Germans 'break the speed of light'
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Aug 28, 2007 06:20 am but they didn't really.
it just seems that way. there's no way to explain how on this forum with three beers in me--and without doing a lot of googling--but fear not. einstein was right: you can't go faster than light. you can only seem to, sometimes. two stories came out like this since 2000 and both were shown to be ...well, just the media jumping to conclusions.
c was not violated this week!
Aug 28, 2007 06:30 am arstechnica.com/news.ars/...t-think-so.html
there are more refutations out there--i saw them a few days ago--but i didn't bat an eyelash at this news. they're exploring quantum tunneling (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_tunneling) which doesn't really have anything to do with light speed but rather with quantum mechanical...stuff. things jumping from place to place instantly. it's a different thing. i don't know how or why this article has gotten the press that it has.
Aug 28, 2007 07:30 am This puzzle is a hard one.I believe in the relativity theory but the fact that in our world(as we know it)we can keep doubling our speeds so why should it have a limit?
Aug 28, 2007 07:41 am because it gets crazier the faster you go and the math stops making sense.
einstein showed that mass is energy. energy, then, is mass. the faster you go, the more energy you have, so you also become 'more massive.' not literally--your actual mass as we know it doesn't change--but you have more energy, and that energy is equivalent to mass, so that's why peeps say you get more massive the faster you go. so even though it's just (really) increasing kinetic energy you're talking about here as you move faster and faster, it's the same as saying you have more mass, and it takes more energy to accelerate more mass, and you so you wind up at this dead end where the speeds you're traveling at actually make it impossible to go any faster. it's like this ramp, and the closer to the lip you get, the harder it gets, until you end up at place where all the energy in the universe could not accelerate you up to the next level.
i don't know if this is a valid way to look at it, but i imagine trying to push a kid on a bicycle. as we get up to speed, i have to run at that speed and more, in order to get the bike up to a faster speed. i will always, myself, have to have at least the speed of the bike, plus a little more, and just getting up to the current speed requires much energy. to go beyond that takes what you have, plus more. and the same again, for the next level. at a certain point in the 90%'s of light speed, the whole universe can't supply you with enough energy to accelerate the mass (energy) you're already 'pushing.'
Aug 28, 2007 07:45 am www.eurekalert.org/pub_re...s-lst081607.php
Aephraim Steinberg, a quantum optics expert at the University of Toronto, Canada, doesn't dispute Nimtz and Stahlhofen's results. However, Einstein can rest easy, he says. The photons don't violate relativity: it's just a question of interpretation.
Steinberg explains Nimtz and Stahlhofen's observations by way of analogy with a 20-car bullet train departing Chicago for New York. The stopwatch starts when the centre of the train leaves the station, but the train leaves cars behind at each stop. So when the train arrives in New York, now comprising only two cars, its centre has moved ahead, although the train itself hasn't exceeded its reported speed.
"If you're standing at the two stations, looking at your watch, it seems to you these people have broken the speed limit," Steinberg says. "They've got there faster than they should have, but it just happens that the only ones you see arrive are in the front car. So they had that head start, but they were never travelling especially fast."
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