By proving a single photon can't travel faster than light, scientists say they have proven time travel is impossible.
Posted on 01/29/2014 11:10:03 AM PST by lbryce
By proving a single photon can't travel faster than light, scientists say they have proven time travel is impossible.
THE GIST
Hong Kong physicists say they have proven a single photon cannot travel faster than the speed of light.
This demonstrates that time travel is impossible, they say.
Hong Kong physicists say they have proved that a single photon obeys Einstein's theory that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light — demonstrating that outside science fiction, time travel is impossible.
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology research team led by Du Shengwang said they had proved that a single photon, or unit of light, "obeys the traffic law of the universe."
"Einstein claimed that the speed of light was the traffic law of the universe or in simple language, nothing can travel faster than light," the university said on its website.
"Professor Du's study demonstrates that a single photon, the fundamental quanta of light, also obeys the traffic law of the universe just like classical EM (electromagnetic) waves."
The possibility of time travel was raised 10 years ago when scientists discovered superluminal — or faster-than-light — propagation of optical pulses in some specific medium, the team said.
It was later found to be a visual effect, but researchers thought it might still be possible for a single photon to exceed light speed.
Du, however, believed Einstein was right and determined to end the debate by measuring the ultimate speed of a single photon, which had not been done before.
"The study, which showed that single photons also obey the speed limit c, confirms Einstein's causality; that is, an effect cannot occur before its cause," the university said.
"By showing that single photons cannot travel faster than the speed of light, our results bring a closure to the debate on the true speed of information carried by a single photon," said Du, assistant professor of physics.
"Our findings will also likely have potential applications by giving scientists a better picture on the transmission of quantum information."
The team's study was published in the U.S. peer-reviewed scientific journal Physical Review Letters.
Well you can’t go back. Only forward. Problem is nothing exists 5 years from now. Just saying.
“Nonsense, I myself am a time traveler. I go only into the future though, one day at a time.”
I too am a time traveler who goes only into the future, but in increments smaller than a day.
Or is that true for either of us? Is time a continuous stream that extends into a future or past we can’t reach?
Perhaps there is no future time to be reached and what we call the future does not exist until we live it.
And if that’s true, how do we know time exists in the past, except in our memories and stories?
Perhaps there is only some sort of eternal “now”, with future time yet to come into existence and past time no longer in existence.
Statrgate SG! and Atlantis did so as well.
Next they will try and say that Dr. who is make believe as well
These clown need to spend less time in the lab and more in front of the Television.
Yes, he was shot because he stepped off the walkway and stepped on a butterfly, thus altering the flow of time and forever altering everyone’s future.
Here ya go:
CORRECTION: The word “she” which appears in the sentence containing Christ’s blood, should NOT be there. It somehow was put there by this Puerto Rican phone, which, praise and glory to Jesus, I will be trading for an iPhone 5s on Feb. 10th!
“A tachyon with an electric charge would lose energy as Cherenkov radiation[13]—just as ordinary charged particles do when they exceed the local speed of light in a medium. A charged tachyon traveling in a vacuum therefore undergoes a constant proper time acceleration and, by necessity, its worldline forms a hyperbola in space-time. However reducing a tachyon’s energy increases its speed, so that the single hyperbola formed is of two oppositely charged tachyons with opposite momenta (same magnitude, opposite sign) which annihilate each other when they simultaneously reach infinite speed at the same place in space. (At infinite speed the two tachyons have no energy each and finite momentum of opposite direction, so no conservation laws are violated in their mutual annihilation. The time of annihilation is frame dependent.)”
And, at infinite speed, some tachyons are basically everywhere, all the time.
While we’re talking paradoxes...how about Zeno’s paradox? If numbers are infinite, then movement of any kind through any dimension is impossible. Why? Simply because any movement from point A to point B requires me to move through an infinite number of fractional increments. But if the denominator of a fraction is infinite in size, how can anything move?
“What about spooky action at a distance? “
Good point!
Joe... I get it now... he’s an “average Joe”.
Absolutely average, in all things.
Well, if you want to go backwards in time, wouldn't you need the photons travel slower than the speed of light? Now, admittedly, getting back would be a problem in light of this discovery.
You cannot travel back in time in the same universe......
“Or how about a Tachyon?
Can’t find em. “
Well,,,, we haven’t found them,,,, yet.
What is the speed of time?
Get two flashlights and tape them bottom to bottom. Turn both on. Beams of light are now traveling at twice the speed of light away from each other.
You know what they say: "Those that do not learn the future, are doomed to repeat it."
All laws of physics are set by God. All past, present and future are all the same in him. You think he wants time messed with by our chaotic race?
As the article says, it's an electromagnetic wave. Such waves depend on two other constants, permittivity, and permeability.
From Wiki:
This is the speed of light in vacuum. Maxwell's equations have unified the vacuum permittivity \epsilon_0, the vacuum permeability \mu_0, and the speed of light itself, c0.
“Simply because any movement from point A to point B requires me to move through an infinite number of fractional increments. But if the denominator of a fraction is infinite in size, how can anything move?”
Just off the top of my head, would that not depend on where
points A and B are and whether or not we move by fractional increments?
If Point A is 1 and Point B is 2 and I move in fractional increments of 1/3 it takes me three moves to get from A to B.
If the beautiful woman I want moves in fractional increments of 1/2, she moves from Point A to Point B in two moves, and disappears from my existence for a while since she’s moving at a different fractional increment. (By the way, that would explain some things in my life.)
Where did we go relative to each other during the move? Different dimensions? Different timelines with intersection points?
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