German physicists break speed of light

[Phait]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/08/16/scispeed116.xml

A pair of German physicists claim to have broken the speed of light - an achievement that would undermine our entire understanding of space and time.
According to Einstein's special theory of relativity, it would require an infinite amount of energy to propel an object at more than 186,000 miles per second.
However, Dr Gunter Nimtz and Dr Alfons Stahlhofen, of the University of Koblenz, say they may have breached a key tenet of that theory.

The pair say they have conducted an experiment in which microwave photons - energetic packets of light - travelled "instantaneously" between a pair of prisms that had been moved up to 3ft apart. Being able to travel faster than the speed of light would lead to a wide variety of bizarre consequences. For instance, an astronaut moving faster than it would theoretically arrive at a destination before leaving. The scientists were investigating a phenomenon called quantum tunnelling, which allows sub-atomic particles to break apparently unbreakable laws. Dr Nimtz told New Scientist magazine: "For the time being, this is the only violation of special relativity that I know of."


http://img441.imageshack.us/img441/9187/hyperspace673b528ag4.jpg

[Dead Chief]

LOL at the star wars picture...

Regarding the article...well it just proves that humans have been proven wrong one more time.

[Malgon]

The pair say they have conducted an experiment in which microwave photons - energetic packets of light - travelled "instantaneously" between a pair of prisms that had been moved up to 3ft apart. Being able to travel faster than the speed of light would lead to a wide variety of bizarre consequences. For instance, an astronaut moving faster than it would theoretically arrive at a destination before leaving. The scientists were investigating a phenomenon called quantum tunnelling, which allows sub-atomic particles to break apparently unbreakable laws. Dr Nimtz told New Scientist magazine: "For the time being, this is the only violation of special relativity that I know of."

Bizarre indeed. :o SW pic ftw!

[Shadow Master]

Heresy! Hide this!
:p Really? I won't believe this till I read real proof.

[Little Conqueror]

Well, there goes all of time and space as we know it.

[alexgk]

Speed of light can't be broken. It breaks YOU!

[Dead Chief]

Great, now we'll be teleporting in a year or so.

[Dave-ros]

Let's hope this is for real and not another cold fusion -- it's about damn time we made a scientific advance that isn't just improving the quality of TV pictures ;)

[Needle]

Neat, but I'm afraid it's a far way from transporting subatomic particles to teleporting whole people.

[Daedolon]

No more traffic jams!

[Jiminator]

yeah, cold fusion does come to mind. I am sure their experiment will be evaluated and scrutinized a million ways in the upcoming days, additionally other people will probably try to patent the process (as some did with cold fusion)...

[Sang]

Pretty awesome stuff. I hope this will get developed further and that we'll hear more about this :)
On the other hand, I don't think we should mess with teleportation.. It could be our DooM! :o

well it just proves that humans have been proven wrong one more time.

Can't blame people for being proven wrong.. I'm quite astonished by all the scientific laws that are around, seeing how they were discovered in the 18th century (or 19th) when they didn't have all this nifty hi-tech stuff that we have today.

[Shadow Master]

Pretty awesome stuff [...] On the other hand, I don't think we should mess with teleportation.. It could be our DooM! :o

Hell, yeah! :cool:

[Scream]

I'm quite astonished by all the scientific laws that are around, seeing how they were discovered in the 18th century (or 19th) when they didn't have all this nifty hi-tech stuff that we have today.

All of that hi-tech stuff was made possible because of understanding and building upon those laws. :)

[Scream]

Let's hope this is for real and not another cold fusion -- it's about damn time we made a scientific advance that isn't just improving the quality of TV pictures ;)

I want them to find a way to apply it to my Internet connection...

[TBZ]

In the future we'll have to increase the speed of light, since we can't travel faster than it!
Free cookie for the first one who gets it..

[ShadeEX]

Great, now we'll be teleporting in a year or so.


On the other hand, I don't think we should mess with teleportation.. It could be our DooM! :o


Hell, yeah! :cool:

Danish scientists have actually been hard at work and managed to teleport stuff recently.. Though only a few Centimeters..

[Little Conqueror]

But have they teleported things across obstacles? What good is an object going the speed of light or faster if you're going to smash it against a wall in the process, right? ;)

[Zero]

They didn't do anything that has not been done before, you can't accelerate matter as fast as light, it would require an infinite amount of energy to do so, because if you guys probly don't know the faster to accelerate something the bigger it's mass gets!!!! The means you need more and more energy to propel the matter. They in no way took a piece of matter and broke the speed of light with it.

This is exactly what they did is "normal talk" the term is called "Quantum instantaneousness"

Basically what is happening is 2 photon states become dependent on each other (even though no photon have picked a state yet) Now if you change the first photon into a state (move them further a part) the second photon will instantaneously follow into the same state, thus they have have broken the speed of light (or have they?)
The answer is no, because when they collapse you can't control the state in witch the photon changes (you can change the state, but not control it) so really no matter or information is actually from one location to another.

if you don't understand this, basically all they did it put 2 protons in a quantum
tunnel and transported one of the protons using the other protons state for acceleration they didn't actually travel anywhere.

[Dave-ros]

Do whaaat? :o

[avatar_58]

Being able to travel faster than the speed of light would lead to a wide variety of bizarre consequences. For instance, an astronaut moving faster than it would theoretically arrive at a destination before leaving.

This is the kind of thing that can make you go crosseyed.

[Shadow Master]

Danish scientists have actually been hard at work and managed to teleport stuff recently.. Though only a few Centimeters..
Centimeters? I thought they managed to teleport an apple from one room to another, adyacent ones.

Just kidding, that's a movie scene. Real life's IIRC a microscopic piece of dirt.

[Micki!]

I look forward to the first couple of light-speed crashes, haha... :D

But seriously, this sounds really interesting and cool...

[theHunted]

I remember that kind of stuff has been done before (in 1997 as it turns out).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Zeilinger

That's the guy I heard of having pulled it off first. I remember him doing an experiment that "teleported" photons across a river or so. Not sure what the connection is between his stuff and the works of the guys mentioned in the topic starter.

[Paroxysm]

Someone pointed out to me the only place this has been reported so far is in the telegraph. So let's not get too excited.

[Jiminator]

for all anybody knows this might just be another internet hoax picked up by the media. independent testing will need to be done on this...

[ShakeItBaby]

If it's anything other than a hoax or faulty equipment readings, it'll probably just turn out to be a variation of entanglement teleportation (http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8756&feedId=quantum-world_rss20) which has been around for a few years now.

[SyntaxN]

Old, and the particle itself doesn´t really break the speed of light, only the information about the particles "condition" does.

[Airtraffic]

I'm a little skeptical,Seems like a pretty huge breakthrough to have such a small article and nobody else talking about it. Other scientists opinions?

Is this just cold fusion again?

[Dave-ros]

Terry Pratchett already pointed out that royalty breaks the speed of light, because the instant a king or queen dies, his or her heir apparent immediately becomes the new king or queen, and therefore the kingons and queons which convey royalty must travel instantaneously. He theorised that information could be transmitted through the careful torturing of monarchs ;)

[Rider]

apparently Einstein can rest easy... according to THIS (http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-08/ns-lst081607.php) article, light is allowed to break it's own maximum speed :)

[axion]

False apparently. (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070816-faster-than-the-speed-of-light-no-i-dont-think-so.html)

[Nessus]

False apparently. (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070816-faster-than-the-speed-of-light-no-i-dont-think-so.html)

Schucks, you ruined my rant!

If light travels 186,000 mps how fast does it travel 3 feet? Is that even measurable?

[Plagman]

It would take about 3 nanoseconds (3.05474096 to be fairly accurate).

[Nessus]

It would take about 3 nanoseconds (3.05474096 to be fairly accurate).

The atomic clock itself is accurate to one billionth of a second. Is there any lab equipment that can measure 3 billionths of a second with any accuracy? Hell, if your measurement device heated up one degree it could throw the whole thing out of whack.

[Twin]

you'd think something like this would make headline news worldwide... ahwell, i guess it's not depressing enough to make the headlines

[Plagman]

The atomic clock itself is accurate to one billionth of a second. Is there any lab equipment that can measure 3 billionths of a second with any accuracy? Hell, if your measurement device heated up one degree it could throw the whole thing out of whack.

I assume they have other means of measuring the speed of their stuff than having a stopwatch handy. Like having both their particle or whatever and a real beam of light be emitted together and somehow be able to tell which one reaches the goal first or something like that. Trying to directly measure such a short duration is, as you pointed, foolish.

[Sang]

you'd think something like this would make headline news worldwide... ahwell, i guess it's not depressing enough to make the headlines


Well this isn't exactly very newsworthy material to the mainstream.. If they manage to teleport an animal or something, that'll get in the news. But this "scientists managed to move photons over a distance of 5 cm".. nah.

[wayskobfssae]

Basically what is happening is 2 photon states become dependent on each other (even though no photon have picked a state yet) Now if you change the first photon into a state (move them further a part) the second photon will instantaneously follow into the same state, thus they have have broken the speed of light (or have they?)The answer is no, because when they collapse you can't control the state in witch the photon changes (you can change the state, but not control it) so really no matter or information is actually from one location to another.

I think you're talking about Quantum Entanglement, but this doesn't seem to be what they did here, at least not the quote mentioned. They said they transported the PHOTONS faster than light speed, not state information from one photon to another faster than light speed, which yes, has indeed been done before and will probably make electronic communication VERY interesting someday.

Whether the same form of Quantum Tunneling that entangled particles use to communicate with each other can be used for FTL travel is a different matter (no pun intended) entirely. Anyone know if this is the kind of "Hyperspace" field that Hawking has proposed as a solution to FTL travel (Star Trek terminology - Warp "Bubble")?

[Hudson]

Unfortunately I have a sad feeling if this technology is ever actually created, the first thing it's going to be used for is bombs.. and not people :(

[Mr.Fibbles]

I imagine that the first real use of a teleportation or high speed travel device will be exploration of the galaxy and spy tech. Then they will apply it to bombs and finally people (carrying guns) and then passengers.

[Kalki]

you'd think something like this would make headline news worldwide... ahwell, i guess it's not depressing enough to make the headlines

Or the story wasn't convincing. You need confirmation on science stuff, which requires peer review as opposed to the usual fact checking.

[wayskobfssae]

Unfortunately I have a sad feeling if this technology is ever actually created, the first thing it's going to be used for is bombs.. and not people :(

It sounds to me like with the system they have running here, you need both a specific starting point and an ending point, otherwise there's no way to make the photon terminate the quantum tunnel. If that were the case for matter as well then it would probably make for a very wasteful payload delivery system.

If Star Trek-style teleportation becomes possible someday, then the same rule will probably apply. I highly doubt we could beam objects to a location that doesn't have a teleporter there to receive the information and convert the energy back into matter.

[Dave-ros]

I think the principle in Star Trek is that it costs less energy to beam from one transporter to another, presumably because of this very problem -- if either end doesn't have a transporter pad, more energy is needed to "create" one, and of course site-to-site transporting is very expensive indeed.

Though of course only being able to beam to specific, pre-built teleporters would obviate the possibility of illegally beaming death squads to random places without warning, so let's be thankful :p

[hell-angel]

Let's hope this is for real and not another cold fusion -- it's about damn time we made a scientific advance that isn't just improving the quality of TV pictures ;)
Hey, the quality of the TV pictures is important to some people ;)

No more traffic jams!
hehe, that made me laugh :D


Seriously, I believe that it should be possible to break the speed of light. I don't know how but I don't believe we know that much of physics that we can safely say it is impossible to break the speed of light. We never made those tests in space for example. :) Nor did we ever use technology utilizing the other theoretical stuff they have though of. (including that star wars warp bubble which is based on an actual theory afaik).

[Destroyer]

i wonder if this is even true.

[The Red Slaughter]

If we did break the speed of light, now we need to find HOW to use it, and how to NOT kill/destroy people/ships when travelling at that speed.

[Commando Nukem]

feh, I prefer anti-gravity. It has far more chance of success then anything FTL will ever be able to bring us in our life-time. With anti-gravity you can go as fast as you what without the worry of being injured. With FTL theres still no real way to get around without uh...death.

Even still, this is only a single photon, when they can get chimps and dogs going through i'll be a little more interested.

[wayskobfssae]

feh, I prefer anti-gravity. It has far more chance of success then anything FTL will ever be able to bring us in our life-time. With anti-gravity you can go as fast as you what without the worry of being injured. With FTL theres still no real way to get around without uh...death.

.... anti-gravity will not save us from stupid drivers, if that's what you're thinking. And even negating the need for roads, there's still all sorts of wonderful things to crash into. Just ask any scout trooper on a speeder bike and he'll tell you how much he hates trees.

[BillyD]

.... anti-gravity will not save us from stupid drivers, if that's what you're thinking. And even negating the need for roads, there's still all sorts of wonderful things to crash into. Just ask any scout trooper on a speeder bike and he'll tell you how much he hates trees.
You nerd. :rolleyes:








:p

[Commando Nukem]

.... anti-gravity will not save us from stupid drivers, if that's what you're thinking. And even negating the need for roads, there's still all sorts of wonderful things to crash into. Just ask any scout trooper on a speeder bike and he'll tell you how much he hates trees.

Nothing will save you from stupid drivers... I was thinking more of long range space exploration and the abbillity to store matierials in smaller spaces using anti-gravity lifters.... things like that.

[warlordQ]

False apparently. (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070816-faster-than-the-speed-of-light-no-i-dont-think-so.html)

Yeah my thoughts exactly.. i was going to ask how they measured the results..
but this article explains everything nicely... :D

check out this quote
For instance, an astronaut moving faster than it would theoretically arrive at a destination before leaving.

This is completely wrong, they would not arrive before departure.. instead they might look ( or appear to look ) like their in a time paradox for a fraction of a second under certain conditions relative to an external observer.. but they are in not a time paradox as the article suggests..

[Roger]

They didn't do anything that has not been done before, you can't accelerate matter as fast as light, it would require an infinite amount of energy to do so, because if you guys probly don't know the faster to accelerate something the bigger it's mass gets!!!! The means you need more and more energy to propel the matter.

Infinite? No, probably extremely high, but not infinite. In case you didn't know, light's travel isn't instant. I think the fact that it takes millions and even billions of years for us to just see something in the sky makes it pretty obvious that while light is quite fast there is still room enough for quicker speeds.

[Dave-ros]

You're trying to apply common sense to science -- what's wrong with you?! :p

[wayskobfssae]

This is completely wrong, they would not arrive before departure.. instead they might look ( or appear to look ) like their in a time paradox for a fraction of a second under certain conditions relative to an external observer.. but they are in not a time paradox as the article suggests..

Well according to Einstein if you could break light speed, you would indeed travel backwards in time, but much more advanced ideas have been developed about the nature of space/time since the Theory of Relativity.

[Sang]

If you ask me, the speed of light is just that.. a speed. And maybe someday we will be capable of going faster than that speed. So then.. you'd just travel faster than light, not go back in time or something.

I'm guessing if you travel faster than light across long distances and - say - arrived on some colonized planet, after landing (dunno how long) you would see a ship in the sky landing on said planet.. It'd be your ship! The light would finally be arriving at your spot.

Or maybe I'm horribly mistaken :p

[Mr.Fibbles]

If you ask me, the speed of light is just that.. a speed. And maybe someday we will be capable of going faster than that speed. So then.. you'd just travel faster than light, not go back in time or something.

I'm guessing if you travel faster than light across long distances and - say - arrived on some colonized planet, after landing (dunno how long) you would see a ship in the sky landing on said planet.. It'd be your ship! The light would finally be arriving at your spot.

Or maybe I'm horribly mistaken :p

That sounds right actually. I am no physicist or anything, but that makes sense. You would have traveled to a location before anyone could see you traveling to it. Kind of like you get hit with a bullet before you hear it (in some sense you could die not hearing the gun that killed you go off :o)
I don't think you would be able to see yourself landing though, that just sounds really really creepy and thus, it is not true.;)

[Commando Nukem]

If you ask me, the speed of light is just that.. a speed. And maybe someday we will be capable of going faster than that speed. So then.. you'd just travel faster than light, not go back in time or something.

I'm guessing if you travel faster than light across long distances and - say - arrived on some colonized planet, after landing (dunno how long) you would see a ship in the sky landing on said planet.. It'd be your ship! The light would finally be arriving at your spot.

Or maybe I'm horribly mistaken :p

You're mistakening distance with visible light. From a third party they might see some strange distorion, but you would not witness YOURSELF doing anything, or any form of visible light formation. Since you are at the "eye of the storm" when we're talking about the light.

You would arrive at the same time as leaving, but to 3rd party viewers viewing from distances, you might appear to freeze, or be in multiple spots at once. This is merely because of how insanely fast you're going.


Seriously, going around lightspeed is far easier then going TO lightspeed.

[warlordQ]

Well according to Einstein if you could break light speed, you would indeed travel backwards in time, but much more advanced ideas have been developed about the nature of space/time since the Theory of Relativity.

According to Einstein in special relativity nothing can go faster than the speed of light because gamma diverges.. Einsteins equation is basically E=gamma*m*c^2, but when mass is at rest then gamma=1 so basically it can be written as E=m*c^2..

In regards to changing the remote co-ordinate speed of light c..
With general relativity, the vacuum speed of light is locally invariant and so the remote co-ordinate speed of light is not always c, and in some cases it is greater than c.. because of this, there are situations in general relativity where objects may travel faster than c..

This video here discuses tensors equations in Einsteins theory of relativity..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kcL9H8r9Qw

heres a video in regards to discussing paradoxes with relative simultaneity..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkpBoAMCVZs

[Dave-ros]

And what's gamma in the equation? Is it related to 1/c^2? (I vaguely remember that it is in some way!)

[Mr.Fibbles]

All I know about E=mc^2 is that I have the kinetic energy of several nuclear bombs; and that is all that matters.

[Dave-ros]

So if they don't do what you want, you'll explode? That'll teach 'em :flame:

[wayskobfssae]

The U.N. will be coming over shortly to confiscate a WMD commonly known as Mr. Fibbles.

[Dave-ros]

Hang on -- kinetic energy? Mr.F, are you saying you're moving like a nuclear bomb? Are you by some chance sitting astride one as it plunges towards Russia, waving your cowboy hat and letting out a rebel yell? :o

[Mr.Fibbles]

E=mc^2
I am the equivalent of a 1,500 Megaton Nuclear Warhead. I might have confused some things, but I know that the amount of energy in me (standing still, I think) is the same as upwards of 160 Nuclear explosions. That is just freaking cool.
If only we could harness that energy within us and use it/release it.


EDIT: It is potential energy, that is what it is. Not Kinetic energy. If it was Kinetic, well, we would all be in trouble.

[Dave-ros]

By disintegrating convicts??? :eek:

I could write something sappy here about how we've all got huge amounts of potential inside us that we can harness if we put our minds to it... nah :p

[Mr.Fibbles]

We could also potentially (no pun intended) travel at incredible speeds. Perhaps even get close to the speed of light.

[wayskobfssae]

Or we can wait for our robots to figure it out, and hope the virtual dreamworld they give us while our bodies are fueling their power plants is something enjoyable. :D

[Mr.Fibbles]

That works too, but what if someone were to be born into this dream world? What would happen then? Oh the adventures they would have. . .

At any rate, back to the main topic, this is interesting news, but isn't applicable science as of yet.

[warlordQ]

And what's gamma in the equation? Is it related to 1/c^2? (I vaguely remember that it is in some way!)

click here:
http://www2.slac.stanford.edu/vvc/theory/relativity.html

[Dave-ros]

Ah yes, that was it -- so basically, if speed = speed of light (v = c), you end up with a "division by zero" and the Universe explodes :p

[warlordQ]

This video explains why we use gamma in our equations ( explanation starts from 16 seconds into the video :p ), and tensor equations..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kcL9H8r9Qw

Actually the gamma factor came from time derivative of the 4 vector velocities being translated into a coordinate time derivative with respect to your lab frame.. so in another words it actually came from time dilation..

This implies that to move something which has mass, it would take an infinite amount of energy to move it all the way up to the speed of light..

Now in the case of photons which have no mass, it gets treated as a wavelength, thus E=pc ( momentum * speed of light ) is used for photons..

and thus, frequecy = c / wavelength :p ..

[Dave-ros]

Er................................................ just what I was gonna say :o

You say "tensor", my eyes glaze over... they do my head in :insomnia:

[Buzzer]

Speed of light can't be broken. It breaks YOU!

In Soviet Russia, the speed of light breaks you!

Sorry i just had to :p

[warlordQ]

I found some videos that can probably explain things a little better.. :) well i hope so, anyway...

An understanding of the first video is required to understand the second video..

heres the first video ( discussions of simultaneity in regards to frame reference ):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wteiuxyqtoM

The famous train paradox.. again it discusses effects of time dilation and simultaneity in regards to frame references.. if you can understand the train paradox, you can understand the theory of special relativity..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSRIyDfo_mY&mode=related&search=

Now for the maths behind video 2.. this video here discusses the mathematics of length contractions and time dilations using Lorentz Transformations..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaicwN1gdk4&mode=related&search=

You say "tensor", my eyes glaze over... they do my head in :insomnia:

Hahahaha... LOL :)

this video here discusses the mathematics of tensors...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbDLfQjVn6o

EDIT:
--------------
Youtubes website is undergoing maintenance... need to wait awhile before you can view the videos..

[warlordQ]

In my last post while discussing the maths behind length contractions and time dilations using the Lorentz Transformations.. heres two videos on the discussion of the Lorentz Transformations..

part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYVmUzac44Q&mode=related&search=

part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEy7OQiHmtE&mode=related&search=

[oak man]

.........
Free cookie for the first one who gets it..

Hrm... Free cookie you say? I'm on it!

Man that's awesome! I'd like to be somewhere before I get there! Wait... Then I won't know where I am.. Here. There. EVERY WHERE!!
^^^
!now thats multitasking!

[hell-angel]

You're mistakening distance with visible light. From a third party they might see some strange distorion, but you would not witness YOURSELF doing anything, or any form of visible light formation. Since you are at the "eye of the storm" when we're talking about the light.

You would arrive at the same time as leaving, but to 3rd party viewers viewing from distances, you might appear to freeze, or be in multiple spots at once. This is merely because of how insanely fast you're going.


Seriously, going around lightspeed is far easier then going TO lightspeed.

Not quite true I guess.
Providing you can travel fast then the speed of light. what a person behind you sees is seeing you leave probably like how you see a ship leaving to warp in Star Trek (sorry, best description I could thing of)
The person in front sees you coming though because you hit the light particles and thus accelerating them beyond there own speed (which of course quickly slow down again of course).

Kind of like with a bullet:
normaly it flies at say 1200 KPh
When shooting from car driving at 80 they fly at 1280 Kph (more of less)

The same with you and light particles, even though you don't shoot them they bounce of with your speed + their own "bounce" speed.

In theorie of course :)

[Commando Nukem]

Not quite true I guess.
Providing you can travel fast then the speed of light. what a person behind you sees is seeing you leave probably like how you see a ship leaving to warp in Star Trek (sorry, best description I could thing of)
The person in front sees you coming though because you hit the light particles and thus accelerating them beyond there own speed (which of course quickly slow down again of course).

Kind of like with a bullet:
normaly it flies at say 1200 KPh
When shooting from car driving at 80 they fly at 1280 Kph (more of less)

The same with you and light particles, even though you don't shoot them they bounce of with your speed + their own "bounce" speed.

In theorie of course :)

You will not see "light particles" displacing. You will only see a visible distortion, an odd freeze as they pass through the distortion.

I still say Anti Gravity = Win.

[BillyD]

Kind of like with a bullet:
normaly it flies at say 1200 KPh
When shooting from car driving at 80 they fly at 1280 Kph (more of less)

The same with you and light particles, even though you don't shoot them they bounce of with your speed + their own "bounce" speed.

In theorie of course :)
Actually, light doesn't work that way. Let's say you measured the speed of photons coming from the head lights of a car while you and the car are stationary with respect to each other. You would measure a speed c, which is 300,000 km/s. Now, if you measured the speed of the photons from the head lights while the car was driving towards you at 100 km/s (I know, kind of fast for a car), you may expect to measure 300,100 km/s, but in fact you would only measure 300,000 km/sec. Even if the car were moving at 150,000 km/sec, or 200,000 km/sec, or 299,999 km/sec, the speed of the photons you measure will always be 300,000 km/sec.

[hell-angel]

Actually, light doesn't work that way. Let's say you measured the speed of photons coming from the head lights of a car while you and the car are stationary with respect to each other. You would measure a speed c, which is 300,000 km/s. Now, if you measured the speed of the photons from the head lights while the car was driving towards you at 100 km/s (I know, kind of fast for a car), you may expect to measure 300,100 km/s, but in fact you would only measure 300,000 km/sec. Even if the car were moving at 150,000 km/sec, or 200,000 km/sec, or 299,999 km/sec, the speed of the photons you measure will always be 300,000 km/sec.

Are you sure? I guess that is why they think that 300,000 kps is the maximum speed.
Still, I doubt it would be that way when you travel at 150,000 kps, probably the protons would slow down tremendously because of collisions with other protons.
Just a theory of course :)

[Dave-ros]

I think it's just that the speed of light doesn't change, but the frequency of it does, hence redshift and blueshift -- it's like the Doppler effect, or, like a spring being stretched or squashed ;)

[BillyD]

Are you sure? I guess that is why they think that 300,000 kps is the maximum speed.
Still, I doubt it would be that way when you travel at 150,000 kps, probably the protons would slow down tremendously because of collisions with other protons.
Just a theory of course :)
Absolutely sure. Back in the 19th century scientists were trying to detect a "luminiferous aether", esentially what they theoried the medium that light traveled was. I think they figured if they could detect this aether they would have an absolute reference point to which to measure the movement of everything in the universe. To detetct it a couple of scienctists measured the speed of light coming from the sun at various times of the year (when the earth was moving towards the sun or away). They figured that when we were traveling towards the speed of the light would be faster, and when traveling away it would be slower. Instead, they found that no matter the time of year they measured the speed it was always constant.

I'm assuming that by protons you mean photons ("particles" of light)? Photons don't work that way. They don't interact with each other like billiard balls. Photon-photon interaction only occurs through their wave like nature (interference... either construcive ot destructive - check this out: http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/interference/doubleslit/index.html ).

And Dave-Ros is correct - when traveling towards light it will blue shift, and when traveling away it will red shift. (You have to be going significantly fast to be able to detect it.) Travel towards our sun fast enough and it will appear blue - of course, watch out for any UV and X-rays from the sun that have blue shifted into X-rays and gamma-rays, as well ;)

[BillyD]

Oh, and current theory (as far as I know it) states that no matter can exceed the speed the light. In relativity, the kinetic energy of a moving object is given by this equation. (http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/relativ/imgrel/rke2.gif) You can see that as velocity begins to approach the speed of light, the kinetic energy will increase and approach infinity. So if you were traveling at the speed of light your relativistic kinetic energy (that is - to someone observing you) would be infinity. I've heard of various claims to ways to break the speed of light, but this was a while back and I haven't heard of them again recently so I'm guessing they didn't get very far :p

[hell-angel]

Absolutely sure. Back in the 19th century scientists were trying to detect a "luminiferous aether", esentially what they theoried the medium that light traveled was. I think they figured if they could detect this aether they would have an absolute reference point to which to measure the movement of everything in the universe. To detetct it a couple of scienctists measured the speed of light coming from the sun at various times of the year (when the earth was moving towards the sun or away). They figured that when we were traveling towards the speed of the light would be faster, and when traveling away it would be slower. Instead, they found that no matter the time of year they measured the speed it was always constant.

That is really weird. One would assume that although the speed of light doesn't change. The measured speed would. That would make sense in the end anyway.

I'm assuming that by protons you mean photons ("particles" of light)? Photons don't work that way. They don't interact with each other like billiard balls. Photon-photon interaction only occurs through their wave like nature (interference... either construcive ot destructive - check this out: http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/interference/doubleslit/index.html ).

And Dave-Ros is correct - when traveling towards light it will blue shift, and when traveling away it will red shift. (You have to be going significantly fast to be able to detect it.) Travel towards our sun fast enough and it will appear blue - of course, watch out for any UV and X-rays from the sun that have blue shifted into X-rays and gamma-rays, as well ;)

Yeah, I meant photons, stupid typo. :(

Thanks for the explanation though, it has been a while since my last physics lessons ;)

[Z`en]

Unfortunately I have a sad feeling if this technology is ever actually created, the first thing it's going to be used for is bombs.. and not people :(

*insert Isaac Asimov short story quote here
"Silly asses."