FTL Currents May Power Pulsar Beams

thomst passes along news out of the recent AAAS meeting of a new explanation for pulsar beams that involves faster-than-light currents. Here are Los Alamos's press release and three related papers on the arXiv. "The new model explains the beam emissions from pulsars as products of superluminal currents within the spinning neutron stars' atmospheres. According to the authors' model, the current generated is, itself, faster than light, although the particles that compose it never individually exceed the universal speed limit, thereby preventing Einsteinian post-mortem rotation. The new model is a general explanation of the phenomenon of pulsar beam emissions that explains emissions at all observed frequencies (and different pulsars emit everything from radio waves to x-rays), which no previous model has done."

Comments

You know what else creates FTL currents?

[jeffb (2.718)]

A disco ball. Shine a light on a disco ball, and project those cool reflections onto a surface more than a few light-seconds away. You'll see that the spots move much faster than light.

Still no FTL movement or information transfer. Still no violation of GR or causality. Just another nice, attention-grabbing headline.

Re:FTL Information?

[camperdave]

Quantum entanglement is like a coin. Once you know one side is Heads, the other side is "instantaneously" Tails.