'We have broken speed of light'

[Tigerzen]

Thought I would share this for those that have not happened across it yet. Didn't see it in the forum yet.

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.

Below are links to a couple of places where you can read the full article...
http://www.hbinavigators.com/index.p...=1509&Itemid=1
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/mai...cispeed116.xml

~Tigerzen

[Korpo]

Now it's broken, are they going to fix it?

Damn Germans, always messing up stuff!

Oliver

[ButterflyWoman]

And once again, it's the difference between group velocity and phase velocity. Or so says my scientist husband. And, he points out, no actual information was sent faster than light. (No, I don't know enough about physics to fully appreciate what he's on about, but I do understand that the problem with the speed of light is information, not speed.)

[White Wolf]

Its a local violation, which is completely consistent with relativistic field theories. It is quantum tunneling, something which is fairly mundane in the grand scheme of phenomenon.

There are local violations to the law of thermodynamics which states that energy is neither created nor destroyed.

It is interesting that they could get it to work on such a macroscopic scale.

Later this year, information will be passed faster than the speed of light, but the light won't carry the information. http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/ ... 74531.aspx

Which, if that happens, WILL be significant.

[journyman161]

There's a few problems with this information.

1. Einstein's work has never said anything about travelling faster than light. If simply states that, [/i]AT[/i] the SoL, the mathematics is discontinuous - ie. you begin to divide by 0
This implies that AT the SoL, infinite quantities come into play but it is really just a limitation of the mathematics.

2. Quantum Tunnelling, as WW says, doesn't really say much about macro-level events.

3. We have many examples of experiments which DO show information being passed faster than light, from the paired-particles phenomena, to BOSE Condensates, through to using phase to pass information slightly faster than the light carrier.
(this last is when you have two carriers, slightly out of sync, & the phase interference between them will move faster than the light itself - from memory I think it is √2 x C (where C is the SoL) old tech but still passes basic information faster than light I think)

If I also recall correctly, I think Black Holes can't exist without the implication of the event horizon passing information instantaneously.

Instantaneity is interesting, far more so than simply 'faster than light' yet for some reason the reports of this are talking about SoL rather than instantaneity - wierd - maybe they thought the general public wouldn't understant the concept of instantly?

Faster than Light simply points out limitations in the theory - Instantaneity calls the entire concept of the Universe into question.

[Tigerzen]

I found some more information on quantum tunneling. Would you believe it's on Wikipedia? Probably no surprise there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_tunnelling
I'm with Korpo on this one. I hope they fix it!

Reading all of this stuff I don't know where science is going, but it is sure getting interesting. Seems as if science may be finally starting to touch upon possible events that may explain some psychic phenomenon.

What's next?

Best Wishes,
Tigerzen

[wstein]

Speed of light; who needs it anyway??

[journyman161]

Anyone who's lived in a small country town could tell you the Speed of Light is far exceeded by the Speed of Gossip!

[gigaschatten]

Interesting, though lightspeed has been overcome about 13 years in an experiment before. If I remember it correctly, data was transmitted by a tunneled wave and received faster than light would have taken.

[jalef]

hmm it seems speed of light is the maximum for matter, but not for information...