Thread: We Have Broken Speed Of Light

'We have broken speed of light'


By Nic Fleming, Science Correspondent
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 16/08/2007



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.



Albert Einstein won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921


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."





http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.j ... eed116.xml

Could the movies "Back to the Future" no longer be Sci-fi??

Anybody thinking what I'm thinking?

and the headline reads.....

Quantum Leap used to deport illegal aliens from the United States.

Oh well, a girl can dream can't she?

Great idea florgal!

As an aside - this pic confuses me. Einstein was left-handed.

How about the quantum leap in technology that we've made to control mother nature?

http://www.cuttingedge.org/NEWS/n1694.cfm

Yeah, right. These wouldn't happen to be the same guys who brought us cold fusion using palladium as a catalyst?

Seriously, though, wouldn't the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle largely discredit measurement of so small an interval as 3 nanoseconds (for normal light traversing 3 feet) minus the interval for traversing the same distance for photons observed in quantum tunneling? It is not that 3ns is so minuscule, although it certainly is. But the difference between the two clocked intervals might be on the order of a fraction of a picosecond. That might fly if we were talking about interactions between subatomic particles. But in a three foot space, does the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle allow for measuring time down to that order of magnitude? Someone help me here.

this is nothing new, rumors have been doing it for years.

Wish I could help MinutemanCDC_SC, but I'm just the messenger.

I searched the internet for blogs discussing this story. Some of their entries might be of interest.


http://volokh.com/posts/1187308390.shtml




Here's another link to related story.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/ ... 081607.php

Light seems to defy its own speed limit
IT'S a speed record that is supposed to be impossible to break. Yet two physicists are now claiming they have propelled photons faster than the speed of light. This would be in direct violation of a key tenet of Einstein's special theory of relativity that states that nothing, under any circumstance, can exceed the speed of light.

Günter Nimtz and Alfons Stahlhofen of the University of Koblenz, Germany, have been exploring a phenomenon in quantum optics called photon tunnelling, which occurs when a particle slips across an apparently uncrossable barrier. The pair say they have now tunnelled photons "instantaneously" across a barrier of various sizes, from a few millimetres up to a metre. Their conclusion is that the photons traverse the barrier much faster than the speed of light.

To see how far they could make photons tunnel, Nimtz and Stahlhofen sandwiched two glass prisms together to make a cube 40 centimetres on its sides. Since photons tunnel most readily over distances comparable with their wavelength, the physicists used microwaves with a wavelength of 33 cm - long enough for large tunnelling distances yet still short enough that the photons' paths can be bent by the prism.

As expected, the microwaves shone straight through the cube, and when the prisms were separated, the first prism reflected the microwaves (see Diagram). However, in accordance with theory, a few microwave photons also tunnelled across the gap separating the two prisms, continuing as if the prisms were still sandwiched together.

Nimtz and Stahlhofen found that the reflected microwaves and the few microwaves that tunnelled through to the second prism both arrived at their respective photodetectors at the same time. This suggests an ultra-fast transit between the two prisms - so much faster than the speed of light that the experimenters couldn't measure it. Moreover, the pair found that the tunnelling time, if any, did not change as they pulled the prisms further apart. Because tunnelling efficiency also drops off with distance, however, Nimtz says that they could not observe the effect across distances greater than 1 metre (http://arxiv.org/abs/0708.0681).

"For the time being," he says, "this is the only violation [of special relativity] that I know of."

How can this be explained" The Heisenberg uncertainty principle dictates that a particle's energy and the time it spends in any one place cannot both be known with absolute precision. This means particles can sometimes sneak over a barrier if the time they spend traversing that barrier is short enough. Bizarre as it may seem, quantum tunnelling is not only a commonplace phenomenon in the quantum world, it also lies at the core of many processes we take for granted.

"In my opinion, tunnelling is the most important physical process, because we have it in radioactivity and we have it in nuclear fusion," Nimtz says. "The temperature of the sun is not high enough to organise regular fusion of protons into helium [without tunnelling]. Some people are saying that the big bang happened because of tunnelling. Recently, many people have argued that processes in biology and in our brain are based on tunnelling."

Aephraim Steinberg, a quantum optics expert at the University of Toronto, Canada, doesn't dispute Nimtz and Stahlhofen's results. However, Einstein can rest easy, he says. The photons don't violate relativity: it's just a question of interpretation.

Steinberg explains Nimtz and Stahlhofen's observations by way of analogy with a 20-car bullet train departing Chicago for New York. The stopwatch starts when the centre of the train leaves the station, but the train leaves cars behind at each stop. So when the train arrives in New York, now comprising only two cars, its centre has moved ahead, although the train itself hasn't exceeded its reported speed.

"If you're standing at the two stations, looking at your watch, it seems to you these people have broken the speed limit," Steinberg says. "They've got there faster than they should have, but it just happens that the only ones you see arrive are in the front car. So they had that head start, but they were never travelling especially fast."

###
"This article is posted on this site to give advance access to other authorised media who may wish to report on this story, or quote extracts as part of fair dealing with this copyrighted material. Full attribution is required, and if reporting online a link to www.newscientist.com is also required. This story posted here is the EXACT text used in New Scientist magazine, therefore advance permission is required before any and every reproduction of each article in full. Please contact claire.bowles@rbi.co.uk. Please note that all material is copyright of Reed Business Information Limited and we reserve the right to take such action as we consider appropriate to protect such copyright."

THIS ARTICLE APPEARS IN NEW SCIENTIST MAGAZINE ISSUE: 18 AUGUST 2007.

EDITOR’S NOTE: PRIOR PERMISSION IS REQUIRED BEFORE ANY REPRODUCTION OF THIS STORY IN FULL

IF REPORTING ON THIS STORY, PLEASE MENTION NEW SCIENTIST AS THE SOURCE AND, IF REPORTING ONLINE, PLEASE CARRY A LINK TO: http://www.newscientist.com

UK CONTACT - Claire Bowles, New Scientist Press Office, London:
Tel: +44(0)20 7611 1210 or email claire.bowles@rbi.co.uk

US CONTACT – New Scientist Boston office:
Tel: +1 617 386 2190 or email jill.heselton@reedbusiness.com

Anybody thinking what I'm thinking?

and the headline reads.....

Quantum Leap used to deport illegal aliens from the United States.

Oh well, a girl can dream can't she?

BUT OMG. THEN ANOTHER HEADLINE COULD READ.....

QUANTUM LEAP USED BY ILLEGALS TO CROSS BORDER INTO USA