kindly debunk this

[self biased]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3303699/We-have-broken-speed-of-light.html

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.

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."

[SlowwHand]

So this is based solely on what they said?

[KrazyHorse]

It's a bunch of nonsense.

a) This experiment has nothing to do with quantum mechanics; it is in fact an effect of classical electrodynamics

b) They wrongly associate the phase velocity with the "speed of transmission" of the wave. This is complete nonsense. There are any number of optical setups in which this phase velocity can exceed the speed of light. In no way, shape or form does anything actually "travel" at greater than the speed of light in any of these setups; the phase velocity is simply a mathematical fiction. Only for freely propagating plane waves does the phase velocity necessarily equal the group (physical) velocity.

The people who published that paper (and a series of similarly ridiculous papers going back many years) are literally making undergraduate mistakes in their understanding of physics. Their papers are amateurish, contain conflicting claims, and do not even come close to passing the laugh test.

[SlowwHand]

Like I said...

[Kuciwalker]

I've been seeing these stories for YEARS, and they always involve the same basic misunderstanding of wave mechanics.

KH, are they really all from the same 2 morons?

[KrazyHorse]

I think so. How many utterly retarded german physicists doing the same idiotic thing could there be?

[KrazyHorse]

Do a search on arxiv. There's a good debunking of their work by some electrical engineers. One of the better points is that to get transmission of the evanescent wave over the distances claimed in some sections of the paper, they would need to be able to detect a wave after it undergoes a reduction in intensity of a factor of 10^88

[Kuciwalker]

I think so. How many utterly retarded german physicists doing the same idiotic thing could there be?

Isn't Hera German?

[KrazyHorse]

Slovenian

But touche

[SpencerH]

It's a bunch of nonsense.


The people who published that paper (and a series of similarly ridiculous papers going back many years) are literally making undergraduate mistakes in their understanding of physics. Their papers are amateurish, contain conflicting claims, and do not even come close to passing the laugh test.

So where are they published, and if they are decent journals rather than someones 'blog', why is such simplistic crap accepted by reviewers?

[KrazyHorse]

I doubt they're published in anything I'd consider a decent journal.

[DaShi]

This reminds me of a doctor in Mexico who wrote a paper about using microwaves to cure HIV infections. And by microwaves, I mean microwave ovens.

[Ben Kenobi]

The scientists were investigating a phenomenon called quantum tunnelling, which allows sub-atomic particles to break apparently unbreakable laws.

Erm no. All it does is allow particles to pass through other particles that normally they wouldn't be able to do. Analogy on a larger scale, it's like having your baseball pass through a wall. It says nothing about 'particle travelling at the speed of light'.

[Straybow]

For instance, an astronaut moving faster than it would theoretically arrive at a destination before leaving.

Yet another absurdity, although this is the fault of the news writer rather than the scientists. Moving faster than light would only allow traveler to arrive before the arrival of an EM transmission of their departure.

[KrazyHorse]

Try again. Traveling faster than the speed of light from A to B and then back from B to A would cause the traveler to reappear at A prior to departing A.