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Scientists Claim to Have Broken Speed of Light

cygnusx1

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cygnusx1

cygnusx1

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:D :shock:

Scientists claim to have broken the ultimate speed record - by making photons travel faster than light.Exceeding the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second, is supposed to be completely impossible.According to Einstein's special theory of relativity, it would take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate an object through the light barrier.Travelling faster than light also turns back time with bizarre consequences. An astronaut moving beyond light speed would theoretically arrive at his destination before leaving.But two German physicists now claim to have forced light to overcome its own speed limit using the strange phenomenon known as quantum tunnelling.They set up an experiment in which microwave photons, energetic packets of light, appeared to travel "instantaneously" between two prisms forming the halves of a cube placed a metre apart.When the prisms were placed together, photons fired at one edge passed straight through them, as expected. After they were moved apart, most of the photons reflected off the first prism they encountered and were picked up by a detector. But a few photons appeared to "tunnel" through the gap separating them as if the prisms were still held together.Although these photons had travelled a longer distance, they arrived at their detector at exactly the same time as the reflected photons. In effect, they seemed to have travelled faster than light.Dr Gunter Nimtz, one of the physicists from the University of Koblenz, told New Scientist magazine: "For the time being, this is the only violation of special relativity that I know of."Quantum tunnelling is a well known phenomenon that occurs as a direct result of the strange uncertainty which pervades nature at very small scales. It allows sub-atomic particles to break apparently unbreakable barriers.

--Source: http://www.channel4.com

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Macavity

Macavity

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Difficult one. But I guess if New Scientist is (seemingly) convinced? :)

It seems rather akin to other quantum mechanical phenomena (note this is dependent on QM tunneling). E.g. where "waveforms" can instantaneously e.g. "collapse" over all space (large distances) IMPLYING some sort of Faster than Light "communication". See also QM "entanglement" phenomena? But I thought this was generally accepted a "curiousity", rather than "revolution". But who knows? It all becomes hard to conceive of in reality... Even harder mathematically? See: Action at distance etc. (Uhm... maybe!) :D

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StarMan1701

StarMan1701

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It all becomes hard to conceive of in reality...

As was Human flight / faster than sound travel / spaceflight etc. - until they actually happened.

I don't believe anything is impossible. Some things are just not possible YET, given our current level of scientific and/or technological knowledge. This may turn out to be nothing more than a curiosity, but you never know...

The answers are waiting to be discovered - we just have to keep asking the questions.

Next stop - warp drive... :D

Lee.

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Kenny_10_Bellys

Kenny_10_Bellys

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It does sound akin to quantum entanglement, but I'd reserve any celebrations until they get it to travel some considerable distance and they get some peer reviews of this work. Hell, they still haven'g got quantum entanglement to work yet either. As you say it may just be another odd quantum effect that had not been forseen or calculated correctly, not actually a hole in the theory.

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proflight2000

proflight2000

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I remember reading about the new particle accelerator being built in the UK and they had visions that one day they would reach this goal, but im sure if this had actually been done it would be creating waves worldwide as a scientific milestone even to the level of a nobel prize. I feel they may one day catch up to the speed of light but i think they are many moons (no pun) from getting there.

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Macavity

Macavity

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Slightly OT: There have been some quite GOOD "scientific programs" on the box, recently. (Too late now, but...) e.g. Jim Al-Khalili's (Is he neutralised by "Aceed"? :D) "Atom" series. Also the (much) more challenging evening of August 8th last, reviewed HERE. I must admit, despite my "training" with the Sky at Night, I was dozing off during the latter though! But, if they ever re-screen some of them... :)

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andyrooshk

andyrooshk

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I just lashed out 20 quid on Amazon for a couple of books on Quantum theory by Jim Al-Kahlili and some other bloke, so I'm sorted.

Nice one :( Like it lots my witty friend :( :( Respect to you.

On another note, I'm doin an OU course on Physics and Quantum Theory is BLAH FLAH HMAHH GNAHH ... I understand it well!! :D:)

What the blumming hell is a "Strange Quark"? Appart from the obvious of having the quality of Strangeness !!! :(

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Astroman

Astroman

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What the blumming hell is a "Strange Quark"? Appart from the obvious of having the quality of Strangeness !!! :D

Most of the early detected subatomic particles were described by what their trajectories were after the collision in an accellerator. The cloud chambers used then traced the path of the particles. Left, right and strange were the earliest I think and they traced left curling, right curling and strange paths, respectively. 'Course you already knew that.

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Macavity

Macavity

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What the blumming hell is a "Strange Quark"? Appart from the obvious of having the quality of Strangeness !!! :D

At "normal" energies, nuclear matter consists of protons and neutrons. These, in turn, are modeled as consisting of three quarks of TWO types, dubbed "up" and "down" - Proton = (uud), Neutron = (udd). As stated above, physicists had observed exotic cosmic ray events and, with the advent of accelerators, higher energies became available, revealing a whole "Spectrum" of further particles. These could be explained by proposing a THIRD quark - the Strange quark, allowing combinations such as (uds) etc. which explained these... "strange" particles, seen transiently in their experiments. Not only that, the model also allowed the prediction(!) of other particles e.g. Omega (sss), later to be observed in experiment. The "Quark model", is inherently highly SYMMETRICAL and it has been found e.g. the Up and Down quarks form a natural "pairing". Later, the Strange quark found its "mate" in "charm". To this have now been added "top" and "bottom", for a total of SIX quark types. In turn, all these are seen as part of the "Standard Model" of particles and interactions... etc. <Wibble> :(

See also e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_model

Comment: The Wikipedia pages do seem to rather to "jump in", especially with use of terms not always familiar to the novice. In that sense indeed, a "Real Book" may help! In the interim maybe: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/particles/quark.html isn't too bad. (A rather amazing site, it would seem!). Certainly plenty of LINKS to follow. :)

Added Index: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/hframe.html (Blimey!) :(

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Macavity

Macavity

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Much better explanation than mine...

Nah, used to be my "subject" until a health matter intervened. :( I think though the general idea that an intimate knowledge of e.g. quantum theory is granted to rather few is right - Probably why they win the odd nobel prize or two? I was more sweated labour ... Sorry "hardware person". :D But such is "Big Science" - Always plenty of opportunities for testing the odd thousand photomultipliers or dragging cables up ladders! :(

Greatfully returning to (hoping to develop) my distinctly amateur astronomy. :)

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AstroTiger

AstroTiger

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New Scientist again. Haven't we learned anything? They are the National Enquirer of science-they publish anything that sounds like science without any corroboration.

When I see it in Nature or Science, I'll begin to believe.

i am afraid i agree with this. Nature is thee journal.

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Cloudwatcher

Cloudwatcher

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I rather like New Scientist. It may be the 'Red Top' of the 'science' journals but it is accessable to and readable by us lesser beings. If ones interest is stimulated by a article in such a publication then there is usually recourse to more 'learned' journals on the subject of choice. Without that initial spark however, some very interesting 'stuff' would go unread by other than the 'intelligentsia'.

CW

(The fact that I'm a shareholder in Reed Business Information Ltd in no way influenced the views expressed above. :wink:)

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