http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html?in_article_id=475587&in_page_id=1965

From the link above:

It was supposed to be the one speed limit you cannot break.


But scientists claim to have demonstrated there is the possibility of travel faster than the speed of light.


This isn't supposed to be, but I'm not sure they've reached the correct conclusion. Anyone?

The tunneling is a pure quantum mechanical effect. So it does not mean that we can have a space ship traveling at the speed of light.

So you think it's just highlighting the incongruence between QM and GR?

I would say so. Tunneling is (as far as I remember) an effect which works over short distance ranges. It is known to be the mechanism behind nuclear fusion, were say protons with equal charge will fuse if they are brought close enough together. This is what happens in the core of the sun. If they are squezed close enough together, they will tunnel through the energy barrier between them and fuse, rather than repel.

I will see if there are more details somewhere on this experiment, the article in your link is a bit short. This could be the case, where some interpretation of the results comes into the equation. They may be a bit enthusiastic....

This is an illusion caused by averaging the pulse widths of the input and output to pinpoint the pulse's location. The output pulse width is much less than the input pulse width and the leading edge of the output pulse trails the leading edge of the input pulse exactly as it should. It is as if the tunnel was open for a short burst then closed before the input could complete.

I Blogged it here (http://photontheory.com/ftl.html)

I guess it's in the news today. Here's a link to another article. Still not sure if they're overly enthusiastic.

http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-160112.html

It must be able to be repeated by other scientists and until those repeats are concluded we can't really know for certain. Just like the cold fusion that was developed but found out to be a fraud.

Carefully re-read what Einstein said.
(I guess learn German, while you're at it.)

The speed of light is what most humans, at this particular blink in their long manipulated history, agree to be the fastest in the universe. I would be extremely surprised if this 'fact' is objectively true.

Vern---one must be careful about these things. There's always the question (as I recall) about phase velocity and group velocity of a wave packet. While an individual mode can have a phase velocity greater than the speed of light within the packet, the packet itself is bound by the speed of light.

The paper in question has no data at all so; although it asserts that it has measured superluminal velocities, it offers nothing to back that up. It also has very little in the way of experimental detail, so we can't determine with certainty what they are measuring, making it very difficult to evaluate their claims.

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

Vern---one must be careful about these things.
Yes; I know. I'm not sure this is the same effect that I saw.

the photon has no mass

the post has no relevance

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

In that article, the results are dismissed. So nothing here then.

the photon has no mass

you are light years ahead of some of the posters in this forum :)

if light is made to go faster than c, is it contradicting the light speed barrier? since photons are massless? as far as i know the light speed barrier only applies to things with mass, which is why photons can travel at c

Light can't escape a black hole so that means something is slowing it down! I would say yes it is possible.