuum, they lose their identity as individual particles and act like a single super- atom with characteristics similar to a laser.
Such an exotic medium can be engineered to slow a light beam 20 million-fold from 186,282 miles a second to a pokey 38 miles an hour.