Can anything travel faster than the speed of light?

Question

I’ve read recently that propelled photons “can travel faster than light”

Was Einstein wrong after all, or this theory will be shrugged off eventually?

Thanks

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/mg19526173.500-photons-challenge-the-light-barrier.html

Answer 1

Nimitz has been making these claims for years, but neither photons nor information are actually 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

Like most people trying to answer the question I am not clever enough either, however think of this as I often did after reading Hawkings work ( this was not mentioned by the way) If a photon travelling at the speed of light towards object A has Tachyons Gluons etc orbitting around it surely these sub particles are overtaking the photon at some point!, rather like somebody walking along at a constant speed swinging a ball on a string, the ball relative to the person is accelerating and decelarating all the time towards the object A. I do understand that light speed is supposed to be constant but to the likes of me, I believe that man will never be intelligent enough to know the answer that is for Gods knowledge only.

Answer 3

I believe that Einstein still holds. Notice they said "Instantaneous". Therefore, there was NO movement. It went from point A to point B without crossing the space between. It reminded me of an technology I read about a few years ago (see link) about teleportation. An IBM group teleported a photon.
Its good to see that more has been done in this field.

However, I'm always hesitant to believe "new breakthroughs" until it has been repeated by other scientific groups.

I've also read articles about Quantum Entanglement, which suggest instantaneous travel between matched photons.

I also have a vague memory of a group finding something that didn't accelerate past the speed of light but has just always been faster then light; however, I can't find anything to corroborate this tid-bit.

My second link mentions how they have changed the speed of light, both faster and slower, by which medium and temp it is going through.

Answer 4

There is no KNOWN matter that can travel above, or even at, the speed of light in any specified medium. However, some physicists have theorized that physics would allow for the existence of particles known as tachyons, which would be incapable of traveling Slower than the speed of light. Unfortunately, the existence of such particles has never been confirmed; nor do I believe it is ever likely to be confirmed. The relationship between velocity and time would suggest that any such particles would move backward through time... thus, if they were emitted, you would not be able to detect them after the emission.

Answer 5

As I understand it, the uncertainty principle, together with probability density functions means that photons can travel through classically forbidden areas 'instantaneously'. These areas are very small, however if you add up the distance travelled through these areas together with 'permitted' areas the total length is greater than that which a photon would travel normally. Since the total distance is greater in the same time then the classical 'speed' is greater than light in vacuo.

FYI Einstein was not a great believer in quantum mechanics - "god does not play dice with the universe"

Answer 6

Relativity isn't going away, but it may well be incorporated into a subsequent theory, just as Newtonian physics is a special case of relativity.

The phenomena in quantum mechanics that sometimes get described as something going faster than light are better described other ways, such as saying that our macroscopic understanding of an object having a location doesn't work for subatomic particles.

Answer 7

Einstein's Theory of Relativity allows for faster than light particles called "Tachyons".

Tho none have been seen or proven to exist, they are theoretically possible, and they behave opposite of what logic would dictate.

The more energy they have, the slower they move, and the less energy they have, the faster they move, but they always travel faster than the speed of light.

Answer 8

Light can travel as photons or as waves. Some scientists now are claiming(in yesterday's papers) that they have made light travel faster than the speed of light..I still can't get my head round that

Answer 9

In order to answer your question I'll have to vulgarize a little bit of elementary nuclear science and cosmogony. This is by no means easy , so bear with me.
Our entire universe as we know it is made of about 5% of what is called the baryonic universe (this is the universe made of atoms, protons, neutrons and electrons; and these in turn made of quarks (9 different types of them, and these in turn made of....jesus will it ever stop?) The 95% other percent of he universe is called the hadronic universe and is made of dark matter (matter which we cannot perceive but which we can mathematically prove to exist via what are known as gravitational lensing measurements) and dark energy.
In the baryonic part of the universe it looks as if the Einstein formula is still holding, but in the hadronic part it could be a whole different kettle of fish. In order to explore this part of the universe at this moment a series of dark matter trapping experiments are being carried out all very deep in mines in order to trap dark matter particles. And some of these particles are called (and I am not kidding) MACHOs and another category is called WIMPS.However up to now nothing has been trapped.
On another front the ATLAS experiment in the particle accelerator at the CERN underneath Geneva, Switzerland which will start in 2008 is supposed to reveal more elementary particles and perhaps answer some of our -and your questions.

Answer 10

Einstien was a step forward in progress. He was not the end, he was another step along the road.

Light has always been the fastest thing we have ever known, in our short time of scientific exploration
But we know that there are other forces that act upon light, such as huge gravity wells, and that possibly there are other things that go faster then light.