Was This Ever Proven/disproven?, German physicists break speed of light

[andyJ]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtm...scispeed116.xml

[rpenner]

It's been widely discussed that Dr. Nimtz (who gained noteriety with other "superluminal" tunneling experiments) isn't correctly interpreting what physical theory says about the nature of the measurements he is making.

I.e. when Dr. Nimtz saying he is proving Einstein wrong, he hasn't correctly understood what Einstein was saying in 1905.

Depending on unpublished details of the microwave pulse generator being used, the "instantaneous" transit over 3 ft could be explained by details of the detector and phase shifts.

This post has been edited by rpenner on Oct 25 2007, 03:49 AM

[positive]

How about the law of conservation of matter and energy? They say it is a law, a proven fact. Niether matter nor energy can be created nor destroyed, only altered in form.
However, this actually is not logical becuase, how did we get here then? :-P Also, how can we PROVE that it CAN'T be done? You can't. You can't prove something is impossible, you can only prove that given what we currently know you do not think it is possible. That really proves nothing.

[rpenner]

"Law" doesn't mean proven fact. It means "Theory."
"Theory" doesn't mean guess, it means a comprehensive generalization of physical observations which is empirically demonstrated to be reliable throughout a wide experimental realm.
The law of conservation of matter is 99.9999999% accurate in chemistry, but only about 99.2% accurate in nuclear chemistry, and useless in high-energy physics.
The separate laws of conservation of momentum and conservation of energy have yet not a single found inaccuracy.
The three laws are related: E² - (pc)² = (mc²)² and this expression is reliable. But since (E_1 + E_2)² adds in one way and (p_1 + p_2)² adds a different way unless p_1 and p_2 are both in the same direction, it follows that mass need not be conserved when multiple particles are involved.

I never said Dr. Nimtz didn't break the speed of light, I said it was far from clear he has discovered new physics. Microwaves and tunneling are both pretty well understood. Previous experiments like this one have allegedly detected NEGATIVE speeds, with the modulation signal being reconstructed before it was sent. And not just with microwave tunneling, but with amplifier circuits. This is possible because a slowly changing modulation signal can be predicted because it is smooth, and anomalous dispersion can cause the modulation to change in strange ways, including apparent FTL. It's not magic or new physics but a consequence of Fourier series.

http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/anomalous-dispersion.html