German Physicists Claim Speed of Light Broken

Byzanthy writes "Two German physicists claim to have broken the speed of light by using 'microwave photons.' According to Einstein's special theory of relativity, it would require an infinite amount of energy to accelerate any object beyond the speed of light. However, Dr Gunter Nimtz and Dr Alfons Stahlhofen, of the University of Koblenz, say they did it by using a phenomenon known as quantum tunneling. The pair say they have conducted an experiment in which microwave photons — energetic packets of light — traveled 'instantaneously' between a pair of prisms that had been moved up to 3ft apart." New Scientist, however, is running an article that suggests Einstein can rest easy. Aephraim Steinberg, a quantum optics expert at the University of Toronto, explains that the German physicist's results aren't necessarily wrong, they are just being interpreted incorrectly.

Comments

The headline leaves only one question

[DigitalReverend]

What are they going to do to fix it?

Re:The headline leaves only one question

[Shadow Wrought]

Since they are in front of Judge Schroedinger, they'll know whether or not they are guilty once their cell door is opened.

Re:The headline leaves only one question

[WED Fan]

Nice, even my cat liked that one. How do I know? Simple observation.

Re:The headline leaves only one question

[Anonymous Coward]

What are they going to do to fix it? They're going to issue a patch next Tuesday.

Re:The headline leaves only one question

[Anonymous Coward]

They're going to issue a patch next Tuesday. Don't you mean they'll do it last Tuesday?

Re:The headline leaves only one question

[nospmiS remoH]

Noted physicists Schrödinger and Heisenberg are driving around in a car, and Heisenberg goes "I think we just ran over a cat."

"Is it dead?" asks Schrödinger.

"I can't be certain", says Heisenberg.

186,000 miles per second

[gozar]

186,000 miles per second, it's not just a good idea, it's the law.

Just won't do...

[nbannerman]

How am I supposed to welcome our new microwave-photon overlords if they've already arrived?

Re:Just won't do...

[varmittang]

But they haven't left yet either....

How quaint

[Verteiron]

Information on how to break the light barrier has been around for ages.

Another explanation from Ars

[Anonymous Coward]

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070816-fast er-than-the-speed-of-light-no-i-dont-think-so.html

Re:Another explanation from Ars

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently, Chris Lee has read the current paper, but Prof. Nimtz isn't new to the field of faster then light transmission, he demonstrated this a few years ago with a mozart symphony in a barrier shaped like fig. a in this article on popular science. The results experiment have been confirmed by others, showing that the signal travels at about 4.7c in the narrow section of the barrier, if I am not mistaken. Chris Lee appears to have some understanding of the basics, but he tries to argue against the new paper with some handwaving and appealing to intuition, however both are quite useless in the field of quantum mechanics.

quantum spin

[randuev]

Doesn't quantum changing of spin happen faster than light would travel between two points? Does teleportation actually breaking speed of light? Otherwise why would it be called teleportation if it's just moving things (really) fast?

Re:quantum spin

[Skrynkelberg]

You're thinking of the EPR Paradox.

Simplified, when you have two entangled electrons and measure the spin along an axis of the first, the second one immediately takes on the opposite spin of the first.

But you don't know what spin you are going to get by measuring the electron; because it is made of two entangled wavefunctions it's pure chance which one is going to show up. Thus, you have no control over which spin the second electron has, and thus you can't transmit any information using this phenomena.

However, you DO know the spin of the second electron, a fact that can be used. For example, you can create potentially unbreakable ciphers using Quantum Cryptography.

Re:quantum spin

[Anonymous Coward]

Simplified, when you have two entangled electrons and measure the spin along an axis of the first, the second one immediately takes on the opposite spin of the first. Well, the second one immediately always had the opposite spin to the first. The wierd thing is that if you had measure spin of the first along a different axis, the second would instead have always had opposite spin to that instead, since when you measure a spin you either get an integer multiple of hbar or nowt, and whatever you measure it as becomes reality thenceforth.

Which is all decidedly strange. It's almost like we're living in an approximation running on a superscalar processor...

Great.....

[segedunum]

The time barrier's been broken, so where's that damn warp drive?

*Grabs salt shaker*

[TyFighter]

I brought enough for everyone.

Every couple of years

[abionnnn]

Guys come out confusing group velocity with the speed of light, from the very first equation I am beginning to suspect that it is the case. I have read the paper, and must question their conclusion as their setup is not entirely clear. This said, everybody loves surprises. Yes, IAAP.

Re:Every couple of years

[kebes]

Indeed. Now, I won't say with certainty that this present claim is wrong... but we've seen so many "speed of light broken!" reports over the years that I'm not going to get too excited. Typically, when people think they have seen a speed-of-light violation, they are actually reporting on one of two well-established phenomena:

1. Group velocity versus speed-of-light. Basically, relativity states that no individual photon can travel faster than c. However a collection of photons interfere to form a beam or a pulse with some kind of shape. You can arrange your experiment so that the envelope of the pulse travels at some velocity (faster than light, slower than light, etc.) but the individual photons are still always traveling at exactly c.

2. Quantum instantaneousness. Two particles can be put into a quantum entanglement, such that their states depend on one another, even though they have not 'picked' a particular state yet. You can separate the two particles (even by a huge distance), collapse one particle into a state and the other particle collapses instantaneously into the corresponding state. This instantaneous effect seems to violate the light-speed rule. However because the experimenter cannot control the state which is selected upon collapse, no "information" is actually transmitted from one location to the other.

Importantly, both 1. and 2. involve emergent effects that a human may characterize as "faster than light"--but no information, and no energy, was transmitted faster than light-speed. (And, to be clear, relativity states that energy and hence information cannot travel faster than light. Emergent phenomena can travel at arbitrary speed. In fact in relativity spacetime itself can, theoretically, expand faster than light, but you still can't send signals from one location of spacetime to another at greater than c.)

From the descriptions, it really does sound that these researchers are merely committing one of those two classic fallacies (or maybe a novel combination of the two?). Now, assuming that these researchers are not novices, I find it hard to believe that they would commit such classic mistakes. So in this case it might be a subtle point to prove that relativity is not disproved, but my assumption would be that they have made a mistake somewhere.

I don't mean to dismiss these results, and new science certainly comes from violations of established science. However relativity is so well-established at this point that making the extraordinary claim "we've violated relativity" is going to require exhaustive verification.

Re:Every couple of years

[Intron]

Suppose we put Angelina Jolie on a rocket and send her to Mars. While there, they open the envelope. Angelina instantly becomes an Oscar winner. She doesn't know it because information will take several minutes to get there, but her state changes instantly.

I use Ms. Jolie because she is frequently mentioned as part of an "entangled pair".

Re:Every couple of years

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

She doesn't know it because information will take several minutes to get there, but her state changes instantly.

Without getting bogged down in the specifics of your thought experiment:
According to General Relativity, her state does not change "instantly".
According to Quantum Mechanics, her state does change "instantly".

This is the essential problem in modern physics. General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are, as they stand, in contradiction with one another.

and the penalty for breaking this law?

[aapold]

You have to walk the plank.

Re:and the penalty for breaking this law?

[SQLGuru]

Good joke, poor execution.....

You have to walk the planck. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck's_constant

Layne

Incredible?

[vigmeister]

Something like this was claimed a while back. Is it like this guy's experiment where although an adge of a light pulse travelled faster than light, information still could not be transmitted faster than light?

Not discrediting the achievement. This will help us clarify current theories regarding speed limits and stuffz

Cheers!

Re:Actually

[brunascle]

i think you're confusing quantum physics and relativity. Einsten didnt believe in, and tried to disprove, quantum physics, but i dont believe he ever questioned his own relativity theory.

"God does not play dice" is about the inherent randomness in quantum physics.

Informative

[daskinil]

I'm glad there was a post today to tell me the speed of light isn't broken. I need a reminder every once in a while.

Next article from Germany

[kannibul]

We shall call this new Technology:

Way to go Anywhere Really Phast

Or WARP

Idiocy

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

Light is light, no matter the frequency. I think when you say "light", you're trying to refer to light in the visible part of the spectrum.

The summary does however call photons "energetic packets of light" when I think they're trying to say "packets of energy".

Nothing new..

[Araxen]

The effect they measured is not new. As they described correctly, the waves are evanescent modes. The thing about these modes is that they do not possess a velocity with a real number value; the index of refraction is effectively imaginary. Imaginary in the sense that you need to consider the square root of a negative number. The imaginary velocity means the modes decay away from the surface (of the prism in this case). But if you have another prism close enough, it can pick up some of the evanescent mode and convert it back to real propagating light (which travels at real light speed).

Since imaginary speed waves die out over long distances, for which we do need "faster than light" speed, we will not be able to use this effect.

Photons do not have mass

[eyebits]

Photons do not have mass.

From: http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answer s/960731.html

The Question
(Submitted July 31, 1996)

Do photons have mass? Because the equations E=mc2, and E=hf, imply that m=hf/c2 . Is it so?

The Answer
No, photons do not have mass, but they do have momentum. The proper, general equation to use is E2 = m2c4 + p2c2 So in the case of a photon, m=0 so E = pc or p = E/c. On the other hand, for a particle with mass m at rest (i.e., p = 0), you get back the famous E = mc2.

Re:Photons do not have mass

[eyebits]

Hatta said: But since p=mv anything with momentum does have mass.
No. Logical fallacy. If p then q does not mean q then p. Ex: Boys have eyes. So, if a person has eyes is that personal necessarily a boy?

p = mv is true if there is mass that is moving. Without mass, given only that formula, there would be no momentum. But it is also true p = E/c. If an entity has energy it has momentum. The momentum can come from a mass with velocity or from energy. To say that an entity with momentum has mass because p = mv is not logical because the momentum may not have come from the entity having mass it may have come from the entity having energy. Photons have no mass but they do have energy.

Wikipedia - momentum - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momentum (scroll down to "Momentum of massless objects")

Wikipedia - photon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon
Planck's Constant and Energy of Photon - http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000/quantumzone/p hotoelectric2.html
Relation of Photon Energy and Frequency - http://www.physlink.com/education/AskExperts/ae99. cfm

Re:Actually

[Nilych]

I liked Niels Bohr's response to Einstein's comment:

"Einstein, stop telling God what to do."

Re:First Post!

[Mr. Underbridge]

then how does a photon, WHICH HAS VOLUME AND MASS, travel at the speed of light without having the same mass/energy as the whole of the universe?

Well, you've proven one theory of mine - any postulate typed in uppercase is guaranteed to be incorrect. ;)

Re:Wrong about microwave photons

[Rogerborg]

>Not only that, but [Einstein is] dead

Only if you're within 52 light years of him.

Re:Actually

[kebes]

As an aside, I find it interesting how different people interpret Einstein's famous stance on Quantum Mechanics. As indicated in that quote, Einstein felt that Quantum Mechanics was fundamentally incomplete, and was not an accurate representation of reality. Now, many people point to Einstein's disbelief to support their own arguments that Quantum Mechanics is wrong. Thus their argument is: "See! If a smart guy like Einstein says it's wrong, then it's probably wrong!"

However Einstein himself, over his entire life, was never able to disprove Quantum Mechanics, despite many attempts. All the thought experiments and physical experiments he proposed instead bolstered the case of Quantum Mechanics, since the predictions of the theory were verified time and again. In the years since Einstein's death, the case has only gotten stronger: Quantum Mechanics is now one of the most thoroughly and rigorously verified theories we have (along with relativity, of course).

So, the alternate interpretation of Einstein stance is: "See! Even a really smart guy like Einstein is wrong sometimes!" Just because Einstein "felt" that Quantum Mechanics was wrong does not make it so. In this case, his intuition seemingly failed him.

(Incidentally, one thing we do know is that there is a mismatch between our two best theories: quantum mechanics and relativity. It's not at all obvious how to reconcile them, and it is likely that they are both "wrong" in the sense that they both need to be modified to be united into a single coherent theory. However the aspects of Quantum Mechanics that Einstein didn't like (nonlocality, randomness, etc.) are firmly established and are probably not going to be "undone" by even a unified theory.)

Matter People, Matter!!!

[oh_my_080980980]

It just goes to show that journalists have a hard time reporting science.

The Speed of Light limitation is in regards to Matter, i.e. something with Mass. A Photon does not have mass. The component is acceleration! You cannot accelerate matter faster than the speed of light. The reason being as you begin to approach the speed of light, the object in question begins to increase in mass. Thus you need increasingly more energy to propel the object. More energy, continues to increase the mass of the object.

However there is no law against objects that already travel faster than the speed of light. For example, Tachyons. Hypothetical particles that travel faster than the speed of light. However they have never been found.

So a Photon can travel faster than itself - i.e. speed of light because it has no mass. Interesting. The explanation of why it's wrong doesn't jive. The data still prove it got there faster than it should.

Theoretical Physicists have a hard time with Experimental Physicists, mainly because experimental physicists have data to backup the arguments.

Re:Actually

[rk]

Then there's Hawking: "Not only does God play dice with the universe, He sometimes throws them where you can't see them."

It's sorta like this

[Moraelin]

It's sorta like this:

1. First of all, the somewhat inaccurare version Newtonian version: when you calculate the acceleration of a small body in the gravity field of another body, the small body's mass cancels itself out.

I mean, the force is: F= G * M * m / d^2

The small body's acceleration therefore is: a = F / m = G * M / d^2

You'll notice that the small body's mass isn't present at all in the acceleration, which in this case is also determining the curvature of the trajectory. Or to put it otherwise, a 1g thumb tack will fly in the exact same orbit as a thousand ton Goa'uld pyramid. As you make mass smaller and smaller, in other words take a limit when mass -> 0, well, the trajectory still stays curved.

2. Actually, in a perverse way, you are right that Newtonian mechanics should not apply to light, and they don't: if you apply Newtonian mechanics to light, the predicted deflection of light is only half the deflection actually observed. So light does act funnily in a gravity well.

Light's curvature in a gravity well is only explained right by Einstein's general relativity. There gravity is just the observed consequence of a distortion of space itself. The presence of a mass there distorts space. The usual analogy is that it's like having a horizontal rubber sheet and placing a steel ball upon it. You'll get an indentation in the sheet. The effects on other nearby bodies, or on their movement, is basically just the consequence of that distortion of space.

And so it is with light too. It's not as much that newtonian gravity pulls it, as just that it's moving through a warped piece of space.

3. Generally, don't try to apply your RL intuition and experience to relativistic or quantum phenomena, it tends to just fail spectacularly :)

C++

[192939495969798999]

And lo, the greatest joke post title ever finally gets to be used!

The missing C

[aapold]

As you aptly noted, I omitted the "C", which represents the Speed of Light, which was likewise absent in this case.

Thus, what appeared to be a simple gaff to the untrained eye is actually a sophisticated reference en passant.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Re:The missing C

[Alsee]

>Thus, what appeared to be a simple gaff to the untrained eye is actually a sophisticated reference en passant.

Good move, I guess that's checkmate.

-

Re:Repealed law of gravity?

[DenDude]

How about we have one single science discussion where it does not degenerate into a political bashing session. Please. I'd love to be able to read about a cool development in science without having to read about Bush, Clinton, Republicans, Democrats, or anything other than funny "you broke it, you buy it" jokes about the subject. Let's all stop obsessing on politics for just one freaking story. Please?

Talk about old news...

[JayAEU]

I'm not sure whether anybody is aware of it, but this really is old news. Ten(!) years ago, Dr. Nimtz published an experiment on how to tunnel data (specifically Mozart's symphony) at higher speeds than light. Read about it (in German) here http://www.wissenschaft.de/wissenschaft/hintergrun d/173235.html and here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light

There's even been coverage about his tunneling experiments occasionally in the nightly show "Space Night" broadcast on the German TV station "Bayern Alpha" http://www.br-online.de/wissen-bildung/spacenight/ .

Somehow this experiment keeps turning up now and then, causing wild speculation and discussions every time.

Re:The summary leaves only one question

[x2A]

I think it's along the lines that mass appears to pull things through time; objects with mass age. When energy loses its mass, it no longer ages, and is therefore travelling at speed C (to the energy, it travels instantaniously, to everything else, it will pass at the speed of light). This is what happens when you eg, charge a particle so that a photon is given off. If that photon gains mass (eg, is absorbed into matter, warming it slightly) it will be pulled through time, will begin to age, therefore will be travelling through less space per time, which is under the speed of light.

The real twist here is that for an object to be accellerated past the speed of light, that object would actually 'see' the rest of the universe travelling backwards, and would arrive at its destination younger than it was when it left... so it'd simple appear to us as if the packet had travelling from the 'destination' to the 'source', at a speed below the speed of light... objects travelling faster than the speed of light, and objects travelling below it, appear indistinguishable to us.

(or something like that :-p)