Like I Said Things Move Faster Than Light...?

Question

ok I said in a few previous articles that light is not the ultimate speed.
You will believe me yet..
About superstrings and light being nothing more than a wave not a particle but a wave.
And all that light is nothing more than vibrations in the superstrings..

http://arxiv.org/abs/0708.0681

yes I know all about tachyons moving from future into the past so on..so..on

yes ist is a question now isn't it...?

Answer 1

You cannot just cite an abstract in a non peer reviewed hournal and expect people to believe it proves a wild assertion like that.

In fact, virtual particles are assumed in QED to travel at the speed of light, and this is quite necessary to have it give the real physical result that correspnd to the observed world. QED is the most accurately tested theory in human history - it makes predictions equivalent to getting the diamater of the earth right to within the width of a human hair. It could not do this if a central assumption - the limit of the speed of light -was wrong. Hence the core assumption of this abstract must be wrong.

Answer 2

Jay is exactly correct, although a little off subject. String theory and brane theory were born from attempts to unify QED and GR - and as yet have been untested by experiment, however promising they appear. QED has indeed been experimentally tested to astonishing accuracy. Next, there is a lot of rubbish written about nothing being able to travel faster than light. The crossing point between two blades of a pair of scissors can travel FTL if the handle is squeezed fast enough. It is energy, and by implication, mass (from E = mc2), that cannot travel FTL. The recent experiments on quantum entanglement demonstrate that it is INFORMATION that can travel FTL. Finally, The image of light being deflected by a mass such as the sun conjures up images of light being a particle being affected by gravity. This is not correct, and if you do the sums with this you'll see that the predicted deflection will not match the experimentally observed deflection. In SR/GR, light follows "null" geodesics, and the idea that light has a speed is meaningless. SR/GR does predict the observed deflection.

Answer 3

Very interesting article.

I have 2 points to make.

First, to all naysayers of this article and indeed the theory or supposition behind it, why the inflexibility?

All ideas of explaining and theorizing the world and universe around us as we percieve, and certainly those things we cannot percieve, starts with an idea or question of "What if?"

Even if that "What if" is the challenge against the current model and popular belief. Remember that at one time the current held belief of the driving force of gravity was that the Earth was God's gift to man and that it was so desirable to be here (also remember that it was thought th Earth was the center of the known Universe) all objects willingly fell to be closer to it. As we look back we think of how hogwash it was to believe this way. But to them it was the end-all and be-all of their knowledge.

Even Einstein grappled with the two different schools of thought and opposing calculations that applied to General Relativity and Quantum Theory. He knew that they should not be independent of each other. Would he have lived long enough, couldn't you concede that he might have resolved the two, and maybe, just maybe, also discovered that some of his other theories were slightly wrong, including that light was not the fastest speed in the Universe?

Science is not supposed to be so rigid that it never questins itself. I thought that belonged to the realm of Religion. Just because something is replicated time and time again by tests in the lab, perhaps we are not running the right tests. Try to be open minded about the possibilities. This very attitude about when we think we got something right, don't question it for it is absolute, is exactly what kept science down and did not allow us to advance all throught the dark Ages and the reign of the Catholic Church.

Secondly, Zed has a point about how fast the mind is. It, however, cannot be measured, at least with the technology currently available to us. My way of aligning myself to this statement is that it will be our mind that leads us to more answers and indeed more questions about this subject and many more that have to do with quantum mechanics. Our minds is the driving force to our understanding of that elusive area that is difficult for most of us to even perceive.

Ok. One last thought.

If one does subscribe to Superstring Theory, then one must know that the mechanics of this call for 10 dimensions and that some "strings", especially gravitons, fade into and out of oour dimension to another, possibly multiple dimesnions. It also theorizes that some "strings" fade in and out in fractions of a fraction of a fraction of time. If one were to imagine that these other "dimensions" are other "mebranes" (in essense other universes) and those other "membranes" are at distances even farther away from our Universe than our Universe is wide, then that is travelling un-friggin-believably fast!

Remember, it first takes our imagination to try to explain something we did not at first understand. After we posed several theories, then off to the drawing board to find ways to prove it. And then, even after we think we have the answer, we may still not be right...

~jaz~

Answer 4

Vibrations of what, emc? There must be something to vibrate, ergo light must have mass. This doesn't negate what you have said, but as light can be affected by gravity, it's speed must be variable. So I agree that under some circumstances there might be something which travels faster than light. If or what that might be doesn't impact on my life at this time, but if you have fun with the idea, go for it.

Answer 5

The duality of like permits its definition as a particle and wave. According to the fairy tale, Beltan said the fastest thing is THE MIND!

Answer 6

I agree with Carlos Mal.

Answer 7

You are correct, light is not the ultimate speed...You actually answered your own question...

Answer 8

youre talking out of your a55 and so is he, its 100% theory and unproved
stick to jack and jane

Answer 9

well obviously light isnt the ultimate speed
but its probably the fastest we can see and measure

Answer 10

Well I guess that changes everything.