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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."
Clearly you have already perfected this FTL information transmission and used it to get a firstpost with a topic uncanningly similar to mine. ;)
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
No.
For a detailed explanation, see the next guy's post.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
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.
[ I'm referring to the concept of seeing something that moves faster than the speed of light, not anything else here, just so it's clear ]
Consider this situation --
You've got a big sphere. Let's say it's 93 million miles in radius (the size of our radius around the sun -- it's a figure we're all familiar with anyways.)
In the middle of this sphere is a man. He has a laser, and he's shining it on the sphere. Since the man is still, the laser is not moving.
But, then the man starts spinning, once per second. The laser takes about 8 minutes to reach the edge of the sphere, but once it does, the dot starts going around the outside of the sphere, once per second. If you do the math, that means the dot is moving 584,000,000 miles per second -- which is about 3100 times the speed of light.
The light from the laser is still going at the speed of light, but the dot appears to be moving at over 3000 times the speed of light. But it's just a location -- the spot that the laser is hitting right now -- it doesn't mean that something tangible is exceeding the speed of light, and therefore Einstein isn't proved wrong by it.
My point is, it doesn't require some really strange neutron star situation to picture a situation where something might appear to be traveling faster than the speed of light.
Oh for heaven's sake, somebody post a car analogy!
Take yer hotrod up to about 25 MPH at night and spin some donuts. From far enough away, the headlights reflecting off the walmart wall will move way faster than 25 MPH, maybe 1000 MPH who knows.
Now does the cop give you a ticket for speeding because your headlight reflections are moving 1000 MPH? No, nothing was speeding. The reflection is just a mathematical construct that means nothing. The cop gives you a ticket for being a dumbass and disturbing the peace, not for speeding.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Yours was the anti-correlated part of the singlet.
Somehow this sounds so much better than "-1 Redundant".
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Quantum entanglement is like a coin. Once you know one side is Heads, the other side is "instantaneously" Tails.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!