Maybe Merlin was right...

Since childhood I've been fascinated by stories of King Arthur the Knights of the Round Table. I am probably one of the few kids from my High School who voluntarily read 'Le Morte d'Arthur' and 'The Once and Future King'. There's just something about the whole 'chivalry' and 'code of honor' thing that is very uplifting.

A concept I found interesting in 'Once and Future King' was how Merlin lived 'backwards' in time. As the story goes he was born hundreds of years in the future and was living backwards in time...to the eyes of the people living normal through time he grew younger as the years passed. A look around his medieval forest cottage showed fly fishing rods, baseball bat and glove, along with the dancing dishes that washed themselves.

It's been reported several times in the last few years that researchers have been able to speed up and slow down light. Now the Science Blog reports that researchers have been able to make light travel BACKWARDS. Check out the report.

If light can reach it's destination before it's sent, like this seems to suggest, that matches a story I read about 5 years ago where researchers accelerated particles in a super collider so fast that they arrived at the target before they were launched. They speculated that the particles actually traveled beyond light speed but they said they weren’t ready to say so officially. Could scientists be flirting with the time barrier?