Please excuse me for answering a humorous post seriously.
Gilad Ben-Yossef wrote:
Despite popular belief, the speed of light is only fixed in vacuum and
scientists long acknowledged the fact that light may travels in
different and lesser speeds when going through different materials,
such as air, or water.
Again, not precisely accurate.
While light will, indeed, travel slower through any material denser than
vacuum, this is not what the term "speed of light" refers to. To the
best of my knowledge, "speed of light" refers to a basic property of the
universe (how fast will any change of any field propagate), and that is
the property that goes into the time warping formulas (the famous "c" in
Lorentz transformation). Just because light travels through glass at 30%
less speed does not mean you have to aim 30% lower if you want to freeze
time (unless, and this is something I'm not 100% clear about, YOU are
traveling through glass as well).
88 miles per hour, it would seem, is the speed of light as it travels
through Hollywood movies.
At least that one seems pretty accurate. This also explains why pretty
much anything looks different when viewed through the filters of a
Holywood movie. The huge refraction coefficient acts like lens, only
much more powerful.
Shachar
--
Shachar Shemesh
Lingnu Open Source Consulting Ltd.
http://www.lingnu.com
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