Posted on 08/16/2007 10:15:43 AM PDT by LibWhacker
A pair of German physicists claim to have broken the speed of light - an achievement that would undermine our entire understanding of space and time.
According to Einstein's special theory of relativity, it would require an infinite amount of energy to propel an object at more than 186,000 miles per second.
However, Dr Gunter Nimtz and Dr Alfons Stahlhofen, of the University of Koblenz, say they may have breached a key tenet of that theory.
The pair say they have conducted an experiment in which microwave photons - energetic packets of light - travelled "instantaneously" between a pair of prisms that had been moved up to 3ft apart.
Being able to travel faster than the speed of light would lead to a wide variety of bizarre consequences.
For instance, an astronaut moving faster than it would theoretically arrive at a destination before leaving.
The scientists were investigating a phenomenon called quantum tunnelling, which allows sub-atomic particles to break apparently unbreakable laws.
Dr Nimtz told New Scientist magazine: "For the time being, this is the only violation of special relativity that I know of."
Can you provide a link to an article discussing these "independent demonstrat[ions]?"
Only the big ones.
Department of Redundancy Department
Thanks, GoLightly, for the ping. Sorry I forgot that before.
It is just a matter of interpretation of the results.Heh...
1. Anything that travels faster than the speed of light also has a constant speed.
2. Anything that we know now travels at the speed slower than the speed of light will never exceed the speed of light.
My guess is that researchers had imperfect measurement instruments and, with the distance of only 3 feet, extrapolated results were susceptible to large variance. Which makes me thinks that we are more likely to witness cold fusion before we witness something going faster than speed of light. Come to think of it, maybe the process of cold fusion will create something faster than the speed of light, and they are interdependent? Hmmm...
OK, I swear I did not see your post before I posted my #308. But as I ran across your post scrolling back, I then also had to check and find out exactly how screwed up I am (once I saw your score).
Well, thanks a lot, FRiend!
http://www.nerdtests.com/images/badge/9c9f8adb085d60f8.gif
I’m wondering what the trooper used to record the speed? LOL
If I’m not mistaken he was also accompanied by Will Riker and Geordi LaForge.
I didn't even know they were Catholic!
DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING !
NO more calls, please.
We have a winner!
Now you've gone and reminded me of Dr. No!
(The gloved hand slipping down into the water with the reactor with the Cerenkov radiation giving the nice eerie blue glow...)
Cheers!
Full Disclosure: Pop a cold beverage to help me celebrate--we just found a house we like in Minnesota, after living in exile for years in Phoenix. :-)
He just eyeballed it. He needed to fill his quota before the end of his shift.
Fine, given that photons are bosons, that's a nice pun... :-)
Q. Do Bose-Einstein statistics violate Occam's razor?
A. Only if some of the photons are superfluous. ("needlessly" multiplying entities...)
Cheers!
No I mean he has to receive photons to measure the speed with his radar gun, unless he has found something (tachyons) that is faster than light speed. ... Oh never mind. I never was much good at puns and jokes.
We'll see. If they can transfer information from one point to another faster than the speed of light then they have broken the speed of light barrier. If they can't (like with quantum entanglement), they are just dealing with the goofy principles of quantum mechanics and haven't broken the speed of light. People devise some crazy experiment where they think they have broken the speed of light every year. But when analyzed at the QM level, the group velocity of the wave packets involved never exceed c.
Look fast and don't blink, then.
And especially in ordinary conversation.
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