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Old February 28th, 2001, 09:45 PM

a philistine a philistine is offline
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Default Re: Theoretical Physics [OT thread]

quote:
Originally posted by DirectorTsaarx:
Well, we can't do this with current technology; there's some dissent on this matter in the physics community. I found an article not too long ago that mentioned an experiment where a particle was accelerated beyond the speed of light. HOWEVER (and this is a tricky point), scientists still believe INFORMATION cannot travel faster than light. So the particle can be accelerated and do damage, but it can't be used to provide FTL communication.

{snip}



Actually, I think the experiment did not have a particle traveling FTL, but instead it was a wavefront which was "traveling" FTL (e.g. the peak or trough of a wave) which does not violate the ligtspeed "speed limit", there being a number of similar types of occurences which can travel FTL, but all are equally incapable of delivering information.

I think this article discusses the experiment you were talking about:
http://www.nytimes.com/library/natio...ics-light.html

--A Philistine

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