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.
. . . or a Democrat.
If time is simply the movement of system from a state of higher energy to a state of higher entropy, can someone explain how a particle’s ability to exceed the speed of light can equate to a reversal of entropy?
Hmmmmm...and all these years I thought ludicrous speed was faster than light..my bad.
I would like to travel to 2015, buy a copy of the Wall Street Journal, and then come back to today.
He rented a suite at some hotel, summoned a gathering of friends, acquaintances under the title of "2005 First Annual Time-Travel Symposium", hoping that a true time traveler would find the novelty of appearing at the very first Time Travel Convention much too alluring to pass up.
And while the concept appeared really interesting as some sort of temporal flypaper in getting time-travelers to appear and reveal the concept as very real, it was just too hokey to actually work. Besides, what aspect of time travel did the symposium offer to actually entice a true time traveler to show up other than mere rhetoric?
Perhaps, a souped-up Delorean or two might have done the trick.
Still, it could have been worse. You might have beamed up, re-materialized with your face and ass heading in the same direction. :-)
“I believe it was one of the Halloween specials...”
Sounds like a good one. Sorry I missed it.
And how about that great time travel classic, Idiocracy.
‘But Brawndo’s got what plants crave. It’s got electrolytes.’
A great movie that I can’t talk about with my present circle of friends.
A great movie that I will never allow my kids to watch.
“There was a sound of thunder.”
Anyone get the above reference?
Agreed. The speed of light limitation is perhaps an intentional misdirection, as in sailing off the edge of the earth.
What is relevant and much more practical is to consider that all one has to do is to travel to one of the infinite number of parallel universes that is some precisely measured amount of time different (+ or -) than ours.
But, a photon with a flashlight traveling at the speed of light could turn on the flashlight, and voila, speed of light squared!
Sheldon & Leonard will be saddened to hear this.
“By proving a single photon can’t travel faster than light, scientists say they have proven time travel is impossible.
My dad, who was a physicist in his own right, used to say “it’s impossible for something to be impossible...”
What about spooky action at a distance?
LOL!
‘A great movie that I will never allow my kids to watch.’
You got that right. Starting w the futuristic version of Fuddruckers, and earns its rating from that point onward. Still a good movie, though.
But this was based on a NEW grant. So that’s different.
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