'We have broken speed of light' Can this possibly be true?

Question

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/08/16/scispeed116.xml


If this is true, it changes EVERYTHING.

PLEASE READ THE ARTICLE BEFORE ANSWERING!

I understand that photons have no mass. However, light can be used as a medium to transmit data. If this is true, the implications for deep space exploration would be incredible.

Answer 1

Nimitz has been making these claims for years, but information is not transmitted faster than light in his experiments. The experiment demonstrates a steady-state quantum tunneling effect. But steady state means zero bandwidth. As soon as you attempt to transfer information using quantum tunneling effects, the bandwidth becomes nonzero and it is no longer steady-state and the effects are slower than c.

Answer 2

wow, thats insane- if it can be replicated by other physicists it would be a new era in science

though it would probably be eons before the movement of anything weighing more than a few micro grams of mass

however its also not all that new, we know that electrons somehow "teleport" from point a to point b with in each orbital, however the distances traveled is small- the only new thing that has come out of this would be the 3 ft margin

but since it broke the special relativity law, it would mean that if this was 100% true it would mean an infinite amount of free mass and energy for man kind, that is if used for the right reasons and not for personal gain

however I have my doubts too, we are taking about accelerating a mass less particle, a photon of light pass the speed of light, an achievement yes, but since its mass less the force needed to accelerate it would be quite small

Answer 3

The speed of light was exceeded back in 2000..! ==>http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/841690.stm

As for this most recent experiment, as with all scientific pronouncements it *must* be verified before it can be accepted by the scientific community. Also the question arises with this experiment as with earlier ones about actual information being transmitted faster than light. It's one thing to *apparently* get a photon from 'A' to 'B' faster than the speed of light, entirely another to move information from 'A' to 'B' faster than the speed of light.

The properties of light are so complex and just plain weird that we're a long way from completely understanding it all. For instance, how can light behave as a particle *and* a wave. Then there's so-called Cerenkov radiation that violates the speed of light routinely in nuclear power plants.

There's a somewhat complex and detailed discussion about superluminosity at this website if you'd care to wade through it all ==>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light#.22Faster-than-light.22_observations_and_experiments

Answer 4

i'm skeptical.

first of all, just for the record, it's impossible for an object with rest mass to travel AT the speed of light. there's no prohibition against going faster than light, it's just that to get there from here, at some point you would have to pass through the speed of light, and that's what's impossible.
there are particles that travel faster than light, called tachyons, but they stay faster than light. (they also do travel backwards in time, backwards relative to us.)

but there's a clue in the article. this experiment was not about superluminal travel, but quantum tunneling.
quantum tunneling is a real, verified phenomenon whereby particles seem to jump to another spot.
this does NOT contradict relativity though. the fact that it seems to just demonstrates that quantum physics and relativisic physics have not been reconciled. there is still one set of rules for the really small and another for everything else, and someday we must find a way to understand them as 2 manifestations of the same underlying rules.
but no, quantum tunneling does NOT violate relativity. these scientists just want some attention, it seems.

Answer 5

Lets not jump the gun. We need to wait and see if the experiment can be reproduced and if its accepted in the scientific community.

The article that you are referencing is talking about quantum mechanical tunneling of single photons. That is not the same as a physical body traveling faster then the speed of light.

Answer 6

no, it is not true or possible.

The speed of light in vacuum is an important physical constant denoted by the letter c for constant or the Latin word celeritas meaning "swiftness".[1] It is the speed of all electromagnetic radiation, including visible light, in a vacuum. More generally, it is the speed of anything with zero rest mass.

In metric units, c is exactly 299,792,458 metres per second (1,079,252,848.8 km/h).[2] The fundamental SI unit of length, the metre, has been defined since October 21, 1983, as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second; any increase in the precision of the measurement of the speed of light would refine the definition of the metre, but not alter the numerical value of c. The approximate value of 3×108 m/s is commonly used in rough estimates. In imperial units, the speed of light is 983, 571, 056 feet per second, which is about 186,282.397 miles per second, or roughly one foot per nanosecond.

The speed of light when it passes through a transparent or translucent material medium, like glass or air, is slower than its speed in a vacuum. The ratio of c to the observed phase velocity is called the refractive index of the medium. General relativity explains how a gravitational potential can affect the apparent speed of distant light in a vacuum, but locally light in a vacuum always passes an observer at a rate of c.

Answer 7

If you read the article over, you will find that it says instantaneously meaning not at the same time. So the charged photons crossed the prism an extremely short time after the first.

Answer 8

There's no reason it can't be "true". The interpretation of the experiment is likely skewed, but if not, others will reproduce it and begin a whole new area of research in superluminal physics. I don't see how it changes ANYTHING, the canon of science remains because it WORKS, not because we know what is "TRUE". This discovery would not prevent our previous scientific developments from working . . . oh, wait, planes are starting to fall from the sky. You were right.

Answer 9

No, Einstein's theory E=MC square. So if you want to go double the speed you need to have double the energy. If you want to go to the speed of light, you need more fuel, and you need more mass to contain the fuel. When you have more mass you need more energy, then you need more fuel, then you need more mass. So the number would add up to INFINITE !!!!!!!!

So you can never get to light speed.

Hoped I Helped^_^

Answer 10

No, the speed of light is relative. However fast you or your signals can go, it will always be exceeded by the speed of light.