Speed of light has also been shown in experiment. It should even be possible for the group velocity to become infinite or negative, with pulses travelling instantaneously or backwards in time. None of these options, however, allow information to be transmitted faster than "c". It is impossible to transmit information with a light pulse any faster than the speed of the earliest part of the pulse (the front velocity). It can be shown that this is (under certain assumptions) always equal to "c". It is possible for a particle to travel through a medium faster than the phase velocity of light in that
Speed of light parts per billion (), equivalent to the uncertainty in Earth-based measurements of length by interferometry. Since the metre is defined to be the length travelled by light in a certain time interval, the measurement of the light time in terms of the previous definition of the astronomical unit can also be interpreted as measuring the length of an AU (old definition) in metres. A method of measuring the speed of light is to measure the time needed for light to travel to a mirror at a known distance and back. This is the working principle behind the Fizeau–Foucault apparatus developed