Physicists Claim to Have Broken the Speed of Light
"Being able to travel faster than the speed of light would lead to a wide variety of bizarre consequences...such as an astronaut theoretically arriving at a destination before leaving."
(Germany)—According to a report in the Telegraph U.K., a pair of German physicists claims to have broken the speed of light. If so, notes reporter Nic Fleming, it would be an achievement that would undermine our entire understanding of space and time. Einstein's special theory of relativity, says Fleming, states that it would require an infinite amount of energy to propel an object at more than 186,000 miles per second.
Dr Gunter Nimtz and Dr Alfons Stahlhofen, of the University of Koblenz, claim to have breached a key tenet of that theory in an experiment by which microwave photons traveled "instantaneously" between a pair of prisms that had been moved up to 3ft. apart. According to the article, the two scientists were investigating a phenomenon called quantum tunneling, which allows sub-atomic particles to break apparently unbreakable laws. (Photo: engadget.com)
Being able to travel faster than the speed of light would lead to a wide variety of bizarre consequences, says Fleming, such as an astronaut theoretically arriving at a destination before leaving.
Dr Nimtz told New Scientist magazine: "For the time being, this is the only violation of special relativity that I know of."
