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

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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....

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.

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".

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!

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: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.)

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.