A pair of German physicists claim to have broken the speed of light - an achievement that would undermine our entire understanding of space and time.
According to Einstein's special theory of relativity, it would require an infinite amount of energy to propel an object at more than 186,000 miles per second.
However, Dr Gunter Nimtz and Dr Alfons Stahlhofen, of the University of Koblenz, say they may have breached a key tenet of that theory. advertisement
The pair say they have conducted an experiment in which microwave photons - energetic packets of light - travelled "instantaneously" between a pair of prisms that had been moved up to 3ft apart.
Being able to travel faster than the speed of light would lead to a wide variety of bizarre consequences.
For instance, an astronaut moving faster than it would theoretically arrive at a destination before leaving.
The scientists were investigating a phenomenon called quantum tunnelling, which allows sub-atomic particles to break apparently unbreakable laws.
Dr Nimtz told New Scientist magazine: "For the time being, this is the only violation of special relativity that I know of."
That is pretty interesting. But there's a paradox involved. If travelling faster than the speed of light indicates you "arrive at a destination before leaving", I'm confused. What would it look like? You are there before you leave, so you never leave. How do you leave? Sorry if I'm confusing everyone else, lol.
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Wow, that is pretty cool, but I don't really believe yet that they have broken the speed of light. It is the universal speed limit and according to Lorentz, and his transform crap, no matter how fast something is moving, it cannot move faster than the speed of light even if viewing in different reference frames. It would see if we could faster than the speed of light, it would disrupt the time of the planet and cause that being to transport back into time and, in my opinion, cause the world to become unstable and destroy itself. I won't believe this until it can be confirmed and tested many times.
Universal Orlando Mechanical Engineer Marathon down, Goofy to go.
