Speed of light broken?

[Lazy Bastard]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/mai...cispeed116.xml


'We have broken speed of light'

By Nic Fleming, Science Correspondent
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 16/08/2007

A pair of German physicists claim to have broken the speed of light - an achievement that would undermine our entire understanding of space and time.

According to Einstein's special theory of relativity, it would require an infinite amount of energy to propel an object at more than 186,000 miles per second.

However, Dr Gunter Nimtz and Dr Alfons Stahlhofen, of the University of Koblenz, say they may have breached a key tenet of that theory.

The pair say they have conducted an experiment in which microwave photons - energetic packets of light - travelled "instantaneously" between a pair of prisms that had been moved up to 3ft apart.

Being able to travel faster than the speed of light would lead to a wide variety of bizarre consequences.

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

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

Dr Nimtz told New Scientist magazine: "For the time being, this is the only violation of special relativity that I know of."

[Chaotic Forces]

So this could mean teleportion to an extent? Say moving a distance in seconds?

[Lazy Bastard]

Well, it could mean the theoretical possibility of travel at faster than the speed of light. All it really means is that the speed of light is not necessarily the speed limit in the universe. We already have light, but that doesn't mean we can travel at the speed of light, heh.

[MIR]

There are other consequences as well. Man was not built to got 186000 miles per second. Most likely it would end up in the death of the traveler. This is interesting LB. I read a few articles about a place in Europe (Near Germany) that has been working on particle acceleration. the last i heard was they had a incident and where foreced to shut down the lab.

[LiquidManZero]

It wasn't that long ago, people claimed you'd disintegrate or something if you went past 20 miles per hour. Obviously that didn't turn out to be the case but it still was accepted for a little while. I have the general impression that the somewhat variable speed of light should've been a dead giveaway that maybe the "speed of light" isn't limited to what it's been recorded as.

[Lazy Bastard]

That's another good point.

Going at the speed of light isn't an issue, so much as getting up to the speed of light. Acceleration is what might kill you, if not gently applied.

[MIR]

I am not worried about accelerating, I am worried about stopping. You are going 186k MPH and suddenly you stop... What happens to you then?

[Lazy Bastard]

If every particle of you, as well as every particle of your craft, stopped at exactly the same time, you'd be fine. If your craft stopped, and your body kept going, you'd be destroyed. If your craft stopped, and your body was held firmly in place, but the inside of your body was allowed to move around as usual, you'd be destroyed.

[Savvy]

Well, concerning the acceleration to the speed of light - which theoretically kills you - entirely depends on how your are bound to a gravitational force. Obviously momentum in space is not as strong or powerful as it is on Earth. However, if you can go the speed of light in space, you can still just impact with something immediately and die, because the acceleration itself is a force that will overpower your flotation in space, so to go and then stop will have you crushing all your bones against the opposite end of your vessel in a split second.

The only way to prevent this, I think, would be for a device to cancel all forces within the vessel. That way, nothing is pulled backward or forward within the vessel. All remains still, and so the stop will not affect the person's body. The only downside in this is that this force will shut down all of your active organs. Maybe even an electromagnetic pulse will shut down your brain. So, the trip itself will kill you, and not the impact...I think this is a sign that we should not try to go the speed of light.