Light barrier broken? Is this possible?

[Athenian200]

DailyTech - German Scientists Declare Speed of Light Broken

I've heard vaguely of quantum tunneling before, but this is the first I've heard of anyone claiming that they've seen it. So, what does this mean? Is it possible that those particles really traveled faster than light? How do we know if it was or wasn't a detector flaw? I don't understand the precise mechanics behind the theory of quantum tunneling, but I think it proves that reality and existence aren't quite as solid as they look, and if that's possible, then I guess even such high speeds are possible.

Could this mean that the key to breaking the light barrier is finding a way to control/predict quantum tunneling?

Does this mean anything?

 

[Kyrielle]

Isn't the speed the light the highest measurable speed humans have been able to detect? So, just because it's the highest measurable speed doesn't mean there isn't anything faster. Especially since light isn't the only energy travelling through the universe.

I'm really skeptical of truly predicting anything on the quantum level, since the particles at that level are, by their very nature, utterly chaotic.

 

[ptgatsby]

I believe this was posted in regards to the experiment;

Light seems to defy its own speed limit

I don't know if it is valid or not.

In regards to c being the fastest - it is suppose to be the fastest speed possible... or rather, the fastest one can send "information".

 

[Zergling]

Isn't the speed the light the highest measurable speed humans have been able to detect?

Based on relativity, nothing can go faster than the speed of light unless it starts off going faster than light. (Relativity has shown itself to be quite accurate in a number of ways.)

Quantum mechanics does do some odd things, some of which go against other physics laws, but over time it works out back to what other parts of physics predict. (So the quantum tunneling may allow some things to go faster than light for a bit, but it's unpredictable, and very unlikely to happen to things larger than particles.)

 

[spirilis]

Slashdot.org covered this a few days ago (link here)

Here's a choice comment:
German Physicists Claim Speed of Light Broken

and this:
German Physicists Claim Speed of Light Broken

 

[Geoff]

Hmm, interesting. There is no reason that the theory of relativity could not expand out of the other side into a world we are unable to interact with because it isn't based on rules we "need".

Some of the comments suggest an element of establishment inertia "it must be wrong because everyone believes XXX" that reminds of me of the resistance to heliocentricity when it was first raised with the catholic church.

Anyway, it's all very interesting.. but I'll be suggesting to Schrodinger that he keeps wearing Heisenberg's sunglasses ready for when he comes out of his box.. at least until we hear more

-Geoff

 

[Zergling]

Some of the comments suggest an element of establishment inertia "it must be wrong because everyone believes XXX" that reminds of me of the resistance to heliocentricity when it was first raised with the catholic church.

It's not just because "everyone believes XXX", it is because "XXX" has been tested and incorporated into other theories, and has proven an extremely acurate descriptions of how things work. Making an adjustment along the lines of "Theory XXX is true except in these special cases", is not a good way to handle it, unless the results reall break the theory, or unless it is changed/a new one is developed, that explains why the exceptions occur.

 

[Geoff]

It's not just because "everyone believes XXX", it is because "XXX" has been tested and incorporated into other theories, and has proven an extremely acurate descriptions of how things work. Making an adjustment along the lines of "Theory XXX is true except in these special cases", is not a good way to handle it, unless the results reall break the theory, or unless it is changed/a new one is developed, that explains why the exceptions occur.

So.... if results do break the theory, how else can we handle it? Good way or not, we shouldn't just ignore them?

-Geoff

 

[Zergling]

So.... if results do break the theory, how else can we handle it? Good way or not, we shouldn't just ignore them?

-Geoff

The results have to be tested a few times first, to check if there are other things going on, or an odd exception to the theory, or some subtleties, etc. If they are for real, some has to either make a new theory, or make some adjustments to the old one.

 

[ygolo]

I'll admit the paper was quite terse, only 2 pages, and the topic is outside my breadth...

But , there was a similar story about 6 years ago.

This paper is actually a reference for the Aug. 5th paper

The references also mention something from 1992.

I think the main new contribution of this paper is the analogy between the Schrodinger and Helmholtz equations and the link between evanescent modes and virtual particles was "confirmed".

The "train" analogy applies better to what the "discovered" in the older paper.

Tachyons have been theorized for many years. And I believe that is the Sommerfeld paper cited (didn't check though).

Tachyon -- from Eric Weisstein's World of Physics

I am not sure if they managed to get a group velocity faster than the speed of the component photons, or if its was some other phenomenon. I am not entirely sure what they observed violates special relativity or not.

 

[sundowning]

On another board it was shown this idea was 'refuted' back in 1914. It appears the author of the latest article has tenure and therefore is free to pursue his pet theories which don't actually work.

 

[Athenian200]

On another board it was shown this idea was 'refuted' back in 1914. It appears the author of the latest article has tenure and therefore is free to pursue his pet theories which don't actually work.

Can you elaborate on how it was refuted? I'll be glad to finally have this little case resolved.

 

[sundowning]

Can you elaborate on how it was refuted? I'll be glad to finally have this little case resolved.

Here is the thread to which I'm referring.

 

[Apollonian]

I've looked at quantum tunneling a little bit (though its been a year or two). I know far more about the math of special and general relativity. From what I understand of the principle of quantum tunneling, it is weird in that it may very well occur but that the nature of the mathematics still does not let information travel faster than light. At first, this seems to be a conceptual paradox.

When we think of radio information, we think of the ability to control an RC car or send a message via cell phone. The "information" which these physicists are dealing with is probably more akin to quantum spin, momentum, or position. However, the fundamental paradigm in quantum mechanics is that you can never know the state of a particle with complete certainty (meaning you know all the information). So, when there is quantum tunneling, it may be that a particle is "moving faster than life"... minus the "moving" part. In other words, we see the propagation of spin or position information show up, but as soon as we try to verify momentum (that the particle has actually moved at all) the mathematics of the wave equation for the experiment collapse such that if the particle has moved then it has not moved faster than light OR if it has not moved then it may have other properties which seem to propagate faster than light.

Ultimately, articles on quantum mechanics are often inherently misleading because they try to explain results in terms of colloquial language which is far too imprecise to capture the reality of quantum mechanics. Words like "moves" "faster" and arguably even "particle" are almost nonsensical when it comes to quantum mechanics.

Here is a nice talk from Stanford about the "Strange World of Quantum Reality" which attempts to talk about this new paradigm in plain english.

The Strange World of Quantum Reality

 

[Veneti]

DailyTech - German Scientists Declare Speed of Light Broken

I've heard vaguely of quantum tunneling before, but this is the first I've heard of anyone claiming that they've seen it. So, what does this mean? Is it possible that those particles really traveled faster than light? How do we know if it was or wasn't a detector flaw? I don't understand the precise mechanics behind the theory of quantum tunneling, but I think it proves that reality and existence aren't quite as solid as they look, and if that's possible, then I guess even such high speeds are possible.

Could this mean that the key to breaking the light barrier is finding a way to control/predict quantum tunneling?

Does this mean anything?

I've actually said for a long time that its likely that things can travel faster than the speed of light. To me its just a barrier that exists mainly due to our knowledge and current observations.

I'm not a quantum physicist or whatever, but if a black hole can bend light then has it not travelled a further distance in the same period? If a black hole can stop light escaping then just perhaps it can also eject whatever at a faster speed. (I believe black holes decay via radiation emissions). Just maybe light suffers from more friction than another potential candidate, hence maybe there are other types of energy (or whatever) that can achieve a higher speed.... there's a lot to learn out there...

 

[Ghost of the dead horse]

Its totally, absolutely ridiculous that people claim that faster-than-light processes would equal same as seeing into future, or better yet, retroactive causality. I am outright offended that reputable scientists may even suggest such absurdity.

It's like living at an age when the fastest means of transport is via horse, and making the simplification that for "all intents and for all purposes, things in the universe propage at the speed of a horse. If someone gets a message from the other village before a messanger with a horse could have possibly travelled the distance, he must have known the message before it was sent".

In a few years, people will remember some dogmatic views on light speed with ridicule.

We have entanglement, we have gravitation. Seeing processes faster than light, the speed of light is reduced to little more than a really fast horse.

 

[Apollonian]

Venetti, to respond quickly to your point regarding black-holes and light, you raise an excellent point (but I'd like to clarify it)...

Black holes warp the fabric of space-time. This then causes the path of a beam of light to bend, but it is no different than bending a fiber-optic cable. One way to think of it is that the light itself isn't changing direction, but that the beam of light is following the surface of spacetime in as straight a motion as it can. Since space is curved, light inadvertently follows a curved path.

So, can light travel "faster than the speed of light in vacuum"? Yes, depending on your point of reference. The reason that people say that no thing can travel faster than the speed of light is that objects obey the same laws of motion which light does. So, near the highly warped space-time of a black hole where light might travel faster or slower, so too the motion of physical objects must be bent in the same way. Ultimately, even if light were to "speed up" near a black hole, physical objects would not be able to travel faster than the light could under similar conditions.

This is Relativity, which deals with large scales. Quantum mechanics deals with very small scales. There is presently no viable theory to reconcile the two theories in the middle. The propagation speed of information in Quantum mechanics is mathematically distinct from the propagation speed of information in the Theory of Relativity. In Relativity (and not necessarily in Quantum mechanics), objects which move faster than the speed of light have an imaginary rest-mass. Thus, there is no way to verify their existence. Similarly, the benefits of quantum entanglement seem to break down at the macroscopic level of radio communication.

However, ultimately, both theories make assumptions and lead to extraneous solutions which may or may not correspond to reality. That is why there are experiments/spacecraft like Gravity Probe-B which have attempted (and mostly succeeded) to verify certain predictions of the theories.

 

[Veneti]

Venetti, to respond quickly to your point regarding black-holes and light, you raise an excellent point (but I'd like to clarify it)...

Black holes warp the fabric of space-time. This then causes the path of a beam of light to bend, but it is no different than bending a fiber-optic cable. One way to think of it is that the light itself isn't changing direction, but that the beam of light is following the surface of spacetime in as straight a motion as it can. Since space is curved, light inadvertently follows a curved path.

So, can light travel "faster than the speed of light in vacuum"? Yes, depending on your point of reference. The reason that people say that no thing can travel faster than the speed of light is that objects obey the same laws of motion which light does. So, near the highly warped space-time of a black hole where light might travel faster or slower, so too the motion of physical objects must be bent in the same way. Ultimately, even if light were to "speed up" near a black hole, physical objects would not be able to travel faster than the light could under similar conditions.

This is Relativity, which deals with large scales. Quantum mechanics deals with very small scales. There is presently no viable theory to reconcile the two theories in the middle. The propagation speed of information in Quantum mechanics is mathematically distinct from the propagation speed of information in the Theory of Relativity. In Relativity (and not necessarily in Quantum mechanics), objects which move faster than the speed of light have an imaginary rest-mass. Thus, there is no way to verify their existence. Similarly, the benefits of quantum entanglement seem to break down at the macroscopic level of radio communication.

However, ultimately, both theories make assumptions and lead to extraneous solutions which may or may not correspond to reality. That is why there are experiments/spacecraft like Gravity Probe-B which have attempted (and mostly succeeded) to verify certain predictions of the theories.

Interesting...

I had one concept to explain why the universe is accelerating (It’s like the light bending). If you imagine the analogy of a magnet with the magnetic paths from pole to pole, and then you imagine this like a black hole. With all the matter being ejected from one pole that then travels around to the other pole.

Now imagine this black hole is the size of our universe. It powers and recycles the universe

If our observable part of the universe has been recently ejected then relatively everything is accelerating away (everything in front is curving towards the other pole) hence, relatively everything is accelerating and that’s why we have this red shift.

This analogy would also indicate there is matter further ahead of us that is far older. And the "biggie" is that if you could successfully head towards the exit point then the current universe you live in could be a habitable and infinite, therefore lifeforms could be infinitely developed.

 

[Anentropic IxTx]

The Warp Drive.

 

[JocktheMotie]

This refers to quantum entanglement, which actually does happen.