2015考研英语阅读理解精读P34—工学类2015考研英语阅读理解精读P34—工学类.doc

2015考研英语阅读理解精读P34—工学类 　Passage 34 　　Want to travel faster than light? According to one of the most sacred principles of physics, thats impossible. In a vacuum, light travels at 186,282 miles per second, and in a medium like air or water, it goes only a bit slower, which is why when you turn on your bedside lamp, you dont have to wait half an hour before the light gets to your pillow. But now it turns out that with the right equipment, scientists can get light to go very, very slowly--as slow as 38 miles per hour. They think they can get it to move even slower, around two hundredths of a mile per hour. 　　Putting the brakes on light might have applications years down the road, but right now its a fascinating new physical property. To get there, physicists led by Lene Vestergaard Hau of the Rowland Institute for Science in Cambridge, Mass., used a tiny blob of supercooled sodium, activated with a laser at a particular wavelength. A second laser can then be fired through the normally opaque sodium; it passes through, but not much faster than a racehorse can run. 　　The experiment, reported in last weeks issue of the journal Nature, took advantage of a peculiar property called electromagnetically induced transparency. Every element has a certain color of light with which it interacts most strongly. Light at that exact wavelength would normally be totally absorbed. For sodium, the stuff these researchers used, its the yellow of common street lights. But a laser at a slightly different wavelength, called a coupling beam, can alter the quantum properties of the atoms so they no longer absorb that wavelength. The quantum seas part, and a laser at the wavelength that should have been absorbed passes through unfettered. 　　But changing the way a medium absorbs light also transforms the way light moves through it. All transparent substances slow down the light that moves through them--thats why light seems to bend, or refract, when it passes from air to water. Electromagnetica