German scientists break speed of light

[Hemi-Cuda]

so much for Einstein

i never did quite buy into the whole speed limit of the universe thing. scientists said the same thing about the speed of sound 100 years ago, and have claimed many other undeniable facts over the centuries that were proven false as science has progressed. and as advanced as we are now, with how vast the universe is we can only know a tiny fraction of everything that's at work

[I-Hate-Hulse]

I'll wait for validation by other scientests. Could be another cold fusion breakthrough....

Otherwise, call Starfleet.

[worth]

If true, i don't think this makes special and general relativity invalid. I do believe einstein left room for the bending of space-time wormholes and the like. I don't know a ton about quantum tunnelling, but bending space or time in my mind is not technically the same as traveling past the speed of light. It is but it isn't. It would be a short cut where our physics is still valid.

Unify the four forces and we'll find the answer soon enough.

I read a book a wile back called Hyperspace which dealt with worm holes and relativity among other topics...i may have to go over that again.



It's not that the matter is traveling faster than light, it's that it uses space and time to its advantage to arrive at a place faster than what traditional physics would calculate.

I don't think this invalidates einstein...but hey, i'm not a physicist...i only wish i was.

[albertGQ]

So if we can go faster then the speed of light, does that mean time travelling is now a possibility?

[Ford Prefect]

Ya, one would think it has some kind of relationship to time, and possibly time travel. If true, this is very cool stuff. Sign me up for tea with da Vinci.

[worth]

Time travel is already possible. The faster you go to the speed of light, the more time slows down. Astrnauts who are traveling at 17,000mph in orbit, when they reach the ground will have had less time pass by and be "younger" than the rest of us, if only a fraction of a fraction of a second younger. This has been proven with the use of atomic clocks.

Time travel your talking about is exceeding that speed, but i'm not convinced this is technically exceeding the speed of light. This is bending/tunneling space to arrive at a spot in a shorter time.

[evman150]

It's quantum tunneling.

Key word is "quantum". Classical things (humans etc) could still never do this (theoretically they could, just like i can theoretically break through a 4 inch lead wall with a pipe cleaner).

I'm not quite sure what to make of this, the article is hand-wavy and really doesn't tell much about the experiment.

[albertGQ]

What Is Quantum Tunnelling!?!?!?

[JohnnyB]

Originally Posted by evman150

I'm not quite sure what to make of this, the article is hand-wavy and really doesn't tell much about the experiment.

It is an awfully empty feeling blurb for something that would be very interesting.

[J pold]

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

[Save Us Sutter]

Has anyone found anything else about this? Other articles? Other scientists opinions?

Seems like a pretty huge breakthrough and you're right, that article just doesn't do it justice.

Makes me a little skeptical.

[Hemi-Cuda]

Originally Posted by evman150

It's quantum tunneling.

Key word is "quantum". Classical things (humans etc) could still never do this (theoretically they could, just like i can theoretically break through a 4 inch lead wall with a pipe cleaner).

I'm not quite sure what to make of this, the article is hand-wavy and really doesn't tell much about the experiment.

and it was a "theoretical" pipe dream that heavier than air flight was possible. maybe i'm just an optimist, but i find it very arrogant to think that a theory proposed by a man 100 years ago could never be challenged. just because we haven't figured out a way to do something yet doesn't mean it's impossible. for all we know, tomorrow could be the day that aliens make contact with earth and produce technology that flies against everything we know in the universe

humans are a spec of dust in the interstellar scheme of things. we haven't even begun to scratch the surface on this kind of stuff

[worth]

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

As evman pointed out, this is on the quantum level. This sentence is kind of misleading as everything on the sub atomic level breaks "unbreakable" laws. In quantum physics you can be in two places at once, you can leave before you came and you can not exist at all and suddenly exist a moment later.

Our physics do not work at the quantum level. Take any laws of physics and try to apply on a spectacularly small scale and you're out of luck. Discover a unified field theory and win a nobel prize and possibly answer pretty much every physics question we could ever ask.

[evman150]

Originally Posted by albertGQ

What Is Quantum Tunnelling!?!?!?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_tunneling

That entry is pretty involved.

Simple answer: it's when a particle "tunnels" through a barrier it (in classical physics) should not be able to penetrate.

Radioactivity is a result of quantum tunneling. "Alpha decay", so called because of the expulsion of alpha particles (helium nuclei) from heavier elements, happens only because of quantum tunneling. The alpha particle bounce around inside the (for example) uranium nucleus until after thousands/millions/whatever number of collisions with the "wall" of the nucleus, it finally tunnels through, and the nucleus is now thorium instead of uranium. This is radioactivity. A geiger counter measures these alpha particles.

Nuclear physics and quantum mechanics applied to nuclear physics is fascinating stuff. It's really the only physics I actually enjoy.

[evman150]

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

and it was a "theoretical" pipe dream that heavier than air flight was possible. maybe i'm just an optimist, but i find it very arrogant to think that a theory proposed by a man 100 years ago could never be challenged. just because we haven't figured out a way to do something yet doesn't mean it's impossible. for all we know, tomorrow could be the day that aliens make contact with earth and produce technology that flies against everything we know in the universe

humans are a spec of dust in the interstellar scheme of things. we haven't even begun to scratch the surface on this kind of stuff

This is different. We perform innumerable trials on this subject every second. Typing on this keyboard, my fingers are not going through the keyboard. Every keystroke is a trial. It just doesn't happen. Quantum funniness just does not happen on a macro scale. It CAN happen, but you would have to do billions of trials per second for millions of times the age of the universe for you to have a reasonable chance of success. And even then it's only a chance.

This is not the same thing as "impossible flight" at all.

[photon]

Or is this just a re-reporting of teleportation of light, something that's been going on for quite a while now?

[photon]

Macroscopic Violation of Special Relativity

http://arxiv.org/pdf/0708.0681

[Dan02]

Originally Posted by albertGQ

So if we can go faster then the speed of light, does that mean time travelling is now a possibility?

As i see it time travel into the past isn;t possible. Seeing into the past may be though.

As previously mentioned we can already "travel" into the future. infact everytime one of the shuttles goes up those astronauts are traveling into the future albeit minutely. Though calling it "time travel" is a bit of a stretch IMO. more like delayed aging. I think the problem lies in the fact that our concept of time is entirely dependant of things which are influenced by the speed at which they are traveling.

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

I believe this to be a incorrect. I believe a keyword in this analogy is missing.

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

would be more correct as i understand it.

[Regorium]

Originally Posted by worth

As evman pointed out, this is on the quantum level. This sentence is kind of misleading as everything on the sub atomic level breaks "unbreakable" laws. In quantum physics you can be in two places at once, you can leave before you came and you can not exist at all and suddenly exist a moment later.

Our physics do not work at the quantum level. Take any laws of physics and try to apply on a spectacularly small scale and you're out of luck. Discover a unified field theory and win a nobel prize and possibly answer pretty much every physics question we could ever ask.

My understanding of quantum physics is that you only have a probability of existence, and that you don't actually exist.

[Bring_Back_Shantz]

Originally Posted by photon

Or is this just a re-reporting of teleportation of light, something that's been going on for quite a while now?

No, I don't think so, becasue there was no claim of the light being instantaneously transported which is what these guys are claiming they did. It looks to me like they are similar, but with a very small, but important diference.