The speed of light is not the fastest.

[kikinho]

The speed of light is not the fastest speed that exist. I've heard that a man made an experiment with microwave light and the speed of light started to increase a bit. My teacher sad me that there's one thing that is wrong in theory of Einstein. This thing is that Einstein sad that light is the fastest speed. Not only my teacher sad to me but I saw in Internet saying that exist speed faster than light. I think that was telling about using wormholes as teletransport and that the Universe can't be this size if the fastest speed is light, even though the Big Bang was billions years ago.
I believe that it's true and that exist speed faster than light. Do you believe this?

And one more thing. Although Einstein was a genius, I think that some theories are wrong. Genius people sometimes have some wrong theories. Any human do wrong things, and a for genius it's not different.

[Asaf]

Physical theory's try to describe an aproximation of reality. Non of them describes us the absolute behaivior of the universe. So if theory have issues that don't reflect on reality it's just that.

[Guest]

It's just that... But it would mean that scientists have to find a new theory that agrees with the new fact.

[Guest]

you say : "The speed of light is not the fastest speed that exist".

LoL

you say : "I believe that it's true and that exist speed faster than light. "

LoL LoL



The speed of light can change, the light can use wormholes, but nothing can travel speeder than light.
And microwave light, is the light itself

[kikinho]

And what about the man that increased the speed of light ( microwave light ) using an equipment?

[eburacum45]

Well you would have to tell us which experiment you are talking about.
There are perhaps three ways that light can be made to exceed light speed;
one is by using superluminal wave trains, where the group velocity exceeds c; however the real velocity, the phase velocity of the light does not exceed c ; this is a clever conjouring trick, but cannot transmit information faster than light.

The other two techniques involve quantum effects; quantum tunneling allows a photon to jumpthrough a solid barrier at faster than light speed; but it cannot carry usable information apparently because of uncertainty. This is a very similar technique to quantum teleportation, which is also subject to the uncertainty principle, and neither technique can transit usable information faster than light according to current theories.

There is one technique which might work; in the Casimir experiment, a small volume of space is created with negative energy; this space may be radically different to ordinary vaccuum, and the speed of light in this minute space may be faster than c; but I dont think it has been tested, yet, and it would be difficult to see an application for this phenomenon if true.

[Matt McIrvin]

Here is a relevant part of the Usenet Physics FAQ:

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SpeedOfLight/FTL.html

There are various things (such as, say, the position of a rotating searchlight beam) that can go faster than light without violating relativity. What these things have in common is that none of them are associated with the transmission of any energy, matter or information. The experiments you may have heard about electromagnetic waves going faster than light are typically of this variety: a wave appears to go faster than light, but the faster-than-light transmission cannot actually be used for communication. Some workers have occasionally claimed the contrary but were generally confused.

And there are very speculative theoretical end-runs involving wormholes and such...

[jlf]

everything from infrared to ultraviolet including the area of the spectrum we associate with light travels at 186000 miles per second, in a vacum.

As previously stated, there are instances where that is exceeded.

However, in a non vacum enviroment, the speed of light is not 186000 miles per second. It is fractionately slower. Not that it matters to us, the fraction of difference is not detectable to the human eye.

Now the only thing that is naturally occuring that is faster than the speed of light that i am aware of, is a mother's ability to sense a child doing something wrong and be there at the instant of time as the act takes place.

[wcomer]

Consider that the quantum vacuum is itself a medium. As I understand it, in the absense of the quantum fluctuations the speed of light is slightly larger. In which case, the speed of light is higher between closesly spaced conducting plates due to the Casimir effect blocking some of the quantum fluctuations.

[jlf]

YOu still havent explained the fact that mother's break the laws of physics by being at the exact place at the exact time that a child does something wrong. This in and of itself is faster than the speed of light.

As for the speed of light, light travels slower thru mediums such as water.

[Bob Hegwood]

You know, they used to say that NOTHING could travel faster than the
Sound Barrier too. I'm waiting for more information...

Saw a Science Channel program on this very topic, and was presented with
some kind of particles which spin in opposite directions to each other.

Bear with me here, I am definitely a NON-Scientist... However, the program
showed that when a Proton was spinning in a certain direction, its anti-proton
mate was always spinning in the opposite direction. If the original particle
had its spin changed somehow, then the anti-particle had its spin changed
instantaneously. This relationship held true, was described as being
instantaneous, even at the galaxy and universe level. If this is true,
then SOMETHING travels faster than light does it not?

Sorry I can't elaborate on the program in intelligable language, because
a lot of the terminology was lost on me.

Did anyone else see what I saw here? Perhaps you could elaborate for us
Brain-Dead types?

Thanks, Bob

[Matt McIrvin]

You know, they used to say that NOTHING could travel faster than the Sound Barrier too. I'm waiting for more information...

Actually, nobody ever said this; the sound barrier was known to be an engineering problem specific to airplanes, not an absolute physical limit. Rifle bullets were well-known to travel faster than the speed of sound before airplanes did. I'm pretty sure that subsonic aircraft had traveled faster than sound too-- just not intentionally, and not remaining intact afterwards.

Saw a Science Channel program on this very topic, and was presented with some kind of particles which spin in opposite directions to each other.

Bear with me here, I am definitely a NON-Scientist... However, the program showed that when a Proton was spinning in a certain direction, its anti-proton mate was always spinning in the opposite direction. If the original particle had its spin changed somehow, then the anti-particle had its spin changed instantaneously. This relationship held true, was described as being instantaneous, even at the galaxy and universe level. If this is true, then SOMETHING travels faster than light does it not?

They're talking about Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen correlations and the Bell inequality. It's a subtle issue whose interpretation depends in part on your interpretation of quantum mechanics. But whether or not you interpret it as something traveling faster than light, I can say this: the effect is often misunderstood as something you could actually use to communicate faster than light; it's not. It turns out that whenever this sort of thing happens, the changes in the measured spin component are completely uncontrollable, so that all that you can "transmit faster than light" this way is random noise, and you can't even tell that the correlations existed without comparing notes later by an ordinary channel. (However, nonlocally correlated random noise might itself be useful: this is part of the mechanism of quantum cryptography.)

[Bob Hegwood]

They're talking about Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen correlations and the Bell inequality.

Okay, like I said, I am definitely NOT a scientist. Thanks for your attempt
to explain the unexplainable.

Take care, Bob

[eburacum]

[League of Gentlemen] This is a non-local phenomenon for non-local people...[/League of Gentlemen]

[Guest]

They're talking about Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen correlations and the Bell inequality.

Okay, like I said, I am definitely NOT a scientist. Thanks for your attempt
to explain the unexplainable

Here's an analogy that might help:
Sometime in the future, when we have a colony in orbit around Alpha Cen, a bunch of friendly aliens arrive and sell us a "faster-than-light" radio. One box is at Alpha Cen and one is on Earth, and the aliens tell us that the boxes communicate with each other instantaneously across that distance.
When we turn either of the boxes on, it just emits random noise. But if both boxes are turned on at the same time, they simultaneously emit the same random noise - they somehow synchronize immediately with each other across 4.3 light years.
But we can't use that instantaneous transmission to signal to each other - there's no way, even in principle, that we can tell at the time if our box is emitting just plain random noise, or random noise correlated with the other box. I can jiggle the on/off switch furiously on Earth, and the Alpha Cen colonists will never notice the difference. The only way we can even check that the magical correlation of signals is occurring is by swapping time-stamped recordings with each other, which we have to send at light-speed or slower.
The instantaneous correlation of particle spins across huge distances behaves the same way ... we know it happens, and we can even demonstate after the event that it has occurred, but there's apparently no way we can exploit it in real time as a means of instantaneous communication.

Grant

[Bob Hegwood]

The instantaneous correlation of particle spins across huge distances behaves the same way ... we know it happens, and we can even demonstate after the event that it has occurred, but there's apparently no way we can exploit it in real time as a means of instantaneous communication.

Thanks VERY much for the explanation, Grant. Whether we can use this for
something doesn't really matter to me at this point. The fact is, however,
that SOMETHING is travelling faster than the speed of light. Yes?

Take care, Bob

[t00fri]

The instantaneous correlation of particle spins across huge distances behaves the same way ... we know it happens, and we can even demonstate after the event that it has occurred, but there's apparently no way we can exploit it in real time as a means of instantaneous communication.

Thanks VERY much for the explanation, Grant. Whether we can use this for
something doesn't really matter to me at this point. The fact is, however,
that SOMETHING is travelling faster than the speed of light. Yes?

Take care, Bob

Bob,

what really matters in such considerations is "holy symmetry" including Einstein's relativity and what physicists call causality. The latter is crucial, to forbit transport of any /information/ at speeds faster than that of light. Causality means in simple terms that "reactions" take place later than corresponding "actions", no matter what the frame of reference is...

Bye Fridger

PS:
The speed of light (i.e. of the "photon") is actually only special, since the photon is the only known particle, the mass of which is truly zero. If there was another massles (& neutral) particle in nature, it also would travel with the same /maximal/ speed (in vacuum). Before we learned recently that neutrinos have a small nonvanishing mass, neutrinos were also considered to travel at maximum speed.

[Cham]

Also, the gravitons, if they really exists, should travel at the speed of light.

And the gluons are massless and travel at the speed of light. But they are linked together and to all the massive quarks, so they don't go far away.

[t00fri]

Also, the gravitons, if they really exists, should travel at the speed of light.

And the gluons are massless and travel at the speed of light. But they are linked together and to all the massive quarks, so they don't go far away.

Right Cham, the gravitons (the quanta of gravity) are good further candidates. But quantum gravity is still "in the fog" so I left them out for the moment.

You mentioned already, why gluons are not relevant.

Unlike gravitons and photons, they are not neutral: they carry a so-called "color" charge, where "color" is the microscopic force responsible for the strong interactions.
Gluons are indeed massless, but due to their color charge, they cannot travel freely at distances larger than the typical nuclear distance of 1 fermi = 10^(-15) meter!

They are "confined" within protons, neutrons etc.

Bye Fridger

[Bob Hegwood]

The speed of light (i.e. of the "photon") is actually only special, since the photon is the only known particle, the mass of which is truly zero.

Fridger,

If the photon truly has no mass, then I really AM confused here... How is it that
Solar Sails work then? Being Brain-Dead, I simply thought that photons
"pushed" against the material to get it to move. If they don't have any mass,
then how do they "push" on the sails?

Sorry... Just curious as always.

Thanks, Bob