Faster than light? Not a problem.

 Posted by on 7 July 2009  Modern Life
Jul 072009
 

einstein1It is often asserted that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.  To date, no one has been able to prove that statement wrong.  Or have they?

This article is reporting that John Singleton has created a device that will allow radio waves to travel faster than light (or FTL, if you are a sci-fi geek).

If my understanding is correct, and I don’t necessarily claim that it is, this technology will allow us to send communciations at speeds greater than the speed of light.  The ramifications of this could keep me busy speculating for weeks.

What does this mean for space exploration?  For projects such as SETI?  For global communications?  For military applications?

This breakthrough is so mind-boggling I can’t understand why I haven’t heard about it before now.

Oh, yeah.  Jacko is still hogging the news.

T. Keith Edmunds

  • http://www.absurdintellectual.com/ Grant Hamilton

    Weird!! Just two days ago I was reading all about the speed of light, because of an unrelated article. What was that post on synchronicity, again?

    Anyway, the article is very muddled, but it sounds like all he’s talking about is Cherenkov Radiation, which has been well-known for 50 years. It’s not travelling faster than the speed of light, c, but faster that than the speed of light in any given medium. For example, the speed of light in water is only about 0.75c, but it’s relatively easy to get electrons to travel faster than that, which causes the wave-stacking “sonic boom” that he’s talking about.

    However, c is still an absolute limit.

    Also, as mentioned in the article, it’s trivial to get something to travel faster than the speed of light — just sweeping the point of a laser across a distant object can make it appear to move faster than the speed of light. Unfortunately, that doesn’t move any individual particle or information any faster than the speed of light.

    In the Wikipedia article on the speed of light (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light) they mention an experiment from the year 2000 where a group of laser beams managed a velocity of 300 times the speed of light (for very short distances). But no individual laser exceeded c, so it was still impossible to transmit information faster than light.

    For more interesting reading, try the Wikipedia article on tachyons, as well: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyon)

    Equations that define the speed of light as an absolute limit are interesting in that they show you require infinite energy as you approach closer and closer to c. However, the equations work perfectly well with negative numbers — meaning that, hypothetically, one could conceive of an alternate universe where everything moves much faster than the speed of light, and it would require infinite amounts of energy to slow down to c. In this expanded definition, it’s not that you can’t go faster than the speed of light, it’s that you can’t go exactly the speed of light. Of course, once you end up going faster than c, you’re going back in time, too.

  • http://pennywise-books.blogspot.com/ T. Keith Edmunds

    Wow. Is that called a nerd-fit? (Only sort of kidding.)

  • http://www.absurdintellectual.com/ Grant Hamilton

    It’s unbecoming to point out the ailments of others. :P

  • thebanana

    Does this mean I’ll be able to listen to tomorrow’s CBC Radio 2 broadcast yesterday?

    • http://www.absurdintellectual.com/ Grant Hamilton

      Only in Newfoundland.

  • http://pennywise-books.blogspot.com/ T. Keith Edmunds

    Only if you can travel back to yesterday to do so.

  • the banana

    Science is so hard :(