'We have broken speed of light'

Telegraph ^ | 8/16/07 | Nick Fleming

[Repeal 16-17]

[A]round 5-10 years ago, three different labs around the world independently demonstrated the ability to accelerate a photon to something like 500, yes, 500 times the speed of light.

Can you provide a link to an article discussing these "independent demonstrat[ions]?"

[sola_fide]

I haven't read all of the 300+ posts on this thread, so someone may have already said this. BUT, the theory of General Relativity most emphatically does not imply that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. However, it does imply that nothing my break through that "light barrier" if you will. In other words anything travelling slower than the speed of light can never go faster than c; nothing travelling faster than c can ever go slower than c.

[festus]

Only the big ones.

[KevinDavis]

Should I back my bags and hop aboard a ship to Alpha Centauri????

[Don W]

Department of Redundancy Department

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks, GoLightly, for the ping. Sorry I forgot that before.

[SunkenCiv]

It is just a matter of interpretation of the results.

Heh...

[CutePuppy]

That would imply at least two corollaries?

1. Anything that travels faster than the speed of light also has a constant speed.

2. Anything that we know now travels at the speed slower than the speed of light will never exceed the speed of light.

The photon differs from many other elementary particles, such as the electron and the quark, in that it has zero rest mass;[3] therefore, it travels (in vacuum) at the speed of light, c.

My guess is that researchers had imperfect measurement instruments and, with the distance of only 3 feet, extrapolated results were susceptible to large variance. Which makes me thinks that we are more likely to witness cold fusion before we witness something going faster than speed of light. Come to think of it, maybe the process of cold fusion will create something faster than the speed of light, and they are interdependent? Hmmm...

[CutePuppy]

OK, I swear I did not see your post before I posted my #308. But as I ran across your post scrolling back, I then also had to check and find out exactly how screwed up I am (once I saw your score).

Well, thanks a lot, FRiend!

http://www.nerdtests.com/images/badge/9c9f8adb085d60f8.gif

[Reaganesque]

Why did I stop you? I clocked you doing 250,000 miles per second in a 186,000 mile per second zone, that's why, Einstein!

[MHGinTN]

I’m wondering what the trooper used to record the speed? LOL

[Equality 7-2521]

If I’m not mistaken he was also accompanied by Will Riker and Geordi LaForge.

[grey_whiskers]

Do photons have mass?

I didn't even know they were Catholic!

DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING !

NO more calls, please.

We have a winner!

[grey_whiskers]

Cerenkov radiation is an example of something of possible interest.

Now you've gone and reminded me of Dr. No!

(The gloved hand slipping down into the water with the reactor with the Cerenkov radiation giving the nice eerie blue glow...)

Cheers!

Full Disclosure: Pop a cold beverage to help me celebrate--we just found a house we like in Minnesota, after living in exile for years in Phoenix. :-)

[Reaganesque]

He just eyeballed it. He needed to fill his quota before the end of his shift.

[grey_whiskers]

The real test for this will be reproducibility.

Fine, given that photons are bosons, that's a nice pun... :-)

Q. Do Bose-Einstein statistics violate Occam's razor?

A. Only if some of the photons are superfluous. ("needlessly" multiplying entities...)

Cheers!

[MHGinTN]

No I mean he has to receive photons to measure the speed with his radar gun, unless he has found something (tachyons) that is faster than light speed. ... Oh never mind. I never was much good at puns and jokes.

[burzum]

Hum.... to be honest it smells like “Cold Fusion” all over again. I heard Linus Pauling speak on that Matter at Oregon State University. I wonder what he would say now? Most likely, to what decimal degree was the TIME measured to. Because 1) 3 feet is not real far apart, and 2) More than likely there IS a time lag, they were simply not capable of measuring. Get those crystals a MILE apart and then we will have some idea of the accuracy of their claim. Until they can do this over a distance, one great enough to actually measure the difference with currently existing measuring equipment. The closer one gets to the speed of light the more infinitely short the time period becomes, it may LOOK like 0, but it isn’t. Any more than they can calculate the EXACT value of Pi.

We'll see. If they can transfer information from one point to another faster than the speed of light then they have broken the speed of light barrier. If they can't (like with quantum entanglement), they are just dealing with the goofy principles of quantum mechanics and haven't broken the speed of light. People devise some crazy experiment where they think they have broken the speed of light every year. But when analyzed at the QM level, the group velocity of the wave packets involved never exceed c.

[RightOnline]

"Ill believe it when i see it."

Look fast and don't blink, then.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

You can end a sentence with a preposition, if that is what you are referring to. (or, if that is to what you are referring).

And especially in ordinary conversation.