Thursday, August 16, 2007

Traveling faster than the speed of light??

According to Einstein's special theory of relativity, it would require an infinite
amount of energy to propel an object at more than 299,792,458 metres per second (speed of light).

However, Dr Gunter Nimtz and Dr Alfons Stahlhofen, of the University of Koblenz, claim to have forced light to overcome its own speed limit using the phenomenon of quantum tunnelling. Their experiments focused on the travel of microwave photons - energetic packets of light - through two prisms. When the prisms were moved apart, most photons reflected off the first prism they encountered and were picked up by a detector. But a few appeared to "tunnel" through a gap separating them as if the prisms were still held together. Although these photons had travelled a longer distance, they arrived at their detector at the same time as the reflected photons. This suggests the transit between the two prisms was faster than the speed of light.

Dr Nimtz told New Scientist magazine: "For the time being, this is the only violation of special relativity that I know of."


I still have my doubts about this. Science experiments are not always accurate.
Travelling faster than light, in theory, could turn back time. I guess it would be nice to travel back in time to uncover all the mysteries in the world. How did Egyptians build pyramids? How did dinosaurs become extinct? By the way, we'll also need some Timecops like Jean-Claude Van Damme so no one can change the past. :P


Source:
Telegraph
new.com.au
ZDnet

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