Eureka! Scientists break speed of light

SCIENTISTS claim they have broken the ultimate speed barrier: the speed of light.

In research carried out in the United States, particle physicists have shown that light pulses can be accelerated to up to 300 times their normal velocity of 186,000 miles per second.

The implications, like the speed, are mind-boggling. On one interpretation it means that light will arrive at its destination almost before it has started its journey. In effect, it is leaping forward in time.

Exact details of the findings remain confidential because they have been submitted to Nature, the international scientific journal, for review prior to possible publication.

The work was carried out by Dr Lijun Wang, of the NEC research institute in Princeton, who transmitted a pulse of light towards a chamber filled with specially treated caesium gas.

Before the pulse had fully entered the chamber it had gone right through it and travelled a further 60ft across the laboratory. In effect it existed in two places at once, a phenomenon that Wang explains by saying it travelled 300 times faster than light.

The research is already causing controversy among physicists. What bothers them is that if light could travel forward in time it could carry information. This would breach one of the basic principles in physics - causality, which says that a cause must come before an effect. It would also shatter Einstein's theory of relativity since it depends in part on the speed of light being unbreachable.

This weekend Wang said he could not give details but confirmed: "Our light pulses did indeed travel faster than the accepted speed of light. I hope it will give us a much better understanding of the nature of light and how it behaves."

Dr Raymond Chiao, professor of physics at the University of California at Berkeley, who is familiar with Wang's work, said he was impressedby the findings. "This is a fascinating experiment," he said.

In Italy, another group of physicists has also succeeded in breaking the light speed barrier. In a newly published paper, physicists at the Italian National Research Council described how they propagated microwaves at 25% above normal light speed. The group speculates that it could be possible to transmit information faster than light.

Dr Guenter Nimtz, of Cologne University, an expert in the field, agrees. He believes that information can be sent faster than light and last week gave a paper describing how it could be done to a conference in Edinburgh. He believes, however, that this will not breach the principle of causality because the time taken to interpret the signal would fritter away all the savings.

"The most likely application for this is not in time travel but in speeding up the way signals move through computer circuits," he said.

Wang's experiment is the latest and possibly the most important evidence that the physical world may not operate according to any of the accepted conventions.

In the new world that modern science is beginning to perceive, sub-atomic particles can apparently exist in two places at the same time - making no distinction between space and time.

Separate experiments carried out by Chiao illustrate this. He showed that in certain circumstances photons - the particles of which light is made - could apparently jump between two points separated by a barrier in what appears to be zero time. The process, known as tunnelling, has been used to make some of the most sensitive electron microscopes.

The implications of Wang's experiments will arouse fierce debate. Many will question whether his work can be interpreted as proving that light can exceed its normal speed - suggesting that another mechanism may be at work.

Neil Turok, professor of mathematical physics at Cambridge University, said he awaited the details with interest, but added: "I doubt this will change our view of the fundamental laws of physics."

Wang emphasises that his experiments are relevant only to light and may not apply to other physical entities. But scientists are beginning to accept that man may eventually exploit some of these characteristics for inter-stellar space travel.

-- Hawk (flyin@hi.again), June 07, 2000

Answers

Captain's log:

Returning Enterprise to the nearest Star Base, where she will be out- fitted with the new WARP-300 engines.

-- Sysman (kirk@enterprise.c), June 07, 2000.

Damn I wish we humans lived longer. I'd like to see how this turns out.

-- Carlos (riffraff@cybertime.net), June 07, 2000.

surely the actual speed of light (whatever number that is) is irrelevant to time or will probably proved to be

einstein will be proved wrong as newton was

-- richard (richard.dale@onion.com), June 07, 2000.

Unfortunately, you're reading this before I've typed it. I'll fill in the blanks later if I remember what I'm going to say.

-- I'm Here, I'm There (I'm Everywhere@so.beware), June 07, 2000.

"Wang's experiment is the latest and possibly the most important evidence that the physical world may not operate according to any of the accepted conventions."

This is exactly what I have been saying for months. There really is no dichotomy between science and non-science(religion/occult). One of my favorite examples has been the notion that the speed of light is no longer considered to be constant.

For those who would debunk the "supernatural", such as astrology, on the basis of its lack of science, this should be an interesting piece of data. We CANNOT fully know how the universe works, therefore an open mind and a sense of wonder can lead to a most interesting life. THe minute I close down and decide "This is how things are" is the moment I truly stop living and growing.

Hawk, thanks for posting this.

-- FutureShock (gray@matter.think), June 07, 2000.

Fascinating!

And yet a little scary at the same time......

Deano

-- Deano (deano@luvthebeach.com), June 07, 2000.

This is pretty trippy when you think about it. What if we were to use this process to attract the attention of life in other parts of the universe? We could set up a mirror in space that would shoot a beam of light reflected from the sun through a chamber of the caesium gas. The farther it goes, the farther ahead of our current "time" it would reach other destinations. If extraterrestial life sees light in the way we do, and are already able to travel through time, they might come to investigate, but the problem is they could actually get here way back in our "past". This could be dangerous, because they might change the course of our history. Maybe they are already able to see the light of our activities much sooner than we do, and have already been influencing our reality! Whoah!

I might add for those who were skeptical of Neil Donald Walsch, this conforms very well with the principles that he claims God spoke to him about, that we can "exist" in more than one place at the same time, and that in reality we are everywhere, always. What we are now capable of "seeing" in our limited 3-dimensional perception is only the tip of the iceberg.

-- Hawk (flyin@hi.again), June 07, 2000.

Fascinating. Thanks Hawk.

-- Debra (...@....), June 07, 2000.

From the Physics and Consiousness listserver:

Actually Einstein wanted a stronger condition, that no influence of any kind can act faster than light. His main motivation was to keep the principle of retaded causality that effects cannot happen before their causes. However, his own general relativity shows that principle is not absolute. For example, Igor Novikov's book, "River of Time" shows that the future can cause the past without changing the past. There are also the classical torsion field models of Gennady Shipov (Moscow) and others added on to general relativity that suggest propagating torsion waves in 3D space that are faster than light.

Bell's theorem shows that quantum information does travel faster than light. Henry Stapp has written widely about that. However, there is a Catch 22 called "passion at a distance" in which you cannot signal i.e. send useful messages faster than light as Kaku says below. However, there is a loophole still. Bohm (also Valentini) showed that "passion at a distance", i.e. no faster than light and/or backward in time quantum level messages, is not absolute either, but is an artifact of "subquantal equilibrium", alternatively the violation of a generalized action-reaction principle between the pilot quantum information "mental" (my term not Bohm's et-al) pattern and the material configuration it is piloting. The mental pattern moves matter, but not vice versa. Only then do you get quantum randomness and passion at a distance as explained, for example, by Heinz Pagels in "The Cosmic Code". There is a bigger theory, post-quantum theory, in which faster than light and backward in time signaling does happen. There is also evidence for this in

http://ufn.ioc.ac.ru/abstracts/abst98/abst9810.html#d

in which control of future absorbers, as in Wheeler-Feynman-Hoyle-Narlikar, in a particular direction of the sky, in a broad spectrum, by an advanced future civilization, apparently modulates the past spontaneous emissions we see today periodically at 24 hours, 27 days and 365 days in synchronized mental, physiological, biochemical, chemical, solid state, atomic, nuclear spontaneous emissions across the board. This effect, may be to the future what the 2.7 degree microwave thermal radiation is to the past. That is, I suggest a new field of "Advanced Astronomy" in addition to the old "Retarded Astronomy". The former observes the future universe, the latter observes the past universe. The post-quantum theory explains the rate and power dissipation of our own consciousness and ties it to the large scale structure of the universe.

Things that do not contain information (e.g. empty space) can expand much faster than light (as in the Big Bang). So this new experiment adds nothing new. For example, take a flashlight and sweep out the night sky with it. Since the night sky is millions of light years across, the image of the flashlight seems to travel billions of times faster than light from one end of the univese to the other! But this is trivial, since each photon of light from the flashlight travels at the speed of light. Relativity is not violated. The key is that you cannot send information (e.g. Morse code) from one part of the sky to the other part of the sky by waving a flashlight across the sky. Similarly, the physicists in Italy simply found that modes within a light beam can travel faster than light (e.g. phase velocity), but these modes CANNOT TRANSMIT INFORMATION. Only the wave packet (which contains these modes inside) can transmit information, and the wave packet travels at the speed of light. In other words, this experiment is useless (except to measure the incompetence of science writers!) Sorry for the letdown. Einstein is still right, in that this discovery cannot be used for practical faster than light computers etc.

-- What the geeks think (celertes@lightcone.net), June 07, 2000.

Along these lines.....what about proposed future computers that will do some of their computing in another dimension?

Has anyone read on this hypothesis?

-- fauna (x@x.edu), June 07, 2000.

"What the geeks",

Einstein could still be right with respect to "physics" as we know it, but I think we are talking about something beyond known physics now.

I was thinking along the same lines as what fauna suggests. We know that thoughts (a form of information) can travel through time and exist in more than one place, another dimension. It is possible to visualize something occuring in the future or past with thoughts.

Perhaps like thoughts, light exists in other dimensions, it's just that we don't normally see this form of light within our normal 3 dimensions. The gas that this scientist used could be the key "window" which allows us to see what occurs in another 4th dimenison, that things can travel faster than 186,000 mps, and can exist in more than one isolated space at the same time.

This is an astounding discovery that could allow us to visually study and confirm the nature of other dimensions. In the very near future, 186,000 miles per second may seem very slow. Maybe the "hyper-light" warp speeds of Star Trek that Sysman mentioned are not so far-fetched after all! Star Trek has been right about many things before, way ahead of its time.

-- Hawk (flyin@hi.again), June 07, 2000.

The group speculates that it could be possible to transmit information faster than light.

From what I understand, the first application to utilize this breakthrough new technology will be the hyperspeed downloading of porn.

-- (hmm@hmm.hmm), June 07, 2000.

Welcome to the 10th Dimension!

Thanks Hawk

-- Not now, not like this (AgentSmith0110@aol.com), June 07, 2000.

Grooovy baby! You're freakin me out!

-- Austin Powers (too.hip@for.my.time), June 07, 2000.

Color me stupid on this one. My only exposure to quantum mechanics has been from watching Quantum Leap. EVERY new scientific discovery excites me. I'm patiently waiting for this one to be evaluated. So many conclusions have been drawn prematurely in recent years that I'd rather wait than leap.

If this isn't the thread wherein Carlos stated that he wished humans had a longer life-span, I'll state here anyway that I agree. My dad had the same opinion. The possibilities are so GREAT that we'd like to see them unfold.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), June 07, 2000.

Anita, I believe we will see them unfold, from the other side, in the higher dimensions. I think that is what we are here to learn in this seemingly limited physical world... how to transcend the 3 dimensions we are currently aware of, expand our consciousness (the unused 90%), and be able to freely move into the higher dimensions. Those already on the other side are communicating with us, but our minds are closed. Some day there will be no difference between what we perceive to be "dead" and "alive", it will just be existence on different dimensions, and we will be able to communicate between them. Instead of leaving our 3 dimensions when we "die", and being thrust into an unknown world, we will be able to experience many or all dimensions simultaneously.

-- Hawk (flyin@hi.again), June 07, 2000.

If in the future we learn to travel to the past, shouldn't the future people be here now among us?

Time to start torturing people who may be time travellers to see if they'll talk IMHO.

Frank

-- Someone (ChimingIn@twocents.cam), June 07, 2000.

Just don't pick ME, Frank. I only LOOK like a time- traveler. I really didn't do it...........yet.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), June 07, 2000.

DR. LIJUN WANG

NEC RESEARCH INSTITUTE, INC.

Due to the high-volume media inquiries in the past weeks, the original page has been removed.

Our recent work on the observation of a light pulse's superluminal propagation is currently under peer review at NATURE and I regret that we cannot disclose any further details at this point. NATURE maintains a press embargo policy that ensures that the scientific review procedure is not interfered prior to a paper's publication and as Scientists we adhere to the principle.

Please allow us a few more weeks for the disclosure of the details. I apologize for not being able to reply to EVERY recent e-mail inquiry; this is simply beyond our typing abilities.

Thank you for your interest in our work and thank you in advance for your understanding.

If NATURE's review comes back clean, Dr. Wang is going to be a very famous guy in a very short period of time. Not that time will mean anything, of course. 8-}

-- DeeEmBee (macbeth1@pacbell.net), June 07, 2000.

- - - - -Begin Encoded Brainwave Transmission- - - - - - - Greetings from the future. I just wanted to let you all know that everything is still fine and dandy in the year 2025. The government is still corrupt, the ozone layer is still withering away, and Paul Milne is still saying, "It won't be long now." The Greenspun forum is still intact, although Phil sold all the equipment years ago to Apple Computer, which now owns 95% of all hardware on the planet. The format is still mostly the same, except that all messages are now posted via brain waves. As a result, al-d's posts no longer show up and Flint's posts regularly overflow the machine's internal memory core. Andy Ray is up to Quotably Quoted #6,342 and Sysman is still telling him to get over it. Yourdon's Super-EZBoard forum is still going strong, helped along by the sales of his last two bestselling novels, "TimeBomb:2010" and "TimeBomb:2020." I think they've just about uncovered the real motives behind the chemtrails. Well, I have to go now. Emperor Dieter's daily broadcast is on and I don't dare miss it. -- (hmm@hmm.hmm), July 22, 2025.

-- (conundrum@nevernever.land), June 07, 2000.

Dang HTML. Bummer.

-- (hmm@hmm.hmm), June 07, 2000.

I heard that!

LOL... <:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), June 07, 2000.

Hmmm:

That WAS great. I envy your creativity.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), June 07, 2000.

I notice Hmmm didn't send anything back from 2039. Do you suppose this is because the world collapsed when the Unix time overflowed in 2038? Especially if all of our brains were running Unix by then.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), June 07, 2000.

Isn't it 2999 when the Bill-Gates clone who is emperor of the world thaws out some COBOL programmers to remediate for the Year 3000?

-- Observer (Lots@to.observe), June 07, 2000.

- - - - -Begin Encoded Brainwave Transmission- - - - - - -

Hi again. Thanks for your support all. Wouldn't you know it, 25 years later and HTML still doesn't work the way you expect it to. Something about sending line-break tags through the space-time continuum or something. Hopefully we have it fixed on our end.

You should be aware that, in the future, computers are based on an entirely new algorithm. Some time ago, we moved away from Boolean logic and towards "fuzzy" logic, and from there, we moved to what they are now calling "Ladylogic." I'm told it's supposed to have many advantages over traditional algorithms, but so far it seems to make the machines less stable. And I don't understand why the techs are always sprinkling the machines with some sort of white powder. Perhaps it's halon.

Well, just wanted to give you an update. I have to go. The computer just told me to "fuck off."

- - - - -End Encoded Brainwave Transmission- - - - - - -

-- (hmm@hmm.hmm), July 27, 2025.

---

Wow, freaky!!

-- (hmm@hmm.hmm), June 08, 2000.

Look, don't get freaked out. Just calm down. And for pete's sake, use the Rogaine!!

-- (hmm@hmm.hmm), July 27, 2025.

---

Okay, FINE. I'll use it. Jeez.

-- (hmm@hmm.hmm), June 08, 2000.