Speed of light broken?

[JohnH]

Odd things are happening at small scales - first an anti-gravity force reported now this:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/08/16/scispeed116.xml&CMP=ILC-mostviewedbox

[Topher]

Interesting. I would like to see the theory on what has happened. Truly unbelieveable! What will the tell us next? The Earth revoles around the Sun?:lol:

(Isn't the world supposed to end now?);)

[ving]

bah! i have broken the speed of light myself... :rolleyes:
i mean really! who hasnt! :P


(ps, the earth does revolve around the sun)

[radu5er]

Oh that's just great...now someone tell me where the super glue is so we can fix the bloody thing.

Next thing you know they will repel ohms law...

[GeoffW1]

Yup, I did the other night on the way to the bathroom:doh:

[ballaratdragons]

Star Trek does it all the time, so whats the big deal :shrug:

[bojan]

It may have something to do with group and phase velocities of waves .. Phase velocity may be faster than c.
Lets see some more details from more serious sources before making judgements...
Remember the furore about what newspapers called "instant teleportation" couple of years ago? It is possible at the end (in principle at least), it is happening due to entaglement of pairs of particles, which is purely quantum effect, very real and predictied by quantum mechanic and then demonstrated and confirmed in the labs couple of times.

[g__day]

It may also have something to do with bodgey physics! At a quantum level - wierd stuff happens - but you shouldn't be able to organise that wierd stuff to a marco level of reality - something we could observe and us this to pass information faster than the speed of light. Time will tell!

[bojan]

Yes, quite possible, GTR does not work on small, sub-atomic scale anyway, where quantum mechanic takes over.
However, the bombastic press presentations of such discoveries (with no real substance and a lot of misinformations) are never helpful either..

[JohnH]

I am not sure I'd put New Scientist is in that category....still it could be another cold fusion furfy...or then again....

[xelasnave]

Where do they get the arrival before one leaves idea out of this? even instant will not provide such an event.
And we have a distance of "up to 3 feet" as the test area... seems the measurements would be so small onw wonders how they can make such a claim and keep a straight face.
Senstional and newsworthy but really how credible?
I dont buy it... does not mean they are wrong just means I dont buy it.

So I wonder how many times they performed the experiment to come up with their conclusion... what was the sample..one? two? a hundred ... anything approaching the sample requirements for a new cough medicine???

Is the implication that the electromagnetic spectrum has parts that travel faster than other parts?
If this is correct it means everything is crap... everything... possible but really lets try moving the prisms say 3 miles apart or 3000 miles apart and look for the effect... must be funding time thats my conclusion.

alex

[bojan]

The link was to the article in Telegraph... that 's what I meant when mentioning "bombastic press presentations". I am sure that New Scientist article would look different ;)
We shall see......

[Calin]

I like this explanation/theory the best !

http://www.etresoi.ch/Denis/hologram.html

I also notice the 'faster than speed of light' experiments have been claimed to be the first for at least the past 20 years, with some experiments going back 30 years or more .....

Guess it all comes down to which one was fastest to pick who was first :)

Mind you, with the 'holographic paradigm' all is revealed .... 'I can taste the smell of ice-cream my great great great granddaughter is eating yesterday, 320 years from now .....' trippy ....

[janoskiss]

Telegraph having a slow news day... New Scientist article 12 years ago talking about the exact same thing: using quantum tunnelling to break the speed of light:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14619710.100-faster-than-einstein.html

Bottom line though is that this is indeed purely a quantum effect, done on "borrowed time", made possible by the Uncertainty Principle, and precludes the transmission of any information faster than the speed of light. as far as i understand...

[mnm]

Notice the date on that New Scientist article, "01 April 1995". :lol:

[Mr. Subatomic]

It goes against anything I've ever heard about physics, but about that whole "get there before you leave" thing, is that all about you supposedly 'beating' your own light so you only appear to get somewhere before you leave?

[felix]

the idea of breaking the speed of light seems unthinkably amazing! :lol:

the example suggested where the astronaut arrives before they leave would most certainly be very bizarre. perhaps it's not just the commonly understood type of 'energy' or force required to move an object at or beyond c? it'd be interesting to see further development and findings on larger particles

[bloodhound31]

Has anyone seen the movie "The Quiet Earth?" A B grader, but very good (and scary concept and outcome).

It tells of the catastrophic chain of events that happen when the brains of the world start "Stuffing" with the space-time continuum.

If this story has ANY credibility at all, I think they need to be VERY careful and the public and government need to keep very close tabs on what they are doing.

My humble opinion.

Baz.:D

[JohnH]

Hmm. The paradox you refer to only exists if you believe the basic tenet of Relativity - that is - that there exists no absolute frame of reference against which "at rest" can be defined. If there is (at some scale or in some dimension) you can go infinitely fast - but never arrive before you left.

There is so little we know and so much we do not, we know little about dark energy and dark matter. As one members sig file has it - what is the speed of dark?

I am keeping a sceptical but open mind I hope...good feedback and lively discussion - IIS is great!

[NQLD_Newby]

Wow!!! This article is very trippy as you put it. But leads to all sorts of thoughts etc.

Like if this is true, maybe our universe is actually a subatomic particle in some larger universe. Maybe our solar system is like an atom and our planet is an electron????? and that would make us.......... DNA????? :rofl:

I have no idea but I tell you what, it is mind blowing stuff and just goes to show how little humans actually kow about our existence.

I have often wondered about similar things on a much smaller scale. Take colour for instance, colour IMO is relative, we all call green, green and so on because each of us sees it as the same thing everytime we see it. But does everybody see it as the actual same colour. There is no way of really knowing, but is interesting to ponder. This would perhaps partially explain why people like different colours, or different light filters for a particular photo etc. Maybe i think green brings out the detail better, and is more pleasing to the eye, but maybe someone else thinks blue does. Maybe the reason behind this is because the way I perceive green is the same as you percieve blue? therefore my green is your blue, however we would never know it because i have always known it as green and you have always known it as blue, so therefore, I think green does a better job, and you think blue does but its really the same colour???

I have a headache now :screwy:. too much thought :lol:

[xelasnave]

What I find curious about light is that it can "live" so long...ltes face it there is some very old light out there..coming in.

I mean how can the "energy" last so long...think of the light in the Hubble Deep Sky captures (and process) it has ben travelling for billions of years but still can register on the chip.

I came up with a concept similar to the quantum tunneling concept (proof at astronomydaily in a thread about you know what) and it was thinkimg about that concept I realised no matter how fast you turn up the speed of anything you will not pass the speed of instant... take the speed of light to the power of one million..you get a big number and it will be very very fast but still it will not be instant.

I think these folk must get so involved with the sums they overlook such a simple premise.

If C were a billion x a billion par secs per milli second this is still slower than instant.... and even at this extreme speed you will find it still takes time to get to one end of the Universe to the other.

Quantum tunneling may provide a speed close to instant and there for faster than light but we still are only working under or at the instant barrier.

I feel the extrapolation of many of the available sums take some into fantacy land... in many areas.

alex

[xelasnave]

AND to state the obvious that so many must fail to consider in these matters...

There can be no speed faster than instant therefor the conditions for pre arrival do not exist.

alex

[Doug]

That may be true for you Alex, but some of us do arrive before we leave: better known as tripping over our own feet!:whistle:

[xelasnave]

At last an observation in support and no doubt a situation that has probably been observed by many different observers in many different observatories.
alex

[Globular3]

Hello JohnH,
An interesting article. If I remember my university lecturer correctly, the group velocity can exceed the speed of light but this is only artificial as the phase velocity is less than it. Maybe I got that around the wrong way, but I'm trying to remember back 29 years ago.:help:

Anyway, I never really believed this fact about Physics and the speed of light.:eyepop:Doesn't everybody know that Captain James T Kirk has been zooming all over the universe at warp speeds since the 1960's.:rofl:

No, seriously, there are many things that we all know little about in the universe. I'm certain that this is one of them. Many events in life would change if this were so, fundamentally, that people in inertial frames of reference could tell if they were moving without looking outside of the reference frame. For instance, their reflection in a mirror could disappear. These are things that fundamentally cannot occur, else the universe would appear very different to us. Anyway, all scientific research needs to be evaluated and checked by others. I'm prepared to keep an open mind on the subject and await any developments with interest. Other scientists should be able to replicate the results if the data is valid. I find it amazing to grasp how these scientists can measure a time interval this small over a distance of 3ft. This equates to being able to measure times as small as 3 x 10(power)-7 seconds. Till I have verification from other scientists, I'll save my faster than the speed of light thoughts for science fiction.:thumbsup:

[xelasnave]

I sortta got carried away reading about light last night and something I came across surprised me... I should have stayed with this aspect but I will follow it up... anyways I read that a scientist had slowed light to some 57 miles per second..or at least it was in that unbelievable region.

If this is so it means that maybe in space cool regions will act as a lens..

But if this is truth it would make one wonder the variations in C in space available in space..what a confusing mix
alex