2nd test affirms faster-than-light particles

CBSnews.com ^ | November 18, 2011 | Brian Vastag

[Sir_Ed]

I don’t understand how measuring something, or detecting something, CHANGES that object’s circumstances. It’s like saying that a tree isn’t 50’ high until I take a tape measure and measure it, but how can that be right, a tree has physical properties regardless of whether I take a tape measure and measure it...

Ed

[djf]

I know. It’s a difficult concept.

But it’s kind of like my sunglasses example. The view (of the universe) does NOT exist until I chose a pair of sunglasses. And I have no way of picking one pair of sunglasses instead of the other.

QM exists in a kind of world where there are many dimensions. Actually, an infinite number of dimensions. But not just dimensions like we are used to like time and space. Other dimensions, like mass and charge and velocity and position and more and more and more dimensions.

I think it was Bohr who said something like “If you think you understand QM, you obviously don’t, because NOBODY does or even can.”

A good book about it is “Quantum Mechanics and Experience” by David Z Albert of Columbia University.

[BenKenobi]

Part of the problem is that gravity is so weak, I had a good long talk with an old physicist friend of mine, what if gravitation is repulsive at long distances? IE, it is ax2-tx3 where t is a very small number.

[Sir_Ed]

What a strange concept. I don’t understand in the slightest.

Thanks for the book recommendation, I’ll get it and see what it says.

See ya’,

Ed

[aruanan]

You do know that IF you see red, the other person will also see red, but you have no way of setting up any kind of messaging system because you cannot pick what you will see.

I was referring also to the French experiments using, I believe, tunneling photons that were measured at superluminal speeds. They transmitted classical music by this means. If someone were able to agree ahead of time that Bach meant go and Mozart meant stop, and then used this means and these music examples to tell another, who also knew the code, what to do, go or stop, then communication would have occurred by superluminal means.

[djf]

If this is a quantum phenomenon, my bet would be that some of the particles might travel faster than light, while others do not, and once again, we have no way of chosing which ones do or don’t.

Don’t get me wrong, the results are very intriguing, that’s part of the reason this is causing such a stir.

And note that my explanation of things is my understanding of what “classical quantum mechanics” (who knew there even WAS such a thing!) says about the issue and why faster than light communication was impossible. Not FTL travel, just FTL communication or signaling. QM is statistical in nature.
Myself, I am open to the possibilities.