A series of new animations by a NASA scientist show just how zippy — and also how torturously slow — the speed of light can be. Light speed is the fastest that any material object can travel ...

It travels as a transverse wave. Unlike a sound waves, light waves do not need a medium to pass through, they can travel through a vacuum. Light from the Sun reaches Earth through the vacuum of space.

The reason BECs can slow light lies in a phenomenon ... window in the normally opaque condensate, allowing the light pulse to travel through it at an extremely slow speed. Experimental ...