Light ssssppppeeeeeedddddd................SMASHED

[Tony H2o]

Plato, Boris, Crisp

Hi guys,

Brandon posted this up in the Aliens and ET forum and I thought it was very interesting. Hope he doesn't mind me hijacking it

I thought some of you might find this interesting. After years of the scientific community saying that the speed of light can never be broken under any circumstances, it appears as though it can. Two independent labs are claiming they have shattered the light barrier, one by 25%, but the other by an unbelievable 300 times! Here's the article:
www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/2000/06/04/stifgnusa01007.html


Or maybe you'd like to see another?
www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/05/30/MN26514.DTL[/URL ]


We've always been told that there's no way that aliens could ever come here because our current theories wouldn' t allow it. Well, maybe its time to re-evaluate our current theories. Granted, this discovery may have no application to interstellar travel, but after hearing all of my life about how this limit was a FACT and could NEVER be broken, it makes me wonder what else they're wrong about.

It started me thinking (I know a rare event ) well it got me to thinking that we can transmit information and receive information using light. If we can then accelerate this as per what these guys are doing we could send a signal containing specific information to the nearest star in about 25 days. Also in radio astronomy we scan band widths, frequencies etc, for possible signals. It could be a case that any advanced race would be using accelerated light transmissions for sending messages also. Should we be looking at how to receive the accelerated light signal and slow it down from these experiments to scan a completely new area of possible signals???

Anyone got any idea on how these things could pan out in reality?

Allcare

Tony H2o




[This message has been edited by Tony H2o (edited June 06, 2000).]

 

[Tony H2o]

This proved interesting.

Courtesy of Plato.

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

11. Quantum Tunnelling
Quantum Tunnelling is the quantum mechanical effect which permits a particle to escape through a barrier when it does not have enough energy to do so classically. You can do a calculation of the time it takes a particle to tunnel through. The answer you get can come out less than the time it takes light to cover the distance at speed c. Does this provide a means of FTL communication?
ref:T. E. Hartman, J. Appl. Phys. 33, 3427 (1962)

The answer must surely be "No!" otherwise our understanding of QED is very suspect. Yet a group of physicists have performed experiments which seem to suggest that FTL communication by quantum tunneling is possible. They claim to have transmitted Mozart's 40th Symphony through a barrier 11.4cm wide at a speed of 4.7c. Their interpretation is, of course, very controversial. Most physicists say this is a quantum effect where no information can actually be passed at FTL speeds because of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. If the effect is real it is difficult to see why it should not be possible to transmit signals into the past by placing the apparatus in a fast moving frame of reference.
ref:
W. Heitmann and G. Nimtz, Phys Lett A196, 154 (1994);
A. Enders and G. Nimtz, Phys Rev E48, 632 (1993)

Terence Tao has pointed out that apparent FTL transmission of an audio signal over such a short distance is not very impressive. The signal takes less than 0.4ns to travel the 11.4cm at light speed, but it is quite easy to anticipate an audio signal ahead of time by up to 1000ns simply by extrapolating the signal waveform. Although this is not what is being done in the above experiments it does illustrate that they will have to use a much higher frequency random signal or transmit over much larger distances if they are to convincingly demonstrate FTL information transfer.

The likely conclusion is that there is no real FTL communication taking place and that the effect is another manifestation of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.

 

[Plato]

Tony, you are truly remarkable I was just finding some time to respond to this message when you already found the answer.

May be I can give some more explanation about quantum tunneling. A mind boggeling effect that directly follows from the fundamental wave nature of elementary particles.
The wave funciton that describes a particle is actually a complex function, this means it has a real part and a complex part (complex numbers in mathematics are numbers that, if you multiply them by themselves give negative answers e.g. i*i = -1)
Since we live in a world with only real numbered values as observables (luckyly for us) it must follow that the wave functions themselves aren't what is physically observed.
What is observed are the amplitudes of the wavefunction. A complex number can take the general form : R*e^{i*\theta}. The Greek letter \theta (when is this going to become a url standard Dave ?) is called the phase and the real part R is called the amplitude.
What we observe is the R-part.

Now what happens when a wave hits a potential 'wall' with a magnitude smaller then infinity (which is everything we know in nature since there is actually no such thing as a something with infinite potential energy) the wave doesn't stop but extinguishes exponentially. This means that its amplitude drops like a function e^{-ax} with 'a' a constant that has something to do with the height of the wall. This means however that behind the wall some small residual wave still exists but with a supstancially smaller amplitude. What is the physical translation of this mombojumbo ?
Since the amplitude is the physical observable (the square of the amplitude actually represents the chance of finding the particle there) it means that there is still a chance of finding the particle behind the wall (greatly reduced of course).

Now, why is there no information transfer at speeds larger then c according to quantum mechanics. This has to do with superposition of quantum waves. A meaningfull information package is actually a superposition of waves, the tunneling however will not be the same for every single subwave of the package. Supposing we are talking about photons this would mean that some photons will jump faster then others, the fast ones will go faster then the lightspeed while the slow ones will go slower. The average, this means the package itself will therefor still be transferred at lightspeed.

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I err, therefore I exist !

 

[Tony H2o]

Plato,

Thankyou for the detailed definition. I followed most of what you described by trying to visualise it but found it difficult to fully comprehend in the 10mins I spent there.

Definitly interesting but for a visual person like myself somewhat hard to grasp.

Thanks again

Tony H2o

PS Say what do you do? Lecture this stuff? Student? Or is it just a hobby?

 

[Plato]

Tony,

Definitly interesting but for a visual person like myself somewhat hard to grasp.

don't think you are alone. The problem is we simply can't imagine it. This has been a serieus problem in the past and was reason for many scientist to not accept quantum mechanics. In fact Boris has this very problem. However we must accept that some things can be true but are not able to be fully grasped at the same time. I think you of all persons will agree on this, Tony.

To answer your question : I used to study this stuff but when I graduated my life took a different turn. Now I do it as a hobby whenever I find a window of time.

------------------
I err, therefore I exist !

 

[Tony H2o]

Originally posted by Plato:
Tony,

don't think you are alone. The problem is we simply can't imagine it. This has been a serieus problem in the past and was reason for many scientist to not accept quantum mechanics. In fact Boris has this very problem. However we must accept that some things can be true but are not able to be fully grasped at the same time. I think you of all persons will agree on this, Tony.

Yeah I hear what your saying Plato, I as a believer can visualise and understand a lot of things from a spiritual perspective that many others don't even grasp.

I've been reading through your's, Boris's and Crisps discussions on Determinism v's Indeterminism. Mind bending stuff to try and keep up with let alone think about joining in on. Crisps last comment on cause of decay of a nucleus I found profoundly interesting as it parralles to a spiritual concept. That being we were created as eternal beings to commune with God and that via the fall or sin death and decay entered into our system of existence. Maybe that's the answer he's after? But then again its probably not scientific enough

Ain't it funny how the same concepts flow through all that we know? like I said in a previous post it all goes to confirm to me the greatness of design. A complexity of design that we with our technology can not reverse engineer, let alone completely grasp with a TOE like Boris postulating. Perhaps if I have some more time I will bring it up in that post. It will be interesting to gauge everyones reactions

To answer your question : I used to study this stuff but when I graduated my life took a different turn. Now I do it as a hobby whenever I find a window of time.

"Window of time" I wonder what Boris would say about that? So its now someting of a hobby. Wow heavy hobby my hobbies are much less brain taxing and are more demanding on the physical fitness side of things. Perhaps one day I'll exercise the grey matter a little more.

Till next time "relitivly speaking"

Allcare

Tony

Tony

[/B][/QUOTE]

 

[Plato]

Hi Tony,

Crisps last comment on cause of decay of a nucleus I found profoundly interesting as it parralles to a spiritual concept. That being we were created as eternal beings to commune with God and that via the fall or sin death and decay entered into our system of existence. Maybe that's the answer he's after? But then again its probably not scientific enough

Unfortunatly it isn't, nice try though
Did you ever wonder why there are so many different religions in this world ? You would think that since there is only one god there can only be one religion ?
I like to make the analogy with languages, there are over 6000 different languages on our planet (although many will disappear in the coming century) why is this when we all talk about the same things ultimatly ?
There is however no fundamental reason why we call something a table and an other thing a stool. If we already have this freedom in the things we can see, how about the freedom we have in the things we can't see !
There is enough freedom for every single human on this planet to have his very own special kind of religion ! This means however that we shouldn't put to much weight on the specific details of each religion, they are after all simply efforts of us trying to grasp the ingraspable...

Science is also a language and therefor subject to the flaws and confusions that is inherit of any language. People have tried to compare science with religion and put it on the same level.
This is however a very difficult task to do, when comparing languages with each other one needs some tool to do this. We need some kind of metalanguage to be able to talk about other languages and their valor compared to each other.
A proposed tool would be logic, but this has been shown not to be a unified language also, there are many different kinds of logic and according to the kind you choose, your conclusions about languages will be different. So now we need a meta-meta-language in order to judge the correct logic that we are going to use.
You see what I'm going to ? Is there going to be an end to meta's ? If there isn't then we are doomed to keep on talking in different languages and be confused about our true intentions. If there is, then what will be the consequence of it ? No more religions ? No more science ? Or something in between ?

------------------
I err, therefore I exist !

 

[Tiassa]

I'll stick my nose in here because I recently read an anonymous article concerning the slowing of lightspeed inside a Bose-Einstein Condensate.

from the following website (American Institute of Physics): http://www.aip.org/enews/physnews/2000/split/pnu472-1.htm

Physics News Update
The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News

Number 472 (Story #1), February 24, 2000 by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


LIGHT AT 1 MPH. A year ago Lene Verstergaard Hau used a Bose Einstein condensate (BEC) as a special nonlinear optical medium for slowing light from 3 x 108 m/sec to a mere 17 m/sec (38 mph; Update 415). This comes about when an incoming light pulse enters the BEC and experiences an extremely abrupt change in index of refraction (and as for absorption of the light, this is prevented by applying two laser beams which induce a transparency at the frequency of the incoming light).

In a talk presented at this week's meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Washington, DC, Hau said that she and her Harvard colleagues had slowed the light further, to a speed of 1 mph. She said that if the velocity could be slowed still more, to a value of 1 cm/sec, then this would be comparable to the speed of sound in the condensate and it might be possible to get atoms to surf on the front of the light pulse. Hau believes that this approach to slowing light, if it can be simplified, would lead to highly sensitive light switches and to low-power nonlinear optics (right now high-power laser light is required to produce nonlinear effects).

I'm hardly a physicist, in the end, but I know a hot story when I see it. This is an effect I can't wait to see with my own eyes, but since I'm not inclined to take up physics for astronomy, neither will I probably be inclined to undertake the subject to update the Tortise and the Hare, so it'll be in commercial application before I ever get to play with it.

But I thought it fun for the current topic.

thanx,
Tiassa

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We are unutterably alone, essentially, especially in the things most intimate and important to us. (Ranier Maria Rilke)

 

[Tony H2o]

Originally posted by Plato:
Hi Tony,

I like to make the analogy with languages, there are over 6000 different languages on our planet (although many will disappear in the coming century) why is this when we all talk about the same things ultimatly ?
There is however no fundamental reason why we call something a table and an other thing a stool. If we already have this freedom in the things we can see, how about the freedom we have in the things we can't see !
There is enough freedom for every single human on this planet to have his very own special kind of religion ! This means however that we shouldn't put to much weight on the specific details of each religion, they are after all simply efforts of us trying to grasp the ingraspable...

Science is also a language and therefor subject to the flaws and confusions that is inherit of any language. People have tried to compare science with religion and put it on the same level.
This is however a very difficult task to do, when comparing languages with each other one needs some tool to do this. We need some kind of metalanguage to be able to talk about other languages and their valor compared to each other.
A proposed tool would be logic, but this has been shown not to be a unified language also, there are many different kinds of logic and according to the kind you choose, your conclusions about languages will be different. So now we need a meta-meta-language in order to judge the correct logic that we are going to use.
You see what I'm going to ? Is there going to be an end to meta's ? If there isn't then we are doomed to keep on talking in different languages and be confused about our true intentions. If there is, then what will be the consequence of it ? No more religions ? No more science ? Or something in between ?

Plato, Ok fess up dude and tell us who you really are, that's way to philosophical and deep for a lab rat

Sorry that was a bad joke

You covered a lot there and sorry that its taken so long to get back to it. What you hit on is something that I have been giving a fair amount of consideration to as well.

This is however a very difficult task to do, when comparing languages with each other one needs some tool to do this. We need some kind of metalanguage to be able to talk about other languages and their valor compared to each other.

Metalanguage, way cool

OK I understand exactly and absolutely what you said in your post and how you relate it back to science and religion. It all comes down to the language we use to describe the events, results, actions, interaction, reactions, etc, etc that we see. To do this we use a language as the vehicle to transmit the observation and depending on the mastery we have of that language we either succeed or crash and burn in our attempts. So we seek to define things more clearly, to assign a larger vocabulary to describe the said events and thus create an even more detailed account of the event. Then we use these words and form sentences and construct them into paragraphs, chapters, volumes, libraries ..........CD's...........??? But no matter how well we word the event, no matter how well we arrange the words to convey the meaning and emotions as well as the actual image we fall short of the original moment and create sometimes good and sometimes bad facsimiles.

Take me for example at this moment in time while typing this out I have a million or more thoughts I'm trying to capture and put into some form of semi intelligent description, yet no matter how I word, how fast I type, how quick I follow a train of thought my response time can not and will not allow for me to capture them all. Take for example Tiassa, (sorry dude) he posts up on a regular basis very wordy and drawn out points, but what is he doing? He's trying to express and convey more than just black and white verbatim thoughts. He's stringing together a thought and attempting to convey at the same time some emotion along with giving people a deeper understanding of what he's saying that goes beyond the words on the page in front of them. Is any of this making sense???

I know I'm jumping around a lot with this but I am basically just jotting down thoughts. What I'm trying to get back to is the science and religion side of things. 6 million languages and 6 billion people all seeing things in a similar way but differently. Each person as individual as the stars in the night sky, yet each one of us with the same yearning to understand, comprehend and to be able to explain something that we know exists beyond ourselves, yet limited in our ability to show others what we see, feel, are and know. Limited by our language, and the fact that we are not them, that we can not crawl into their head and feel what they do, nor can they do like to us . So, if we have this trouble communicating the depth of what we want others to see, then how should God show us what He wants for us to know? How can religion confined to and by words of description truly express all that He is? All that He wants us to see? Metalanguage?

What would compose this metalanguage? What words would we use to define what it should be? How should it be transmitted and received?

I'm going beyond myself now into an area that is outside of my human understanding. I have touched on these things before mentioning that if God was to show us all that He is in any moment then we would not survive. I have mentioned about having glimpsed, only glimpsed a part of who He is and have trouble sorting it into words. I have said how I can see the heart wrenching efforts that the writers of the Bible went through scribing things after having been inspired by what God had shown them, trying to find the right words of men to describe that which was beyond description.

So how does God speak to us? What is His language?

The language of God is beyond any that we have ever experienced, His language is a flood, His language is a storm, His language is a gentle whisper, His language is emotion, His language floods every sense that we have and fills us with an image of who He is. His language goes beyond us mere mortals for He goes beyond our senses, our abilities, our understandings, His truly is the meta language that you consider Plato. In the thing I have posted in this place, in Overview and Dreams and Visions I have attempted to encapsulate into words the voice of God as He spoke to me. You understand when I say voice I mean more than just and audible sound, His voice resonates throughout your whole being and triggers emotions, responses, senses that you never knew you had. In the things I have placed here I have tried to show people what I have seen, I have tried to show them what and who the one is that has shown me these things, and I have failed. I have failed and no matter how many words I try to use to explain will never succeed for these are things between me and my Lord. Yet if I can inspire another to hear His voice, to understand beyond the words on a page, to go to God Himself and seek to know Him as He desires to show Himself, to see Jesus and how He as a man became the way for us to do this. If I can help people to understand that God is not as far off as humanity considers Him to be, then I have done what He has asked and inspired me to.

Is there going to be an end to meta's ? If there isn't then we are doomed to keep on talking in different languages and be confused about our true intentions. If there is, then what will be the consequence of it ? No more religions ? No more science ? Or something in between ?

For me I find language very frustrating along with the time it takes to convey what is. True intentions will always be confused because the intent of every persons heart is different in today's world.

If we stopped and listened we might actually find out the honest truth about many things, but primarily ourselves. If we only stop, ask and listen, if we give God some time and scope to show us things. Not just in the grand and overwhelming but in even in the little thing that surround us.

Allcare

Tony H2o