'We have broken speed of light'

P

Petey of Lone Tree

Jedi
Article with above title is in the British Telegraph at
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/08/16/scispeed116.xml

By Nic Fleming, Science Correspondent
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 16/08/2007

A pair of German physicists claim to have broken the speed of light - an achievement that would undermine our entire understanding of space and time.

According to Einstein's special theory of relativity, it would require an infinite amount of energy to propel an object at more than 186,000 miles per second.

However, Dr Gunter Nimtz and Dr Alfons Stahlhofen, of the University of Koblenz, say they may have breached a key tenet of that theory.

The pair say they have conducted an experiment in which microwave photons - energetic packets of light - travelled "instantaneously" between a pair of prisms that had been moved up to 3ft apart.

Being able to travel faster than the speed of light would lead to a wide variety of bizarre consequences.

For instance, an astronaut moving faster than it would theoretically arrive at a destination before leaving.

The scientists were investigating a phenomenon called quantum tunnelling, which allows sub-atomic particles to break apparently unbreakable laws.

Dr Nimtz told New Scientist magazine: "For the time being, this is the only violation of special relativity that I know of."
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Wow! That's superluminol! What's next--channeling "ourselves in the future"? ;)

(Missed that discussion somehow? See more on the subject here: http://www.cassiopaea.org/)
 
haha, or maybe begin channeling ourselves in the past :)
Or whats more likely, probably make a huge mess of things xD
 
For instance, an astronaut moving faster than it would theoretically arrive at a destination before leaving.

The scientists were investigating a phenomenon called quantum tunnelling, which allows sub-atomic particles to break apparently unbreakable laws.

Dr Nimtz told New Scientist magazine: "For the time being, this is the only violation of special relativity that I know of."
Click to expand...
Ok, theoretically, travelling faster than light means arriving before leaving, and travelling at speed of light means arriving after leaving. Is there an inbetween where you arrive at the same time as leaving?


So a person who was preparing to travel 10 metres at faster than light speed would see himself 10 metres in front looking back at himself preparing to leave and when the person did leave and arrived he'd look back and see himself preparing to leave. I think that's right, yeah? Isnt' there a time loop or some loop in there?


So in a larger scale the C's are looking back and communicating with laura.


If you can imagine being a person travelling at that speed and seeing yourself preparing and arriving then looking forward to see you future self further on looking at his future and your further future, it's a bit weird. I wonder if you'd see all your future simultaniously and past simultaniously. Is that 4D?

This is a great subject. Lets talk.

thanks for the post.
J
 
Thanks, I remember reading that.

I just wanted to add that when typing the post above I had the image of the TV screen plugged into a camera that has focus on the screen. Seen that before? A bit like the image below. I couldnt find it and didnt want to try to describe it earlier. I had to make it.

tv.jpg



Jamie
 
mugatea, your image reminds (will remind?) me of the time I held a hand-held mirror up to reflect the image in my wall-mounted bathroom mirror. I wondered at the time if I was looking at infinity.
 
I think its hard to imagine infinity in 3rd density cause we're linear and infinity isnt. If I've got my facts right then it's a single moment that spans all eternity.
 
Heres some visual feeback: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hNTd9c6R8M&watch_response

In a chemical brothers video they done a similar thing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJyHEhdszDg

I have seen a timeline of myself stretched out in front and behind me once, by using not really the best method :P was a bit like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujvsrXg4aio
 
This reminds me of the movie "the Prestige" with Edward Norton and Hugh Jackman about Nikola Tesla's teleporter. When you step in the teleporter another "copy" of you instantly comes out the other side. The question is, are you the person who stepped into the teleporter or the person who came out? Regarding super-lightspeed, would you be the person looking at yourself arriving in the future or would you be the person looking at your self leaving in the past? Spooky!
 
Maybe you would see it in a linear way, such as, you would see yourself arrive in the future, then you would leave, and you would see yourself leave in the past. So there would be no unaccounted time.

An eerie effect of this would be that you would see yourself doing things in the third person, and then you would do those things in exactly the same way as you saw yourself do them, but from the first person view. There could be some kind of connection, where no matter what you do in the future is what you saw yourself do in the past - in a way it would "update" your memories.

Then there is the other option that the future self you see is a glimpse of another timeline, another possibility. So you see your future self do things, but then when you are in that position, you do different things to what you saw, and you don't experience the future self you saw in the past, but a different one.
 
Hmmm...that would mean that you would have two separate conscious experiences of the same moment or two "nows." They would be in sequential order only in your memory but simultaneous in actuality. If you could travel far enough, you could be in two very different places at the same time, just like subatomic particles!
 
Russ said:
An eerie effect of this would be that you would see yourself doing things in the third person, and then you would do those things in exactly the same way as you saw yourself do them, but from the first person view.
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Perhaps accounting for deja vu feelings?
 
Maybe, yeah - its interesting. I think it would mean that some part of us other than the physical body is going back though, something which retains memories of the past, so that it can think "I've seen this before". Because, you don't see your body arrive from the future in deja vu, you just re-experience what you have already experienced.

ie. some part of us travels FTL, not the whole physical body. But it doesn't mean we have the ability to travel FTL by our own will, it could be something that we have no control over, or that something else has control over.

There are lots of possibilities with deja vu... really its a can of worms xD but yeah I can see how FTL might tie into deja vu.
 
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