Comments on: Finally starting to get evidence that contradicts relativity http://blog.quodlibetor.com/2007/08/24/finally-starting-to-get-evidence-that-contradicts-relativity/ ain't that the truth Tue, 06 Jan 2009 03:37:35 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7 hourly 1 By: quodlibetor http://blog.quodlibetor.com/2007/08/24/finally-starting-to-get-evidence-that-contradicts-relativity/comment-page-1/#comment-1531 quodlibetor Thu, 04 Oct 2007 23:29:36 +0000 http://blog.quodlibetor.com/?p=77#comment-1531 OK, reading that article you link to gives me a (slightly) better idea of what the train analogy was like at the end of the NS article, but i'm not sure that it's 100% applicable. It seems like the Scientists who did the photon tunneling experiment managed to increase the distance travelled by every part of the wave by merely diverting it through a prism and convincing it to act more quantum mechanically than relativistically. It Does seem like there was a trade-off though, significant signal-quality reduction for the increase in speed. Great enough that they couldn't get more than a meter of 'superluminal' transit before they lost everything. And, frankly, the article doesn't mention the really important thing: if the guys thought that they would be able to transfer information in this manner. If they suggested that their next experiment would aim to get information traveling ftl, even just morse code, well then: hey. But they didn't, and now i know that the article didn't even give me enough information to be able to determine if they even have evidence for having done what they claim to have done. But what about that other one, huh? <em>That's</em> a big deal. OK, reading that article you link to gives me a (slightly) better idea of what the train analogy was like at the end of the NS article, but i’m not sure that it’s 100% applicable. It seems like the Scientists who did the photon tunneling experiment managed to increase the distance travelled by every part of the wave by merely diverting it through a prism and convincing it to act more quantum mechanically than relativistically.

It Does seem like there was a trade-off though, significant signal-quality reduction for the increase in speed. Great enough that they couldn’t get more than a meter of ’superluminal’ transit before they lost everything. And, frankly, the article doesn’t mention the really important thing: if the guys thought that they would be able to transfer information in this manner. If they suggested that their next experiment would aim to get information traveling ftl, even just morse code, well then: hey.

But they didn’t, and now i know that the article didn’t even give me enough information to be able to determine if they even have evidence for having done what they claim to have done.

But what about that other one, huh? That’s a big deal.

]]> By: Ponder Stibbons http://blog.quodlibetor.com/2007/08/24/finally-starting-to-get-evidence-that-contradicts-relativity/comment-page-1/#comment-1383 Ponder Stibbons Wed, 03 Oct 2007 07:34:31 +0000 http://blog.quodlibetor.com/?p=77#comment-1383 Sorry to burst your bubble, but the experiment reported in the New Scientist does not violate special relativity. It's been known for more than 20 years now that the group velocity of a wave can be faster than its phase velocity. (Incidentally, the converse can also happen.) But in none of these experiments is the signal velocity more than c, so special relativity remains unviolated. A good explanation of the distinctions between group velocity, phase velocity and signal velocity can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/2snb6r Sorry to burst your bubble, but the experiment reported in the New Scientist does not violate special relativity. It’s been known for more than 20 years now that the group velocity of a wave can be faster than its phase velocity. (Incidentally, the converse can also happen.) But in none of these experiments is the signal velocity more than c, so special relativity remains unviolated. A good explanation of the distinctions between group velocity, phase velocity and signal velocity can be found here:
http://tinyurl.com/2snb6r

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