Sound Pulses Exceed The Speed of Light

A group of high school and college teachers and students has transmitted sound pulses faster than light travels—at least according to one understanding of the speed of light.

The results conform to Einstein's theory of relativity, so don't expect this research to lead to sound-propelled spaceships that fly faster than light.
Still, the work could help spur research that boosts the speed of electrical and other signals higher than before.
The standard metric for the speed of light is that of light traveling in vacuum.
This constant, known as c, is roughly 186,000 miles per second, or roughly one million times the speed of sound in air.
According to Einstein's work, matter and signals cannot travel faster than c.

However, physicist William Robertson at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, along with a high school teacher, two college students and two high school students, managed to, depending on how you look at it, transmit sound pulses faster than c using little more than a plastic plumbing pipe and a computer's sound card.

The key to understanding their results, reported online Jan. 2 in the journal Applied Physics Letters, is envisioning every pulse of sound or light as a group of intermingled waves.
This pulse rises and falls with energy over space, with a peak of strength in the middle.

Robertson and his colleagues transmitted sound pulses from the sound card through a loop made from PVC plumbing pipe and connectors from a hardware store. This loop split up and then recombined the tiny waves making up each pulse.
This led to a curious result. When looking at a pulse that entered and then exited the pipe, before the peak of the entering pulse even got into the pipe, the peak of the exiting pulse had already left the pipe.


SOURCE:
LiveScience.com

This was very interesting to read.

This really does just go to show that we don't have a
complete understanding of physics.


Comments, Opinions?

That is mildly amusing but hardly any kind of break-through. Consider an old example of scissors cutting a sheet of paper (imagine a guillotine arrangement of the blades, one straight, one at an angle, and no pivot).

The point where the paper is cut can possibly move faster than light, with a suitably small opening angle in the blade assembly. Still, there is no information or energy transmission takes place at FTL velocities.

good find

Aelita


mmm

Still, there is no information or energy transmission takes place at FTL velocities.

well im afraid in the brave new world of the quantum realm that isnt corrcet anymore.

One of the starngest experiments in recent years by a extremely verifiable university and researchers, found that two particles that owere seperated and one kept in a lab in the US and one taken to a lab in the UK

an external effect was applied on one of the particles, which changed its state, instantaniously the other "twin" particle 1/2 way across the world also changed state to reflect the nature of its previous and symetrical "twin".

Ceasium clocks were used to ensure no time delay. there was none that was measurable using modern recording techniques at the cutting edge of research.

However even if there was such a time lag, it still would not explain how these particles communicated or what the external factor was that effected the particle in london, to make it in "sync" again to its twin particle.

Do some googling (scholar) as much is written about this falsely, but the experiment happened, was verified has been reproduced and is now a scientific fact with more evidence than the theory of gravitation has. as said google scholar as much urban myth about this.

FTL speed does indeed exist.

Locality seems to be of no importance in this universe as to the effect of that force at that distance.

Also recently light beams in europe were pulsed in a certain way with information, when the information changed that was being transmitted another identical pulse beam matched the information of the first at a great distance with no time lag and also no way of accessing or incorporating that new information under the current physics framework of how the universe works.

The whole idea of Sound iori_komei being more important and powerfull in this universe is gaining credance with me as the years pass.

Thanks

Regards

Elf.

Enjoy your new found models internally.

Regards

Elf

FTL speed does indeed exist.
Elf

Only group velocity can exceed the speed of c.

[edit on 19-1-2007 by sardion2000]

Originally posted by MischeviousElf
well im afraid in the brave new world of the quantum realm that isnt corrcet anymore.

One of the starngest experiments in recent years by a extremely verifiable university and researchers, found that two particles that owere seperated and one kept in a lab in the US and one taken to a lab in the UK

an external effect was applied on one of the particles, which changed its state, instantaniously the other "twin" particle 1/2 way across the world also changed state to reflect the nature of its previous and symetrical "twin".

Dear Elf,

You have mischaracterized the very interesting quantum entanglement experiment here.

There is no "taking" of a particle to some other part of the globe in this experiment. Any change in the quantum state of either particle that results from outside forces ruins the entire experiment.

No information can be made to travel at FTL speeds using entanglement, nor can any physical objects that have mass be made to exceed c through the use of entanglement. However, the quantum state of the distant particle is determined by determining the state of the local one. It is the quantum state information which travels ftl in the experiment.

Unfortunately, this sort of information cannot possibly be manipulated. The quantum state of the local particle is what it is, and cannot be applied to it (and thus to the distant particle) from outside forces without disentangling the two particles, thus ending the connection between the two and ruining the experiment.

Harte

Originally posted by Harte
Dear Elf,

There is no "taking" of a particle to some other part of the globe in this experiment. Any change in the quantum state of either particle that results from outside forces ruins the entire experiment.

Harte

Harte Thanks,
however as you seem pretty aware of this field im sure you will also notice that your above premise is impossible. As it is impossible to measure or make any experiments at the quantum realm without actually observing the phenomena at which time the phenomena by the very act of being observed is changed? Non Locality and the observer affecting the thing being observed is now proven and known at the quantum (and as yet undescribed but probably at the higher level of matter too in everyday experiences) level.

Therefore using your stance it would be impossible to prove or disprove what I said anyway? no ??? yes?? :-) Even though you are in a sense right. I was more referring to the original experiment below rather than the recent laser Princetown group one however its all relevant from a relativistic point of view! Im sure you know the Uncertainty Principle.

to clear up what we are both trying to postulate and just to kick your assertion that FTL is not possible look at this:

The first of these is "Bell's Inequality," named for John S. Bell, who in 1964 devised an experiment which sent pairs of photons in opposite directions. The decay of a particle called a pion produces these photon pairs in a "singlet" state, meaning the spin of one photon (the rotation of its electric and magnetic fields) is opposite to the spin of the other. Thus, one photon "knows" the state of the other, even though the speed of light firmly isolates them from one another. But Bell found, somewhat alarmingly, that if he altered the spin of one photon by passing it through a polarizing filter, the other photon's spin changed as well. A signal (in fact, an action) was being transmitted instantaneously, or at least much faster than the photons themselves were travelling.

Unfortunately, by nature the spin of photons is random, so all this signal could actually do was turn one random sequence into a different random sequence. Unless the observer at the receiving end knew what the unmodified spin sequence "should" have been, there would be no way to tell if the incoming photons had been rotated or not. In a mathematical sense, no information was being transferred. This subtle but crucial distinction makes all the difference between a faster-than-light or "FTL" transmitter--what author Ursula K. LeGuin called an "ansible"--and a laboratory curiosity. Still, this experiment--a real shocker in its day, and still cutting-edge these 40 years later--proved for the first time that quantum entanglement was a physical phenomenon with bona fide FTL implications. The locality principle was dead.

and then more proof here:

Hopefully that will allow others to understand this more.

In 1992, Cologne University physicist Gunter Nimtz noticed that the time required for a photon to tunnel across such barriers was constant, regardless of the distances involved. In fact, if the distance was more than a few centimeters, the photon would leap across the gap faster than it could have travelled across it. Faster than "c." Faster than light.

Again, this was not a sleight of hand or trick of math: Nimtz actually broadcast Mozart's 40th symphony across a tabletop waveguide, and reconstructed on the other side an intelligible recording which had tunnelled there at 4.7 times the speed of light. (Roughly 1 out of every 100,000 photons successfully tunnelled across the barrier, a fraction which drops off exponentially as the barrier width increases.)

Source


We digress though from the posts theme sound and light so this discussion would be irrelevant really without looking at the mysterious phenomena of Sonoluminescence

Sonoluminescence is the emission of light by bubbles in a liquid excited by sound. It was first discovered by scientists at the University of Cologne in 1934, but was not considered very interesting at the time.

In recent years, a number of researchers have sought to understand this phenomenon in more detail. A major breakthrough occurred when Gaitan et al. were able to produce single-bubble sonoluminescence, in which a single bubble, trapped in a standing acoustic wave, emits light with each pulsation.
Sonoluminescence has created a stir in the physics community. The mystery of how a low-energy-density sound wave can concentrate enough energy in a small enough volume to cause the emission of light is still unsolved. It requires a concentration of energy by about a factor of one trillion. To make matters more complicated, the wavelength of the emitted light is very short - the spectrum extends well into the ultraviolet. Shorter wavelength light has higher energy, and the observed spectrum of emitted light seems to indicate a temperature in the bubble of at least 10,000 degrees Celsius, and possibly a temperature in excess of one million degrees Celsius.

So it seems that indeed now twice sound has produced or created FTL or C like velocities. It may even be used in the future to power nuclear reactions!

Such a high temperature makes the study of sonoluminescence especially interesting for the possibility that it might be a means to achieve thermonuclear fusion.[3] If the bubble is hot enough, and the pressures in it high enough, fusion reactions like those that occur in the Sun could be produced within these tiny bubbles

Source

So singing a little song to myself I sign off, to be a bit less technical and scientific about all this, there is an ancient belief in the Bon tradition of Asia and the Himalayas that is 17,000 years old that states that with enough practise you can "hear2 the sounds of Mother earth and her voice, also that illness and disease can come about by lying or using harsh language and words with anger etc, these vibrations were believed 17,000 years ago to affect the human making them, as they are negative, this vibration/state is picked up by the body and produces illness! who knows?

Kind Regards

Elf


[edit on 22-1-2007 by MischeviousElf]

Originally posted by Aelita
Still, there is no information or energy transmission takes place at FTL velocities.

Debateable..

Check this.

Is Faster Than Light Travel or Communication Possible?

There have been reports of music being sent faster than light by means of quantum tunnelling. I would say there is a fair bit of information in music.

11. Quantum Tunnelling
Quantum Tunnelling is the quantum mechanical effect which permits a particle to escape through a barrier when it does not have enough energy to do so classically.

You can do a calculation of the time it takes a particle to tunnel through. The answer you get can come out less than the time it takes light to cover the distance at speed c. Does this provide a means of FTL communication?

ref:T. E. Hartman, J. Appl. Phys. 33, 3427 (1962).

The answer must surely be "No!" otherwise our understanding of QED is very suspect. Yet a group of physicists have performed experiments which seem to suggest that FTL communication by quantum tunnelling is possible. They claim to have transmitted Mozart's 40th Symphony through a barrier 11.4cm wide at a speed of 4.7c. Their interpretation is, of course, very controversial. Most physicists say this is a quantum effect where no information can actually be passed at FTL speeds because of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. If the effect is real it is difficult to see why it should not be possible to transmit signals into the past by placing the apparatus in a fast moving frame of reference.

ref:W. Heitmann and G. Nimtz, Phys Lett A196, 154 (1994);
A. Enders and G. Nimtz, Phys Rev E48, 632 (1993).

Terence Tao has pointed out that apparent FTL transmission of an audio signal over such a short distance is not very impressive. The signal takes less than 0.4ns to travel the 11.4cm at light speed, but it is quite easy to anticipate an audio signal ahead of time by up to 1000ns simply by extrapolating the signal waveform. Although this is not what is being done in the above experiments it does illustrate that they will have to use a much higher frequency random signal or transmit over much larger distances if they are to convincingly demonstrate FTL information transfer.

The likely conclusion is that there is no real FTL communication taking place and that the effect is another manifestation of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle

You can hear the recordings of this experiemnt go here...

Mozart's 40th Symphony - Faster than Light

Personally I advocate Loop Quantum Gravity as a key to understanding Entanglement and information transfer faster than light.

You can read more about Loop Quantum Gravity Here...

Finally an answer to EVERYTHING - Quantum Field Gravity - BRAIDS

All the best,

NeoN HaZe.

[edit on 22-1-2007 by Neon Haze]

Only phase velocity can exceed c, not group velocity. It's a very simple derivation and makes plenty of sense if you understand the mathematics. I posted this in another thread and I hope people will look more into the differences between group and phase velocities.