 Staff call this the Tabletop Synchrotron |
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Singleton has created a gadget that abuses radio waves so severely that they finally give in and travel faster than light.
The polarization synchrotron combines the waves with a rapidly spinning magnetic field, and the result could explain why pulsars — which are super-dense spinning stars that are a subclass of neutron stars — emit such powerful signals, a phenomenon that has baffled many scientists, Singleton said…
And beyond explaining what has been a bit of a mystery to the astronomical community, Singleton’s discovery could have wide-ranging technological impacts in areas such as medicine and communications, he said.
“Because nobody’s really thought about things that travel faster than light before, this is a wide-open technological field,” Singleton said.
And like Singleton says – Einstein wouldn’t have been upset by this at all.
I thought he said that nothing with mass can travel faster than the speed of light
…particles and information can’t travel faster than the speed of light — but phenomenon like radio waves? That’s a different story…
Wait a minute! Radio waves carry information, don’t they?
…asks the baffled non-scientist.
Cinaedh, you beat me too it. I bet that it’s just poor journalism. The statement is paraphrased… not quoted.
I’m waiting for comments from creationists… obviously all previous scientific evidence for everything is meaningless now. 🙂
It’s a tricky biz. It’s nice that they’re looking into it, but I don’t buy it and I’m not alone. Check it out: tricky pulsar math.
Like most good science, Singleton hasn’t jumped to get publicity for what is, after all, a qualitative breakthrough.
He built the first generation of his device in 2004.
#6 – irrelevent.
This is SubSpace communications, everyone knows THAT!!!
I wish scientists would stop trying to mess with stuff like this. The fabric of space-time is going to rip apart, and it’s going to be all their fault.
This is rather old news, Gunter Nimtz of the University of Cologne sent a microwave signal faster than the speed of light in a vacuum in 1994.
He and Horst Aichmann sent the 40th symphony of Mozart 4.7 times faster than light.
Cursor_
Radio waves are light — just light at a lower frequency. Photons are photons and have no mass. Superluminal theory has been around for awhile, but it’s superluminal depending on your reference frame. It’s easy to get light to slow down (wrt us), just let it pass through a glass of water.
Remember, according to Einstein, it’s all relative. I don’t even want to see the math anymore, it would make my hair catch fire.
A wonderful breakthrough in the technology. Thanks, Eideard.
Another “fuck you” to Star wars.
“If you take a laser and shine it on the moon and swing it rather gently, for example, the spot on the moon travels faster than the speed of light,” Singleton said.
Maybe there is something to “faster than the speed of light,” but a laser beam scanning across the moon or any similar effect is not it. That is an illusion.
Imagine two astronauts on opposite sides of the moon. They both turn on a light at *almost* the same time. Has light or information or anything traveled from one point to the other faster than the speed of light, just because they were turned on sequentially?
Now imagine laser photons from Earth striking and relecting from the moon sequentially from Point A to Point B.
How is that different from the first example other than dealing with more points of light? Nothing physical has gone faster than the speed of light. Similarly it could be said that I can look across the Universe faster than the speed of light for however useful that might be.
RBG
Brain fitness needed here… equivalent to getting up off couch … ouch.
Whether radiation signal is a rotated narrow beam or wide spread. Info is going from source to locus of beams reception, be it instantaneous or a narrow locus. NO signal is going along locus. If you doubt that you need to think further.
#14
Aka Subspace communications 🙂
#2 “Wait a minute! Radio waves carry information, don’t they?”
You got me curious too, I think the way the waves “carry” the information is in the modulation or distortion of the wave this pattern of modulation is then “read” and decoded as informatiom by the reciever.
#4. I’m waiting for comments from creationists
Here it is. Motion faster than light is possible but Singleton knows nothing about it.
The speed of darkness is faster than the speed of light. By darkness, I mean, of course, the mysterious gravity.
Take this thought experiment: We all know that place of the Sun in the sky is an illusion because by the time we see the sun in the sky it has already moved in real position because the light takes 8 minutes to reach us here on Earth. Now, imagine the Sun dissappearing completely in an instant. We would not know by the light because the light that shines on us is an eight minute lagging illusion. But, the gravitational effect would be instantaneous. The Earth would shoot of on a tangent from its path around the sun.
Gravity is faster than light.
I dunno, how do you figure the speed of light? Where, in the universe, is the point of reference? Where is datum, where is the universal Greenwich Meridian, where is the starting point? Take a couple of super sized space aliens, both with serious horsepower, and both snot flying drunk, playing chicken across the big empty that lies between galaxies. If they approach each other at high percentages of light speed (relative to God’s navel), arn’t they, in fact, super luminal with respect to each other? Makes my brain hurt to think about it.
20 Luke.
“Gravitational waves, just like photons, are waves that travel at the speed of light.”
Nasa Goddard Space flight Center
http://tinyurl.com/36udla
RBG
Ah the stuff Sci-fi is made of…
Hyperspace travel
http://tinyurl.com/9uwtv
Cheers
20–
Einstein first thought that as well. He later changed his theories to show the Earth wouldn’t spin off until 8 minutes later.
It’s an interesting story to hear how he was hounded by the scientists in the beginning — his first theories were all crap until he did some actual work.
#20, Luke,
Nope. Current understanding in general relativity is that that the force of gravity is exchanged just like any other force – through particles. In this case, the graviton. Were the Sun to disappear instantaneously, the Earth would continue on it’s elliptical orbit until that force was no longer exchanged, at the speed of light, between the Sun and Earth. About 8.33 minutes later.
velocity is a measurement used to depict the rate of change of an objects location between two points over a defined set of time. Our misconceptions about distance is why we have problems understanding that traveling faster than light is meaningless. maximum light-speed may indeed be constant. But that constraint would not prevent us from changing the distance traveled. Now if I can just figure out how to make an Arby’s appear beside my apartment I would be set.
Faster than light movement may be possible with simple push in deep space, far from large masses, no wormholes, warp or hyperspace required:
http://toph.synthasite.com/
It would be great irony if it’s true and no one ever tried, because all that’s needed is to push harder and accelerate.
Essentially, the concept here is that not every frame of reference can measure time equally. Time measurement may depend on masses and distance.
Relativistic effects are very much present near Earth (large mass) but may not be in deep space…