Scientists break the speed of light

Scientists break the speed of light

www.dailymail.co.uk

It was supposed to be the one speed limit you cannot break.

But scientists claim to have demonstrated there is the possibility of travel faster than the speed of light.

The feat contradicts one of the key tenets of Einstein's special theory of relativity - that nothing, under any circumstances, can move faster than 186,000 miles per second, or the speed of light.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Is this a new possibility for space travel? It's an interesting development. What other laws are eventually going to be broken?

www.dailymail.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

I'm no quantum physicist or anything, but I've always wondered why it was impossible to go faster than the speed of light? If this is in fact true, it's going to turn the world of physics upside down...the backbone of quantum mechanics will have been broken. It's exciting and scary at the same time, because there's going to be huge setbacks in a lot of theories out there....

Sensationalism as usual
Here is a better article with more details:
www.space.com...

Confused? Youre not alone. In fact, even scientists who are familiar with this area of study are unsure about the details of Wangs experiment. And many scientists said the experiments results are still open to interpretation.

Having said that, there are actually many 'things' that travel faster than light. SR restrictions apply only on things having mass.

This is'nt something traveling faster than light, it's using quantum tunneling
to make light appear at the location faster.

It would have been more interesting if it had been done with matter, rather than light.


Oh, and the reason you can't make an object move faster than light is because
it would require infinite energy.

There are of course alternative theories that get around this without violating it.

Another reason I always keep an open mind when it comes to science. What is fact today is tomorrow's joke.

So many theories out their about time travel when the speed of light is exceeded. It will be interesting to see if this pans out in the near future.

Look at how far the world has advanced in just over 100 years! If we don't blow ourselves up it's mind numbing to think what we are going to come up with in the near future.

Originally posted by rocksolidbrain
Sensationalism as usual

Here is a better article with more details:
www.space.com...

Confused? Youre not alone. In fact, even scientists who are familiar with this area of study are unsure about the details of Wangs experiment. And many scientists said the experiments results are still open to interpretation.

That article is over 7 years old and is nothing to do with the experiment mentioned in the Mail. They got their source from New Scientist, which unfortunately you need to have a subscription to read the entire article.

Originally posted by rocksolidbrain
Having said that, there are actually many 'things' that travel faster than light. SR restrictions apply only on things having mass.

Photons have mass, do they not?

Originally posted by stumason
Photons have mass, do they not?

Nope, Photons are Massless wave-particles.

Originally posted by iori_komei

Originally posted by stumason
Photons have mass, do they not?

Nope, Photons are Massless wave-particles.

Indeed, kind of.

Just refreshed myself on the theory. It seems whilst they have zero REST mass, as light is never at rest and is constantly in motion, they do have energy and thus mass. But as they are a wave-particle, they have mass and they don't, in a quirky kind of way. They certainly have momentum, which is were radiation pressure comes from.

Wasn't this done a few years ago by a couple of Dutch scientists? Their results were widely disputed but this might be the replication of their study. I think they used lead.

Quantum physics is beyond my mental capacity. However, all that fancy talk doesn't impress me. Einstein was and always will be in my mind the smartest person to live. If they prove him wrong they will need to do so over and over again to prove to me specifically that they have made ANYTHING move faster than the speed of light. Otherwise, is there no variables involved? I doubt that.

Personally, I don't think that this experiment "broke" any laws. The photons may have appeared to have gone faster than light, but in reality, they probably just took a "short cut". Thats the thing about relativity. In relation to us, they may have seemed to travel at whatever speed, but they probably travelled at the same speed, but somewhere else for a little while...

Like the old adage about "hyperspace" and the piece of paper. The didn't directly travel from point A to point B, but went via point Q....

Nothing new, the particles accelerated faster then the speed of light have been around for decades. This is possible through fiber optics.
Even in natural environment: large black hole for instance. The Bekenstein-Hawking radiation still decays from them. And guess what, to beat the Event Horizon the particle must travel faster then the speed of light, and that’s escaping the black hole! What happens to the photon when it enters the Event Horizon, traveling on the direct trajectory to the gravitation source? It doesn't take an intellectual giant to grasp the concept that when you pull on something that is already going you will accelerate it (or change it’s trajectory), which, again, happens every time a photon passes next to our sun.

Originally posted by stumason

That article is over 7 years old and is nothing to do with the experiment mentioned in the Mail.

Sorry I messed up
It appears that the claims are similar. At least it shows that such claims were made in the past.

If they're massless wave particles, then what law of physics has really been broken?.
From whatt I understand, as speed is increased to just below the speed of light the mass of the object in question increases, requiring more and more energy to move it. Now, if it were massless to begin-with, what mass would it be gaining as it's speed was increased?
Or better yet, what can we gain scientifically by moving massless photons beyond the speed of light?...

Originally posted by PULVERlZER
...as speed is increased to just below the speed of light the mass of the object in question increases, requiring more and more energy to move it. Now, if it were massless to begin-with, what mass would it be gaining as it's speed was increased?
Or better yet, what can we gain scientifically by moving massless photons beyond the speed of light?...

On the contrary, the photon looses its mass because it is traveling so fast. It does have a stationary mass which is a very small number, approximately 3.5526589332e-59. The problem with that is we can't really make atoms travel at that speed. The forces exerted on electrons would rip it out of orbit.

Scientists have finally exceeded the speed of light, causing a light pulse to travel hundreds of times faster than normal.

www.cbc.ca...

I got this link from kleverone in a similar thread. The article is from 2000.

It still begs the question. What is the speed of light if light can travel faster than the speed of light?

Originally posted by etshrtslr

Scientists have finally exceeded the speed of light, causing a light pulse to travel hundreds of times faster than normal.

www.cbc.ca...

I got this link from kleverone in a similar thread. The article is from 2000.

It still begs the question. What is the speed of light if light can travel faster than the speed of light?

185,001 Miles Per Second

reply to post by maxseamus


Einstein did not say nothing can exceed c.. He said that nothing with relative Mass can exceed c.. and theres the rub...

Originally posted by blowfishdl
Quantum physics is beyond my mental capacity. However, all that fancy talk doesn't impress me. Einstein was and always will be in my mind the smartest person to live. If they prove him wrong they will need to do so over and over again to prove to me specifically that they have made ANYTHING move faster than the speed of light. Otherwise, is there no variables involved? I doubt that.

Don't worry, it doesn't disprove Einstein, there is an other discovery related to this, some scientists a while back found the photons(light) went faster through quarts then it does in space, breaking its own speed. There was a documentary on this, I forget what it was called. To really understand what is going on, you need to first read up on why things(objects/normal matter) can't go faster then the speed of light, then look into something called the "galaxy clock effect". It is not breaking the system, I guess you could call it a cheat. This is no revolution, it has been known for a while, these guys just seemed to have found a way to show it in a lab. I also agree with you that Einstein is the smartest person who has ever lived, he will not be disproved so easily. It is just a shame that he didn't finish his unified theory, we would be living in a very different world today... *sigh