# Speed of Light broken



## mrhnau (Mar 6, 2007)

Speed of Light broken

Neat stuff! From an early reading, this might have some interesting implications in communications in space eventually... what I find neat is not that they broke the speed of light, but they really shattered it. 300X! I think thats over Warp 2, if my Trek math is right...


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## Ray (Mar 6, 2007)

It will be interesting to see the results repeated and verified.

In my mind, light moving faster than normally expected doesn't mean the speed of light was "broken" or exceeded.  It's still light travelling at a speed.

There have been other instances of light "apparently" travelling at speeds faster than normal.  I believe Asimov wrote about it in one of his popular scientific collections..."behind the teacher's back" I think was the name of the article.


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## tellner (Mar 6, 2007)

The problem is that the articles I've seen are vague about what exactly was done and demonstrated. Anyone have a subscription to Nature? It would be nice to see something a little more concrete.


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## mrhnau (Mar 6, 2007)

Ray said:


> It will be interesting to see the results repeated and verified.
> 
> In my mind, light moving faster than normally expected doesn't mean the speed of light was "broken" or exceeded.  It's still light travelling at a speed.
> 
> There have been other instances of light "apparently" travelling at speeds faster than normal.  I believe Asimov wrote about it in one of his popular scientific collections..."behind the teacher's back" I think was the name of the article.



Yeah, verification will be needed I'm sure. Still, light moving faster than ordinary is indeed significant. Something like a car breaking a new speed record for cars. It's still a car, just going faster than ever before observed. Since the speed of light was for a long time considered a fixed constant, that makes it all the more significant I think.

with regard to other things moving faster than the speed of light, I think its been discussed that gravity waves more faster, but I'm not up to date on that research. I seem to recall something about positrons doing something funky with time/speed, but I read about that 20 odd years ago LOL. any experts in the house?


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## mrhnau (Mar 6, 2007)

tellner said:


> The problem is that the articles I've seen are vague about what exactly was done and demonstrated. Anyone have a subscription to Nature? It would be nice to see something a little more concrete.


I've got access to the online via school. I might take a look at the PDF if I can find it... I'm not sure how quickly they update their files.


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## crushing (Mar 6, 2007)

mrhnau said:


> I've got access to the online via school. I might take a look at the PDF if I can find it... I'm not sure how quickly they update their files.


 
The article was from November 2000.  Hopefully they got the update by now.


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## Flatlander (Mar 6, 2007)

I'd be interested to know whether they've actually propagated a photon faster than C through space-time, or if they've simply manipulated space-time.  Those are two very different circumstances.  My guess is that they've manipulated space-time.


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## Bigshadow (Mar 6, 2007)

Flatlander said:


> I'd be interested to know whether they've actually propagated a photon faster than C through space-time, or if they've simply manipulated space-time.  Those are two very different circumstances.  My guess is that they've manipulated space-time.



The article hinted at that at the end.  I am thinking that as well.


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## CoryKS (Mar 6, 2007)

Okay, maybe I'm just picking nits.  But if they caused a light pulse to move faster than the speed of light they didn't really break the speed of light, they _increased_ the speed of light, right?


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## mrhnau (Mar 6, 2007)

CoryKS said:


> Okay, maybe I'm just picking nits.  But if they caused a light pulse to move faster than the speed of light they didn't really break the speed of light, they _increased_ the speed of light, right?



That's kind of the point. Light is NOT supposed to speed up. That's why its interesting


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## Bigshadow (Mar 6, 2007)

CoryKS said:


> Okay, maybe I'm just picking nits.  But if they caused a light pulse to move faster than the speed of light they didn't really break the speed of light, they _increased_ the speed of light, right?



Or the perception of speed (time and distance or space)?


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## Andrew Green (Mar 6, 2007)

I think the answer is in here:



> The scientific statement "nothing with mass can travel faster than the speed of light" is an entirely different belief, one that has yet to be proven wrong. The NEC experiment caused a pulse of light, a group of waves with no mass, to go faster than light.



They didn't send light particles, just a pulse.  Still impressive, but doesn't violate Einstien's Laws, just makes them need a minor update in wording.


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## MA-Caver (Mar 6, 2007)

What's faster? Thought or light? Heh.

Saying that the speed of light is "broken" is akin to saying breaking the sound barrier or something to that effect isn't it? I mean to go faster than light you're obviously breaking a universal law that was set for light to travel at such and such speed.... 640K miles per second isn't it? 
Now apply this to a shuttle mission or something akin to it then we really got something. Missions to near-by planets won't take eons to make.  
Actually according to legend if we just do it once we'll attract attention of all those UFO's watching this planet and they'll look at each other and sigh... "well, guess it's time to introduce ourselves huh?" 

I'm still waiting for transporter technology to come to pass. I'm sure every parent would like it too... instead of yelling at the kids to come on from playing in a McDonalds play-land just push a button and the kid materializes right next to the parent, where they can grab a hand/wrist and say c'mon we're gonna be late. Or if a daughter is going to be late coming home from a date.


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## bydand (Mar 6, 2007)

> The scientific statement "nothing with mass can travel faster than the speed of light" is an entirely different belief, one that has yet to be proven wrong.



Oh how wrong can they be!  They have never seen a credit card in my ex-sister-in-laws hands, she can swipe that bugger faster than light for sure.


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## Ray (Mar 6, 2007)

Andrew Green said:


> They didn't send light particles, just a pulse. Still impressive, but doesn't violate Einstien's Laws, just makes them need a minor update in wording.


Light behaves sometimes as particles and sometimes as waves...you can't have "waves" without having something (empty space is not going to reverberate a wave).

It doesn't violate, nor make a minor wording in physics.  Nothing with mass can be accelerated to the speed of light, nor faster.  As speed increases, mass also increase.  At c, mass becomes infinite there requiring infinite energy; and infinite is just too much.

My own pet theory regarding things moving fast: During the big bang, miniscule particles were hurled at very fast speeds. When observed from other vantage points, they appear to be traveling at c, therefore becoming relativistic black holes.


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## michaeledward (Mar 6, 2007)

I don't think this is news at all, is it? 

Wasn't there a line from the comedian Steven Wright, a few decades back that proposed this very fact.

Something like .... 

_In a job interview, I asked the interviewere .... if you were in a vehicle, travelling at the speed of light, and you turned on the headlights, what would happen? _

_When the interviewer couldn't answer, I said, never mind, I don't want to work for you anyway._


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## zDom (Mar 6, 2007)

MA-Caver said:


> I'm still waiting for transporter technology to come to pass. ...



While this would be my favorite technological advance, I don't think this one is in the realm of possibility.

As explained in a television show I watched (a Discovery show, I think...)

What you would really be building is a machine that can construct things on a molecular level from piles of loose molecules  a replicator.

So you would end up with a duplicate copy of yourself on the other end, not the same individual. Are memories really existant in molecular structure? If so, I guess it would have the same memories instead of being a like a computer with no software loaded.

But then you get into spiritual matters: the soul isn't physical at all, is it? (Assuming it exists) So you get a soul-less creature with YOUR memories on the other end.

A molecular deconstructor on THIS end would just make you cease to exist and replace you with a soul-less copy on THAT end.

I DO see a use for this machine, however: if the duplicates have the same memory  including neuromuscular training  I sure would to make a couple copies of myself. I would enter them into vale tudo and UFC matches to see how I would do 

By the way ... there is a movie released last year that kind of deals with this idea, but I don't want to spoil the movie for those who haven't seen it. To name the movie would spoil the movie.


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## terryl965 (Mar 6, 2007)

Man warp 2 doe sshe have enough power to egt it to that rate.


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## Touch Of Death (Mar 6, 2007)

Flatlander said:


> I'd be interested to know whether they've actually propagated a photon faster than C through space-time, or if they've simply manipulated space-time. Those are two very different circumstances. My guess is that they've manipulated space-time.


They have already slowed the speed of light using buffers so the fact that it is relative is interesting.
Sean


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## Sukerkin (Mar 6, 2007)

Gents, we have a standard joke at work when things aren't going well ...

"Assuming the speed of light to be constant ... which it *isn't*!"

It's been known for quite a while that _c_ is not a constant but that it varies (markedly in conjunction with gravity), so it's not exactly a surprise that such an experiment 'worked'.

Oh, and as to what warp factor 300c represents, well that too depends ... :

http://www.star-fleet.com/ed/warp-chart.html


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## mrhnau (Mar 6, 2007)

zDom said:


> While this would be my favorite technological advance, I don't think this one is in the realm of possibility.
> 
> As explained in a television show I watched (a Discovery show, I think...)
> 
> ...


Did someone say Teleport? They are up to photons and atoms according to Wiki. I've read about photons in the past. I thought I posted about it once here, but could not find it quickly.

Who cares about spirit? This would absolutely revolutionize the transport industry. Goodbye UPS and Fedex!


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## exile (Mar 6, 2007)

In principle, the variability of the speed of light isn't particularly novel, because we know that the speed of light waves (or photons; light isn't one or  the other but displays properties of both, a result that is `built into' classical formal quantum mechanics) is medium-dependent. Light does not travel at 186K mps in water, for example. And we know that space itself is geometrically variable---someone pointed out the effect of mass on space, which affects its curvature---so it does seem likely that if you screw around with the metric, you could well alter the speed of propagation of light; but to say that doing this `breaks the speed-of-light limit' seems just perverse. 

The nature of the conditions described by the special theory of relativity don't actually rule out matter travelling faster than light, incidentally. The equations of special relatively allow `imaginary' solutions, i.e., solutions involving the square root of -1 as a coefficient; and such solutions correspond to particles for which the speed of light is an unattainable _lower_ limitthey can never travel slower than c! Those particles, called tachyons, have never been detected (though experimental protocols capable in principle of detecting them have been described, if I remember right), but they did have a `vogue' a couple of decades or so ago in sci-fi literature. From what I can tell, this business of light-speed variability is something totally different from the tachyon business.

In the end, what everyone is probably wondering is, can any of this stuff lead to faster microprocessors for my laptop? And the answer is... :idunno:


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## arnisador (Mar 6, 2007)

Published in _Nature_...encouraging, but I'll still have to see it reproduced by others first!

I've always thought it was nothing could travel _at _the speed of light...that that produced, fundamentally, a division by zero that was unacceptable. Faster or slower, yes, but not exactly the same...


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## Carol (Mar 6, 2007)

exile said:


> In principle, the variability of the speed of light isn't particularly novel, because we know that the speed of light waves (or photons; light isn't one or  the other but displays properties of both, a result that is `built into' classical formal quantum mechanics) is medium-dependent. Light does not travel at 186K mps in water, for example. And we know that space itself is geometrically variable---someone pointed out the effect of mass on space, which affects its curvature---so it does seem likely that if you screw around with the metric, you could well alter the speed of propagation of light; but to say that doing this `breaks the speed-of-light limit' seems just perverse.
> 
> The nature of the conditions described by the special theory of relativity don't actually rule out matter travelling faster than light, incidentally. The equations of special relatively allow `imaginary' solutions, i.e., solutions involving the square root of -1 as a coefficient; and such solutions correspond to particles for which the speed of light is an unattainable _lower_ limitthey can never travel slower than c! Those particles, called tachyons, have never been detected (though experimental protocols capable in principle of detecting them have been described, if I remember right), but they did have a `vogue' a couple of decades or so ago in sci-fi literature. From what I can tell, this business of light-speed variability is something totally different from the tachyon business.
> 
> In the end, what everyone is probably wondering is, can any of this stuff lead to faster microprocessors for my laptop? And the answer is... :idunno:



No but it could lead to additional advances in laser switching transport the data that your laptop gets when you log on online.


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## exile (Mar 6, 2007)

arnisador said:


> Published in _Nature_...encouraging, but I'll still have to see it reproduced by others first!
> 
> I've always thought it was nothing could travel _at _the speed of light...that that produced, fundamentally, a division by zero that was unacceptable. Faster or slower, yes, but not exactly the same...



You're thinking of the relativistic mass equation, right? The one where the denominator on the righthand side is (ignore the dots, I don't know how to space stuff without them so the exponents come out in the right places)

..... ......2.1/2
 ((1-(v/c) )

so that if v=c, the mass becomes infinite (because the denominator is 0), and if v>c, the result is a complex number, right? What this equation imposes, in fact, is the condition that nothing with mass can travel _at_ the velocity of light, lest it have infinite mass as a result. Anything that achieved the velocity of light, therefore, would have to be massless. Isaac Asimov used this result as the basis of a wonderful short story in which it is utilized as a murder weapon by an exasperated physicist... wish I could remember the name of it! (or even the collection in which it appeared... _Earth is Room Enough_ might have been the collection title... ?)



			
				Carol Kaur said:
			
		

> No but it could lead to additional advances in laser switching transport the data that your laptop gets when you log on online.



Like, for example, getting a message from someone before they've actually written it (so far as your frame of reference is concerned)??


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## Jonathan Randall (Mar 6, 2007)

exile said:


> You're thinking of the relativistic mass equation, right? The one where the denominator on the righthand side is (ignore the dots, I don't know how to space stuff without them the exponents come out in the right places)
> 
> ..... ......2..1/2
> ((1-(v/c) )
> ...


 

Man, Exlile, what do you teach at the University? Your posts are educational, to say the least!

I think that the implications of above lightspeed travel are minor in terms of transportation for that very reason - mass approaches infinity as speed approaches lightspeed. Also, doesn't Hawking say that Wormholes would collapse before they could be traversed by a human craft? Interesting stuff - I'll have to ask my friend who writes upper division Physics textbooks...


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## exile (Mar 7, 2007)

Jonathan Randall said:


> Man, Exlile, what do you teach at the University? Your posts are educational, to say the least!



My area of research is identifying the computational properties required to 
model the human capacity for language as a brain function... but I got into this from an undergraduate major in physics, math minor. I was, to say the least, a little bit surprised to find myself doing syntax at one point... still not sure how that came about. You remember that old Jimmy Buffet song, _Maragaritaville_?

_Don't know the reason/Stayed here all season/Nothing to show but this brand-new tatoo/But it's a real beauty/A Mexican cutie/How it got here I haven't a clue..._

That's a little bit how I felt when I woke up one day and realized I was going to graduate school in linguistics, not physics. I _still_ haven't a clue....



Jonathan Randall said:


> I think that the implications of above lightspeed travel are minor in terms of transportation for that very reason - mass approaches infinity as speed approaches lightspeed. Also, doesn't Hawking say that Wormholes would collapse before they could be traversed by a human craft? Interesting stuff - I'll have to ask my friend who writes upper division Physics textbooks...



Yes, absolutely, there's no way you could actually use any of this stuff. The theory of relativity is interesting because it contains a theorem that many people regard as the _real_ limit imposed by c: that no _signal_ can propagate faster than the speed of light. The idea is, no information can be transmitted faster than c. The reason this is important is because of something that quantum mechanics predicts. It works like this: pairs of matter/antimatter particles may be created in certain collision processes, and these will have opposite `spin', where spin is a certain quantum number no one really understands. It's a vector, so it has both magnitude and direction. And the matter/antimatter particle pairs must have opposite spin. Now if the collision is energetic enough, these particles will rush off in opposite directions at very high speed, and will, soon enough, be millions of miles apart. At that point, you carry out an experiment where you measure the spin value of one of the particles. That value was indeterminate before you carried out the measurement&#8212;there is a result called Bell's Theorem, which helps prove this to be true&#8212;but as soon as you measure it, it assumes a value, in accord with the postulates of QM. The problem is, you also know that the _other_ particle must have the opposite value, but since the first particle didn't acquire its value till you carried out the measurement, this means that the requisite correlation between the two particles had to have happened virtually instantaneously regardless of the distance separating them. The correlation thus happens `superluminally'&#8212;faster than lightspeed. This is now a well-known result documented by work in quantum optics by Alain Aspect and his group twenty years or so ago.

So it looks like information of a sort _can_ propagate faster than light. But it also appears to be the case that you cannot use this property to communicate information to a distant receiver. I don't remember the details, but apparently both QM and relativity theory converge here: yes, there is a superluminal correlation between the values of the two particles, but no, you cannot use that fact to communicate a single information bit to someone else. The lightspeed barrier never faileth...


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## Bigshadow (Mar 7, 2007)

Should I take notes?  Is there test on this after class?  :rofl:  Very informative and thought provoking!


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## mrhnau (Mar 7, 2007)

arnisador said:


> Published in _Nature_...encouraging, but I'll still have to see it reproduced by others first!
> 
> I've always thought it was nothing could travel _at _the speed of light...that that produced, fundamentally, a division by zero that was unacceptable. Faster or slower, yes, but not exactly the same...


By chance have the citation for that? I've looked in Nature, not found it yet. I'm sure its there, but I'm not seeing it...

well, if things can't go AT the speed of light, we won't be able to get past C, since we need to pass through it... Given time, I think we will get around that. Might take a thousand year, but I think it will be figured out. Probably something like in Dune, folding space... "The spice is life" hehe. I believe there has been some work on using exotic materials to stabalize worm-holes, but being able to effectively utilize those is a LONG way away.


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## Ray (Mar 7, 2007)

mrhnau said:


> well, if things can't go AT the speed of light, we won't be able to get past C, since we need to pass through it... Given time, I think we will get around that.


Can't be done.

And besides, every scientist worth his salt knows that when the train you're riding in hits 35 MPH you won't be able to breath and you'll suffocate....er, no, wait we got past that barrier didn't we?

But everyone who's had a basic education knows that we can't have a triangle wherein the sum of the interior angles isn't 180 degrees...er, no, somebody got past that one too.

That's the real problem with impossibilities.  They're impossible until someone does it once, then it's easy.


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## arnisador (Mar 7, 2007)

exile said:


> You're thinking of the relativistic mass equation, right?



Yes, I should have said anything with mass can't travel _at_ the speed of light!


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## zDom (Mar 7, 2007)

Considering I'm supposed to have an IQ quite a bit over average, ya'll sure do make me feel dumb 

This stuff just makes my brain ache.


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