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| Science & Technology |
| 'We have broken speed of light' |
| 2007-08-16 |
| By Nic Fleming, A pair of 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." |
| Posted by:anonymous5089 |
| #48 "You're just experienced by watchers as being thus. " And that experience will include a gravitational influence from both of you doubling the effective gravity of a given amount of mass, albeit for a short period of time. But if enough events such as those are happening all the time, then there might be enough of them to account for the "missing" mass scientists have been looking for. |
| Posted by: crosspatch 2007-08-16 23:26 |
| #47 Yea, I imagine it would be iffy to meet Medusa, too. |
| Posted by: twobyfour 2007-08-16 22:44 |
| #46 They may be "constructs" but I sure as hell don't want to be within many light years of one... |
| Posted by: 3dc 2007-08-16 22:16 |
| #45 PIMF However these "laws" fall apart around constructs like worm holes and black holes (maybe white ones too) And that's what they are. Constructs. |
| Posted by: twobyfour 2007-08-16 22:09 |
| #44 3dc, just noticed... However these "laws" fall apart around constructs like worm holes and black holes (maybe white ones too) And that's what they are. Constructs. |
| Posted by: twobyfour 2007-08-16 22:07 |
| #43 Oh! So NOW is now quantized! ;-) Okay, that would solve the plumbing issue. |
| Posted by: twobyfour 2007-08-16 21:51 |
| #42 D *** ng I miss my laser projects for the Army-USDOD - time to go to Subway and console wid two Cold Cut foot-longs. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2007-08-16 21:49 |
| #41 Yep they accelerate/rotate into the next now. The square root of -1 is analogous to a 90degrees rotation. The square function implies self-interaction. The solution to the wave equation is... Anyway I see it as a set of NOW states. It works for whatever gauge you want to use for C*T. |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2007-08-16 21:48 |
| #40 Old Patriot, how about computers.;-) Pebbles, one problem... you have a leak there! ;-) Because the NOW happens now, in now all the particles would accelerate out of the NOW and the whole thing would pop out of existence at an instant. I was tempted to say before it began, but realized it's all now.;-) |
| Posted by: twobyfour 2007-08-16 21:08 |
| #39 From what I've read (gross amateur in the field of quantum physics - I flunked College calculus), tachyons and neutrinos also have very strange behaviors that MAY exceed the "normal" laws of physics. As long as there is at least SOME text in the discussion, I can try to follow it. Apparently there are two universes - the macro-universe we all live in and are beginning to understand the laws governing it, and the micro-universe, which apparently has its own rules that we're only now beginning to learn. I doubt seriously that this will have a practical application for at least another 200 years. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2007-08-16 20:59 |
| #38 I'm actually working on a theory that simplifies Einstein relativity... Basically instead of 4D minkowski (x^2+y^2+z^2-t^2=0) space you have 3 normal dimensions PLUS a small closed NOW dimension (i.e. there is no past or future reality). Here's the clever bit. 1) All particles travel at the speed of light i.e. 3space stationary particles are rotating in the now dimension at c. Accelerating particles rotate out of the NOW space. 2) Only light doesn't rotate around the now dimension. 3) The passage of time can only be measured by how long it takes a normal particle to cross a now line. i.e. a 3 space fast moving particle would take much longer to rotate around the now space. Basically all the time dilation effects are the same and you simplify the space/time structure. |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2007-08-16 20:49 |
| #37 Mike, "Its entirely reasonable to presume that backward time travel is not possible because we haven't met anyone from the future." "Very" reasonable, but not "entirely". Granted, you did not say: "We haven't met anyone from the future, therefore backward time travel is not possible". |
| Posted by: twobyfour 2007-08-16 20:49 |
| #36 For instance, an astronaut moving faster than it would theoretically arrive at a destination before leaving. Starfleet calls this the Picard manuever. I have to wonder (a) if their instrumentation is capable of measuring this stuff (b) if they can even tell if it's the same photos. I don't want to sound racist but they all look alike to me. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2007-08-16 20:36 |
| #35 Even more does the universe really care about the direction of information flow or information? Heady arguments between some of the top brains on that issue. |
| Posted by: 3dc 2007-08-16 20:34 |
| #34 Truth to crackpot's arguments. One can not forget planck. Plank demands clocked processing - think super array of computers with a common clock enabling unique events... It seems to suggest that an async computer like some of the ARM models can not be used as arrays of them would not require unique events. Both Einstein and Quantum worlds require it implying a serial nature to the Universe. However these "laws" fall apart around constructs like worm holes and black holes (maybe white ones too) So do we use the wave function, the particle function our something else to look at information travel in reverse or Taychon direction. |
| Posted by: 3dc 2007-08-16 20:32 |
| #33 I got news for the German brainiacs. The only way to travel through time is to visit your local library. Unless you count the forward time travel we are all doing right now. Ummm... Now ima have a thinker moment. Its entirely reasonable to presume that backward time travel is not possible because we haven't met anyone from the future. Excepting Thomas Dolby. And we know that forward time travel is possible, at our current pace, so I will submit that we may someday send someone into the future, but will never get the opportunity to find out if it was cool or completely sucked. This is the first time I have ever contemplated time travel and I fully intend never to make this mistake for a second time. I'm spent. |
| Posted by: Mike N. 2007-08-16 20:21 |
| #32 daughter #1, just for the sake of precision, the now is about 500ms behind, in our perception. Or let me be more acurate--our conscious perception. In fact, there is a little twist...some experiments resulted in signals being received about 70-100ms before their registered time stamp, unconsciously. Yes, that says 100ms before they happened. |
| Posted by: twobyfour 2007-08-16 20:20 |
| #31 Crackpot, were fine until the paragraph with darkwing matter. This is my button, I guess. ;-) DM has nothing to do with reality. It is a mathematical construct. We have no friggin idea what holds galaxies together and it ain't gravity calculated from matter and energy we perceive in all the spectra, or they'd fall or fly apart, so weak is the force. There are other forces in the universe that are many orders of magnitude stronger, but the current cosmology wants to have nothing to do with that, as it would open a whupass can of worms and endanger the teat of the current Elders of Church of Scientism. |
| Posted by: twobyfour 2007-08-16 20:09 |
| #30 Or consider this thought experiment. Postulate a universe of computational elements each one planck length across and connected by a backplane. Simple particles/wave functions like photons and neutrinos don't take a lot of processing power, so they can be clocked across the domains at the maximum clock rate. Nothing can be clocked across a domain faster than the clock rate, thus the speed of light. Things like leptons, baryons and spaceships take up a lot more computational power and can't be clocked across multiple computational domains without consuming tremendous amounts of energy (processing ain't free). Just consider all of the calcs that would be required to maintain the shape and activity of a spaceship moving at .99 c while transversing all of those planck length sized domains. For baryonic matter to move at the speed of light would "lock up" the system. Thus the impossibility of baryonic matter moving at c. Mass would then be an artifact of computational density. The more interactions, the more calcs and the greater the mass. This also explains the mass paradox. An outside observer sees the mass of baryonic matter go to infinity as it approaches c. If you think your way through it, you could also explain the time paradox using this model. Dark matter andd dark energy are the computational mass and energy of the universe. They are running the backplane. Generally, the distribution of both is less dense in the presence of baryonic matter since backplane energy is flowing into baryonic regions of the universe to power all of the calcs required. |
| Posted by: Crackpot 2007-08-16 19:54 |
| #29 Or consider this thought experiment. Postulate a universe of computational elements each one planck length across and connected by a backplane. Simple particles/wave functions like photons and neutrinos don't take a lot of processing power, so they can be clocked across the domains at the maximum clock rate. Nothing can be clocked across a domain faster than the clock rate, thus the speed of light. Things like leptons, baryons and spaceships take up a lot more computational power and can't be clocked across multiple computational domains without consuming tremendous amounts of energy (processing ain't free). Just consider all of the calcs that would be required to maintain the shape and activity of a spaceship moving at .99 c while transversing all of those planck length sized domains. For baryonic matter to move at the speed of light would "lock up" the system. Thus the impossibility of baryonic matter moving at c. Mass would then be an artifact of computational density. The more interactions, the more calcs and the greater the mass. This also explains the mass paradox. An outside observer sees the mass of baryonic matter go to infinity as it approaches c. If you think your way through it, you could also explain the time paradox using this model. Dark matter andd dark energy are the computational mass and energy of the universe. They are running the backplane. Generally, the distribution of both is less dense in the presence of baryonic matter since backplane energy is flowing into baryonic regions of the universe to power all of the calcs required. |
| Posted by: Crackpot 2007-08-16 19:51 |
| #28 daughter #1, smart kido you are ;-) |
| Posted by: twobyfour 2007-08-16 19:49 |
| #27 crosspatch... Not DarkWing Duck again! Err, dark matter. It's an epicycle by another name. 3dc, there has ben some speculation that events can be seen as waveforms in physics sense. They create ripples in time continuum, which esentily has only "now" dimension. The time arrow is only our interpretation of making sense of our environ (and the entropy), as the events get their ripple cancelled by new events for the most part. Only very finely tuned instrument (sometimes that'd be human brain) can detect the ripples that are rather distant--so anyhing in the past or future becoms rather fuzzy, mostly erased by noise the further in either direction you go. So, what you are suggesting is an amplifier of sorts. The problem is not that it would violate causality (I believe that there are causal relationships across time continum in any direction, but we are not equipped to handle it and are built to percieve it in only in one direction along the entropy path--well...with some exceptions of certain cult-ural segment where they have it almost reverse, and children about age 2-3 that operate frequently in the "now" scope and do not have yet a clear idea that yesterday already happened and that tomorow is the future tense, for them, there is a little difference as to them they seem to be equidistant), but that the mischievousnes of matter (disppearing socks, scissors, pens, glasses, etc., that you won't be finding in the place you left them just wile ago, for hours, and then they will reappear in the same spot you went over numerous times before) will be elevated to new heights as you adapt to more lateral perception. Clear? If so, then you are lucky, I have no idea what I just said.;-) |
| Posted by: twobyfour 2007-08-16 19:47 |
| #26 You're not IN two places at the same time. You're just experienced by watchers as being thus. The same thing happens with everything we experience in any way -- everything happens before you experience it, because it takes time for the perception of the experience to reach you, and then to reach your brain, and then to be processed and interpreted by the brain. We are all living in the past. Postscript: Traversing the luminous aether |
| Posted by: trailing daughter #1 2007-08-16 19:23 |
| #25 It's just going fast. Nothing exciting happens to airplanes that break the speed of sound, right? Although for those on the ground it can be a bit startling. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2007-08-16 19:17 |
| #24 If a particle that has mass can be transported to a different location faster than the speed of light, then that might be the source of "dark matter". Dark matter might be tunneled particles. Think of it this way: A particle at point A will have a gravitational influence on the space around it. This influence "radiates" at the speed of light. In other words, a particle one light year from you that is suddenly destroyed will continue to have a gravitational impact on you (however small) for one year after it is destroyed. If that particle tunnels to another location, for all practical purposes, that particle's gravitational influence is doubled because it has now gone outside the influence of it's old location (which is "radiating" out into space like a bubble expanding at the speed of light) and had started a new gravitational influence before the old one is gone from it's current perspective. Might the gravitational influence of "dark matter" simply be from conventional particles that now exist outside of their old existence and thereby exert "double" the gravitational influence on the universe for some period of time? |
| Posted by: crosspatch 2007-08-16 18:59 |
| #23 Okay, Now for a bit of fun.... something happens you send the notification from a to b faster than light by this method and instantly trigger on reception at b to send back to a and so on like a bouncing tennis ball. If your instant trigger is less then the a - b reverse time lag - eventually you bootstrap an answer to a much earlier time at a and maybe just predict the future... |
| Posted by: 3dc 2007-08-16 18:36 |
| #22 no danger of becoming your own grandps from this phenomena.findings such as this one apply only to basic particles,e g , photons,electrons etc with masses so small they behave at times like waves with no mass at all only energy.Quantum behavior is bizarre and on an ordinary level cannot ever be understood. what is goingon here in the German experiment is a conservation of spin at a distance so that if two photons are emitted with opposite spin or polarity,if the spin of one is changed ,say by a diffraction grating three feet away, , the other one must change its spin to conserve the balance of spin in the universe.How do it know?Others have observed this or guessed about it including if memory serve a prof named Smith at Dublin U. there has been a clue also insomething called Higgs space where light seems to travel in a vacuum faster in one direction than it does at rt angles to the first light photon, but enough already of this mind bending Lets go study something easy like peace in the middle east. just as hard but more rewarding |
| Posted by: john e morrissey 2007-08-16 18:11 |
| #21 Al, hencetoforth, you'll send a copy (as data) of the astronaut with some form of encryption key (like md5) that would make sure the astronaut is re-composed properly. We are not talking a clone here but an exact bona fide "projection" of the said astronaut. If you ever exprienced a state called OBE, you'd have a feel for what I mean. Not the same thing, but about quarter of the cigar. Of course, then the astronaut would be in two places at the same time. Meaning you'd need to train people to be able to get over their linear programming and make sense of parsing two data sets at the same time and not get a psychiatric ward dossier. Here we assume that there would be a presistent FTL* entanglement of the mental state. May be not, but I have a hunch that would be the case. You can also terminate astronaut before transfer and after the arival at the destination recompose him/her. Yea, it will feel like dying. The ariving astronaut may be a mental wreck. * Did I mean persistent? No. it's FTL, hence presistent. ;) |
| Posted by: twobyfour 2007-08-16 17:45 |
| #20 At least now I finally know why my socks keep turning up missing. |
| Posted by: Mike N. 2007-08-16 17:36 |
| #19 1 hour from now, I'm going to be every bit as confused as I was one hour ago. |
| Posted by: Mike N. 2007-08-16 17:25 |
| #18 A pair of German physicists claim to have broken the speed of light . . . . Well, then, they'd damned well better fix it! |
| Posted by: Mike 2007-08-16 17:21 |
| #17 This is something that American scientists have been doing also. I remember a documentary where scientists broadcast music at a speed faster than light. Lotp's explanation actually makes quite a bit of sense if heard the music as received on the other end. It had quite a bit of static. Presumably an image transmitted the same way would be blurry, and an astronaut would arrive at his destination with some of his atoms missing/out of place. Whether that would be fatal is anybody's guess. Al |
| Posted by: Frozen Al 2007-08-16 16:53 |
| #16 I like that Perp account, 'moose. The Bayesian probs bit is a nice math way to describe how/why that probability function collapses. But don't you think it's a bit harsh to judge Mr. Tyrone that way, making him guilty because of the police prejudice? ;-) |
| Posted by: lotp 2007-08-16 16:50 |
| #15 Let's ask the science officer what he thinks. |
| Posted by: Perfesser 2007-08-16 16:50 |
| #14 Ten minutes ago I was looking for this story ten miniutes from now... |
| Posted by: tu3031 2007-08-16 16:41 |
| #13 A friend once described quantum physics in terms of what he called "Schrodinger's Perp". That is, let us say that the police have arrested a Mr Tyrone Washington, a suspect in the armed robbery of a 7-11 store. They have pictures of him on the store camera committing the robbery, a positive ID from the 7-11 clerk, his fingerprints on the counter and cash register and a toy gun dropped in a trash can next door to the 7-11, and statements from his friends that he bragged about robbing the 7-11. For the fourth time. However, Mr Tyrone Washington claims that he was instead home at the time, watching re-runs of "The Brady Bunch" on his mom's TV. "Wasn't me", claims Tyrone. Now, according to quantum mechanics, though he *could* have been at home watching TV, by dint of his having been measured at the 7-11, the probability of him recalling any details of that particular Brady Bunch episode are slight. That is, he could have theoretically been in either place up until the very moment in which a police officer determined that "Tyrone done it." At which point Tyrone being an armed robber again became the only real probability. And at no time was causality violated, unlike what will probably happen to Tyrone in prison. Again. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2007-08-16 16:40 |
| #12 "Instant" doesn't impress me. A measurable speed in excess of the speed of light would be something. |
| Posted by: Iblis 2007-08-16 16:26 |
| #11 Here I am! No I'm not! Here I am ! No I'm not! No, tu, that's Joe Biden's brain on any given day. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2007-08-16 16:07 |
| #10 crosspatch's explanation is the standard one, but the Germans are claiming something different IIUC. I think they are claiming that they changed the 'location' of the photons instantaneously - not with regard to our seeing them, but with regard to the state of the field probabilities themselves. There are other instantaneous phenomena at the quantum level. Twinned particles can be created such that, when the spin of one is changed the other changes instantaneously in the same way. It appears that 'information' about the 'proper' state can be shared even tho no electromagnetic field change is propagated so far as we can tell. Quantum tunnelling may consist of an equivalent information transmission that somehow changes the probability density function for the 'particle' to another state, without the 'particle' having to go through the intermediate states. It's as if at one minute I weighed x lbs (plus or minus a few) and then I suddenly weighed x+100 lbs (plus or minus). Or so I'm understanding it ... FWIW !! |
| Posted by: lotp 2007-08-16 15:54 |
| #9 crosspatch, thank you. I figure they were talking about it looking like time travel, but they left that word out, so I wasn't sure. |
| Posted by: Mike N. 2007-08-16 15:47 |
| #8 Not an expert by any means, but my understanding of quantum tunnelling comes at the question from a little different perspective. Start with probability densities. A probability density function describes the likelihoods of some variable quantity being equal to various values. For some values the likelihood is very high. For other values the likelihood is very small. If the possible values are discrete - for instance, whole numbers of people, or scores on the SAT exam - we call the resulting function a probability distribution. If the range of possible values is continuous, for instance potential body weights for people, we call the resulting function a probability density function. Either way, this function captures in a single snapshot everything we would want to know about the likelihood of each possible value occurring in the phenomenon of interest. For many phenomena this function is shaped like a rounded hill, with central values being very likely and low or high values being much less likely. This is true for things like the weights or lifespans of people, for instance. Now consider sub-atomic particles. Rather than picturing them as little BBs, think of a particle as a probability density function which describes the likelihood that a given quantity of electromagnetic energy will occur at a given tiny location in space. In this model, the particle isn't really 'at' one place for certain. In fact, it 'exists' across a relatively wide area of space ... but the likelihood of it manifesting its energy at most of those locations is very very low. At any given time, however, there is one place where it is very likely that the energy associated with a given 'particle' is found. We loosely call that the 'location' of the particle -- and when that location changes, we say the particle 'moved'. In actuality, a given place in space has an energy that is affected by many 'particles' ... it's just that most of those 'particles' affect the energy very very slightly. Or rather, very very infrequently. What quantum tunnelling does, IIUC, is to change where that center of likelihood for a given 'particle' is in the tiny spaces within an atom. To do that requires a change in the energy levels of the EM field in that space. In the German experiment, that change of energy was supplied by a microwave source. The change in 'location' occurs according to Bayesian probability, which is a fancy way of saying that the probability of an event is a function of the likelihood of that event in light of all other information at the time. So the change in energy / location of a 'particle' is influenced by whatever else is going on around it. Including an observer trying to measure its location / speed / energy level. But what works at the quantum level doesn't work for macro level things we can see or touch. I'm not all that affected by my monitor sitting on my desk. At least not when my webcam is turned off ;-). But a quantum particle is. Schroedinger's famous cat experiment points out the fallacy of trying to apply quantum behavior to the macroscopic level of things we can see and touch. Which is why it's pretty dubious to go from the German experiment (assuming it stands peer review) to what happens to astronauts. ;-) Clear as mud, right? Due in large part to my limited understanding, I'm sure. Or maybe also to the universe being weirder than we think. LOL |
| Posted by: lotp 2007-08-16 15:47 |
| #7 There was a young lady named Bright Who traveled much faster than light. She set out one day, In a relative way, And returned on the previous night. |
| Posted by: mojo 2007-08-16 15:34 |
| #6 So, does this mean we can tag jihadis with a .50 cal before they even show up there? Now, THAT'S the question! |
| Posted by: BA 2007-08-16 15:26 |
| #5 Here I am! No I'm not! Here I am ! No I'm not! |
| Posted by: tu3031 2007-08-16 15:12 |
| #4 "would theoretically arrive at a destination before leaving. " Think of it this way: You are at point A. You move to point B at a speed faster than light. You can look at point A and see yourself there even though you are at point B. At some point you will "disappear". Now to take that a step further, a person at point C might see TWO of you, one at point A and one at point B. The speed of light and it's relationship to time was basically what prevents someone from existing at two places at the same time. |
| Posted by: crosspatch 2007-08-16 15:05 |
| #3 Hokay, any geeks here that wanna splains that to me? I'm not an expert, but I'll give you my discovery channel explanation as I understand it. In quantum physics, the sub-atomic items behave differently than others. They pop in and out of existence all the time. For quantum tunnelling to happen, the sub-atomic particles must know what they are gonna be like before they move. Therefore, they particles popping into existence must know what the particles look like before they disappear. So stuff "arrives" at the new point right before the old stuff "leaves". Don't understand why. Hopefully there is a quantum expert running around the 'burg. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2007-08-16 14:52 |
| #2 Hope they got some high speed duct tape to fix it...... |
| Posted by: USN, Ret. 2007-08-16 14:36 |
| #1 For instance, an astronaut moving faster than it would theoretically arrive at a destination before leaving. Hokay, any geeks here that wanna splains that to me? We all know for a fact that light will take time to travel across any given distance. I don't see how going faster equals time travel. |
| Posted by: Mike N. 2007-08-16 14:26 |
