Scientists Make Radio Waves Travel Faster Than Light

Originally posted by mnemeth1
I don't think you've taken the time to read any of the material I've posted.

I also think your just randomly throwing out strawman arguments.

[I]If you want to believe that black holes exist, dark matter exists, and pulsars spin around on their axis at thousands of times per second in violation of every known law of physics on this planet, that's your choice.[/I]

I for one think its a load of nonsense.



[edit on 30-6-2009 by mnemeth1]

OK, you are obviously being purposely contrary here.

I, for one, do not believe in black holes. I know black holes exist, because they have been observed. And they were predicted by a theory which incorporated the correct application of "every known law of physics on this planet".

I, for one, do not believe in pulsars that spin around on their axis at thousands of times per second. I know pulsars that spin around on their axis at thousands of times per second exist, because they have been observed. And they have been explained (more or less) by a theory which incorporates the correct application of "every known law of physics on this planet" and more is being understood about them all the time.

I, for one, do not believe in Dark Matter. I know Dark Matter exists because it has been observed indirectly, via its Gravitaional Lensing effect. And its existence was postulated by applying "every known law of physics on this planet" to directly observed data. And its Gravitaional Lensing effect was predicted by applying "every known law of physics on this planet" to the postulated theory.

So how can observed phenomena incorporated into, explained by, and predicted by, "every known law of physics on this planet" be in violation of "every known law of physics on this planet"?

[edit on 3/7/2009 by rnaa]

reply to post by whatukno

Traveling at the speed of light does not make time stop. Just the appearance of time.

Er, the passage of time does indeed slow down with increased speed. Time and Space don't appear to be separate, or at least they're interwoven into each other. (the "fabric" of space time?) It's late and I'm tired, so forgive any misconceptions I throw out or want for extrapolation I don't - as I'm not up to my usual base run fact-checking, refreshing, accumulation, etc.

(Just because I don't often post a ton of links, doesn't mean nothing's going on behind the scenes)

This effect of travel through time slowing proportionally to your speed traveling through space is at least casually verifiable by the day to day calibration of the atomic clocks aboard our GPS satellites. Time for them moves a bit slower, so they must be set to match ground clocks or the positioning calculations will be thrown off and your GPS wouldn't work. Or rather it would, but over time you'd see your position drift further and further away from where your actual position on the Earth is. This calibration amounts to a scant 38 microseconds per day... but none the less demonstrate the practical/commercial real world application of relativity and variable rate of times passage as speed through space fluctuates.

What's really cool though, is that if you're traveling at 99.9% the speed of light, you will still see light pass you at the speed of light the same as if you were traveling at a speed relative to the Earth's surface.

Originally posted by Lasheic
reply to post by squiz

 

The big bang, Black holes, Dark matter, Nuetron stars that defy well known laws of physics

Wat?
These phenomena don't defy the laws of physics. They were predicted by the laws of physics... and some later confirmed or suggested by new evidence coming in as our data gathering tools diversify and improve.

I disagree. A black hole has never been observed, a singularity only exists mathematically through the process of dividing zero. I suggest you look into Stephen Crothers work. I'm no help with the math.
Dark Matter came about because Einsteins field equations didn't add up. So they add a plus sign at the end (dark matter) not a little one though, a whopping 96% or something.
I mean come on, you don't have to be Einstein to figure it out.

As I said before, a man with only a hammer sees everything as a nail. The only hammer here is gravity.

Black holes, Dark Matter, neutron stars were never predicted, the first two haven't been found and the latter was postulated after the fact. There is no such substance as neutronium, show me some. Neutron stars defy the island of stability principle in nuclear chemistry. There's a certain ratio of protons to neutrons put in too many nuetrons and they decay back to that ratio.
So if there was a neutron star it would be short lived.
The pulse is an electric oscillation. The rhythm of some have even had some hiccups, now if that was a star spinning at the speed of a dentist drill as they claim, it would tear itself apart.

I'm not anti science, I believe in the scientific method. Cosmology is not a science by those standards.

Really, such passion to defend what cannot even come close to laboratory standards. That cannot be empirically proven. Yet these same people, not naming any names and not necessarily you Lasheic, I don't know you that well.
Will then jump in and denounce anything outside of their belief system and what they term proof or evidence. They want what I'm asking here. It's schism, it's truly baffling to me.

I'll repeat it, It's been psychologically proven that the more something is repeated the more it is regarded as fact. Psychologists must have a field day on this site. Perhaps it might be remembered if we say it a few times.

Asty wants me to go away because he cannot deliver the goods either. Never has, in any of our confrontations. It's all talk.
There's a solution, it's called the ignore button.

Don't worry, I won't post anymore. I don't want to upset peoples faith.

Meanwhile the evidence is piling up exponentially I can show recently dozen of discoveries that conform and were predicted by EU/PC It's happening almost monthly lately. It doesn't even have to be completely correct if it leads to more discovery due to a new way of thinking then it will make a huge contribution. really, you people have your heads in the sand chained by your own beliefs, you've got a picture of the universe and you can't let go of it.

Bye.

[edit on 3-7-2009 by squiz]

Einstein wrote a published paper in a scholarly journal arguing against black holes. He never believed in them, with good reason. Should they exist, they would have invalidated his theories. It is a great heresy of modern physics to tie his name to these hypothetical objects.

Einstein's paper showing black holes can not exist based on his own theories can be found here. In fact Einstein fully agreed with Karl Schwarzschild's solution to his Mercury orbit problem which shows that there is no way a black hole could exist and be in agreement with the principles of relativity. Schwarzchild's original work, in English, which leaves no room for black holes can be found here.

Black holes were never predicted, they were constructed to explain observed phenomina. The construction was derived by a man named Hilbert, who used a corrupted version of Schwarzschild's solution to prove his nonsensical theories. He never used the equations put forth by Einstein and Schwarzschild.

Politics caused black holes to be created. There creation was about maintaining status and political power over government funding by a handful of scientists.




[edit on 3-7-2009 by mnemeth1]

Let me explain how and why the myth of black holes has been propagated to this day by thousands of theoretical physicists.


Physicists are like computer programmers (of which I am). They don't like to do excess work when formulating their theories.

As a software engineer, I have all sorts of tools available to me to build computer programs. I do not start from the ground up when building my programs.

Think about what it would take for me to build these forums from nothing.

First I would have to design the circuit boards for the computer and microchips, then I'd have to write the software drivers, then I'd have to design the operating system, then I'd have to write the software, etc.. etc.. it would take me decades to create these forums from absolutely no starting point.

Theoretical physicists operate the same way. They don't create theories of black holes from the ground up, they all base their work on existing theories that have become generally accepted.

What Einstein and Schwarzschild were working on was the circuit boards. What modern theoreticians are working on is the software for an already existing system.

If the circuit board and driver programmers get their stuff wrong, my computer program will have incorrectable errors that I will not be able to over come no matter how good of a computer programmer I may be.

This is the problem in modern physics today. There are some major errors in the lowest level theories and they have never been rectified. This leaves all the other work they are based on worthless.



[edit on 3-7-2009 by mnemeth1]

Originally posted by Kaytagg
So, anyone debunk this yet? I can't find it on any other news sources, other than the copy cat article linked in the OP. Something in this article was lost on the cutting room floor, I think. Sad thing is, most of the ATS users who read this article are now going to be spewing this as "common knowledge" every chance they get.

I am still reading this thread, but I wanted to respond to you, because you captured by thoughts exactly. The article seems completely flawed, at least one one point, as follows:

Consider a line of people where the first person snaps their fingers, then after a delay, the second person snaps theirs, and so on. The "snap" moves down the line with a speed determined by the delay, which can be arbitrarily short. Hence the snap can move arbitrarily fast.

Wrong. The delay described above cannot be arbitrarily short. It is limited by the time for each person to sense that the previous person has snapped their fingers, which is limited to the speed of light. Even if there was zero delay in relaying the information on, there is a delay in the information being perceived. That delay is due to the limits of the speed of light.

The speed of light "c" is a physical constant, having nothing to do with light, other than light is the fastest thing that approaches this constant. The value of "c" has more to do with mass, inertia and energy. Even light cannot travel at this top-speed (although it comes close.)

I am not sure why Los Alamos Labs would promulgate such an idea. I can only guess that they are working too hard on next generation weaponry to spend any time on their website stories.

It doesn't make me very comfortable to think Los Alamos would so casually produce misinformation and misdirection like this. They should understand E=mc2 better than anyone else, I would think.

reply to post by Axial Leader and kaytagg

The article is self-debunking. When you read what the experiment is actually doing, you find that no light or electromagnetic waves are traveling faster than the speed of light, contrary to the misleading sensational headline. Several have debunked it again in this thread, but the article really debunks itself. Unfortunately many people don't seem to read past the headline or if they do, aren't able to comprehend what the article is saying and think some kind of breakthrough was made. That is unfortunate.

First i'd like to say that I don't think Einstein's theories are wrong, just incomplete. Remember, he was practically labeled a nut for some of his theories, so it sounds reasonable that he may have left them incomplete so that down the line someone would finish it, proving that what was thought "impossible" is indeed possible. Nothing is impossible.

Second, if going FTS doesn't slow down sound, then who's to say going FTL would slow down time? Light might behave as the sound would in FTS?

Originally posted by squiz
A black hole has never been observed, a singularity only exists mathematically through the process of dividing zero. I suggest you look into Stephen Crothers work. I'm no help with the math.

I read Crothers Black Hole Paper.
To respond to it let me break his arguments down into 2 areas:
1.-Existence of the event horizon of a massive, dense body
2.-Nature of matter inside the event horizon
Crothers examines the event horizon and makes some correct statements about it, such as no light or matter can escape from inside the event horizon.
Most of his paper seems to object to point 2, the nature of the matter inside the event horizon. I don't have time to read all the papers he cited, but what I can say is this, whether what is inside the event horizon is densely packed neutrons or a point singularity, either way you would have an event horizon. So if you throw out all his arguments on the basis of that argument relating to point 2, there is really nothing left in his paper that I found to refute point 1. I don't see in his work any argument to explain what will happen if you keep adding mass to a dense object until you end up with an event horizon with escape velocity c.

It's kind of funny to hear Crothers talk about what an observer inside the event horizon would see, but he's right that were it possible to make such observations, an observer could see light heading up toward the event horizon but never escaping from it, that is what I'm talking about when I say black hole so he seems to confirm it. We currently know of no way that any information gathered by an "observer" (person, probe, or whatever) inside the event horizon can be transmitted back to us. Therefore I'm guessing that any observational evidence of what goes on inside the event horizon of a black hole will be lacking for a long time, maybe forever. But that really doesn't disprove the existence of black holes, though it might allow us to continue to postulate theories about what form matter inside the event horizon takes without being able to prove any of them.

So in a way, I find Crothers article on black holes to have some similarities to the faster than light topic in this thread. When you read the "conclusions", they suggest faster than light travel exists or that black holes don't exist, but there are details in the articles which suggest the contrary conclusion.

Regarding the "Island of Stability" argument you raised for why we can't have neutron stars:

It's certainly true that there are limitations on how many nucleons can be bound together by nuclear forces. However, neutron stars are not bound by nuclear forces. They're bound by gravity. And, so far as anyone knows, there is no fundamental limitation on the amount of material that can be bound by gravity.

from: Neutron Star

It's certainly true that there are limitations on how many nucleons can be bound together by nuclear forces. However, neutron stars are not bound by nuclear forces. They're bound by gravity. And, so far as anyone knows, there is no fundamental limitation on the amount of material that can be bound by gravity.

Believing that requires the same faith as believing in Santa Claus.

Seriously.

Think of the bold assumptions in that statement. Here we have known laws of nuclear chemistry saying such matter is impossible and can not exist. Yet theoretical physicists are postulating completely unproven (and of course untestable) mechanisms for the existence of such matter.

In the mean time we have electrical engineers proposing SIMPLE mechanisms of charged plasma accounting for pulsars that do not require such esoteric matter or unbelievable physics.

Occam's razor applies.

btw, Jupiter emits millisecond pulses of radio waves, just like a pulsar. Last time I checked, it was not spinning on its axis at a thousand times per second.

I believe it is reasonable to assume the same functions that cause Jupiter's emissions are also responsible for causing the emissions observed from pulsars.

They are not magical beams of spinning fairy dust, they are pulsed emissions of charged plasma just like a relaxation oscillator in a lab experiment.





[edit on 3-7-2009 by mnemeth1]

Well if its possible to boost a frequency up to beyond the speed of light you should also be able to slow light down.

I have a question about slowing light down to a speed less then it had.
If light hits a object won't it slow down when it reflects and even slow down some more when it reflects of a new object?

Don't the natural laws of physics also apply to light. If you throw a ball at a wall it will bounds of with a different speed then it hit with and even more if you hit it at an angel.

I'm just going to point out that "radio waves" and "light" are the same thing. Radio waves just have a different frequency then the "light" we see. The speed of light is actually the speed that electromagnetic waves travel, this includes all the frequencies from gamma rays to radio waves and everything in between (as in they all travel at the speed of "light").

www.antonine-education.co.uk...

If this article is actually true then the title should be "Scientists make Radio waves travel faster then "the speed of light".

Just thought I would mention that

Originally posted by spy66
I have a question about slowing light down to a speed less then it had.
If light hits a object won't it slow down when it reflects and even slow down some more when it reflects of a new object?

Don't the natural laws of physics also apply to light. If you throw a ball at a wall it will bounds of with a different speed then it hit with and even more if you hit it at an angel.

As far as I know there is not way to slow down light (I could be wrong) but if light hits something it does push it very slightly. Thats the whole idea behind solar sails. They use the momentum of the actual photons to push the spacecraft. I don't think you can think of light in the classical physics mindset.

[edit on 3-7-2009 by Louther]

Originally posted by Louther
I'm just going to point out that "radio waves" and "light" are the same thing. Radio waves just have a different frequency then the "light" we see. The speed of light is actually the speed that electromagnetic waves travel, this includes all the frequencies from gamma rays to radio waves and everything in between (as in they all travel at the speed of "light").

www.antonine-education.co.uk...

If this article is actually true then the title should be "Scientists make Radio waves travel faster then "the speed of light".

Just thought I would mention that

Originally posted by spy66
I have a question about slowing light down to a speed less then it had.
If light hits a object won't it slow down when it reflects and even slow down some more when it reflects of a new object?

Don't the natural laws of physics also apply to light. If you throw a ball at a wall it will bounds of with a different speed then it hit with and even more if you hit it at an angel.

As far as I know there is not way to slow down light (I could be wrong) but if light hits something it does push it very slightly. Thats the whole idea behind solar sails. They use the momentum of the actual photons to push the spacecraft. I don't think you can think of light in the classical physics mindset.

[edit on 3-7-2009 by Louther]

Actually we can slow light down.

Substaintially.

Light is still not well understood. We still don't have a good explanation for its behavior or what it constitutes.

reply to post by rnaa


No no, I have no trouble in understanding them. No one has yet proven to me why they make no sense to them. They make sense to me, some people just don't get it.


At this point I have thoroughly given up on an explanation. Both the supporters of this electrical nonsense have not answered my question, but instead gone off topic.

As the person last page said, enough is enough. Anyone viewing this page can see the argument, and how I have won it. One side changes the subject and doesn't answer the question, the other, mine, is just insulted and laughed at for valid proofs.

In such cases the common observer picks my side, the side providing evidence and not skipping questions.


Also, Squiz, I shall end with saying you are a closed minded person and it's quite sad. Yes, Plasma is hot mass. Don't say it isn't. Then you're out right crazy.


To everyone else, all forums have the troll. I think we all know who it is. I just wanted answers, got none. I'm done. Like I said, it's like talking to a creationist. And no, this is not bringing religion into the discussion. This is bringing parallel thinking blue prints into the discussion. And in which case, I stand correct with clear evidence, the troll stands as the insulting non answering fool.

No insulting mods, I'm just denying ignorance.

I hope this board the best. But the observer of the thread knows who to believe. And it't not th electrical universe.

My questions on aether remain unanswered.

toodles,

G-man

[edit on 3-7-2009 by Gorman91]

reply to post by Louther

As far as I know there is not way to slow down light (I could be wrong) but if light hits something it does push it very slightly.

Photons don't have mass, and don't rely on momentum for their speed. It's constant in a vacuum, regardless of what it bounces off of how many times it bounces. Because there is no mass or momentum, it cannot push objects.

Light slows down when it passes through matter, which is what causes the refraction of light we see in water or glass. However, upon exiting the other side of that matter, it's speed returns to c. This is why light generated in the heart of our sun takes about 10,000 years to push through the dense mass of hydrogen atoms, yet once it's out - takes only about eight minutes to reach Earth.

Ok I lied, I'm back for one last act of heresy.

I had a bit of a revelation last night thanks to this thread.
I was thinking about the sagnac effect.
I've mentioned a it few times, let me explain. Light travels at a different distance in relation to the direction of the rotation.
This means that light traveling from east to west around the globe (hypothetically bounced of mirrors), will be of a different time to light traveling from west to east.
This invalidates one of the key concepts of special relativity, it's a non relativistic phenomena that is provable by controlled test.
It is further proved by the fact the sagnac effect is calculated into the equations for the GPS satellites. I think it is actually referred to as the sagnac correction. Correction being the operative word, why would relativity need a correction?
I then began thinking how this effect would impact the time dilation experiments, hmmm.. I wonder. I soon found out this is not a new idea, this has been a point of contention it seems.
The sagnac effect cancels out the discrepancy of time dilation.
There is no space time effect here at all, it's a well defined phenomena. No time travel.

The Emperor Has no clothes!

I could post the relevant studies, math included. But why bother? Blind faith is far to strong. A curious opened minded person may investigate, I guarantee you'll find the evidence based along these lines.

That should ruffle a few feathers.... cluck,cluck,cluck.....

And gravity probe B was a failure. That is why the funding was cut. They tried to jiggle the math, but it still wasn't enough. The gravitational anomalies of the Earth itself far out weigh any observable effects of frame dragging. Just take a look at a gravity map of the Earth.

We won't get anywhere till we drop this idol worship.

[edit on 4-7-2009 by squiz]

reply to post by squiz


One last act of inquisition for me then!

What you described does not go against relativity, it reinforces it, because space time should be twisting with the rotation of the Earth. So it would not be constant... to your observation from an outside source, IE, on Earth.

Here's a good post on how this article is horribly inaccurate:

www.theskepticsguide.org...

I believe that is where the superluminal confusion comes in. This polarization pattern can move faster than light without anything physical doing it. Imagine a series of light bulbs being lit one after the other in super-rapid succession. If you do it fast enough, they can be turned on in a pattern that moves faster than light.

In the words of the researchers themselves:
“The use of polarization charge, which is massless, also enables the device to be used to investigate superluminal sources”

That is the key. We’re talking about superluminal sources of light… not superluminal photons.

The real intriguing thing here is the fact that these radio signals do not vary in intensity with the square of the distance as regular light does. Rather, it produces what is essentially a radio-frequency laser, with light that decreases in intensity at a linear rate.

Cool, but not super-luminal.

Please keep in mind that light never "slows down". Photons always move at the speed of light.

When photons (quanta) travel through matter they get absorbed and re-emitted over and over, so it only appears to travel slower than in a vacuum.

The energy from the photon is just absorbed by the matter, and re-emitted at some time depending on the type of matter, frequency of light, etc.. etc... In the mean time, when it is absorbed, it's not a photon - it's energy added to the electron "orbit". These atoms are typically unstable (excited) and must release energy to become stable - and in the general case the energy is the exact energy from the photon that it has absorbed, and so it re-emits an identical photon.

The light (quanta) never slows down in the common understanding of the phrase.

You might visualize what happens to a photon by comparing two people in a race:

We'll set up two lanes and consider Lane 1 to be a vacuum (no atoms to interact with the runners). Let's consider that Lane 2 has a set of hurdles placed regularly which must be jumped over and we can call these hurdles atoms. So, Lane B has a vacuum between each atom. Each runner runs at a constant speed of 12 MPH, and the runner (photon) in Lane 1 never has to change states. The runner in Lane 2 however has to change states from a runner (photon) to a jumper (electron) as he is "absorbed" by the "atom hurdles" (or rather, affected by non-vacuum). Once he is "re-emitted" on the other side of the hurdle he then becomes a runner (photon) again. In the mean time while he is "absorbed" or jumping, he has (practically) slowed down a little bit compared to the runner in Lane A since he had to "waste" time by getting absorbed and re-emitted.

When they slow a quanta light to a stop in something like a Bose-Einstein condensate of cesium or sodium atoms, they are merely trapping the quanta of energy and not allowing it to be re-emitted.

reply to post by Gorman91


- Computers are not always correct.

- Computers can only calculate what we tell them to. That always leaves the possiblity for human error.

- We dont' know if everything in the universe can be confirmed with mathematics. There are probably some aspects of it that simply don't. The same math that has told us that black holes exist only act to tell us if they're possible mathematically. We have no idea if they're real. Thus, we have no idea how accurate the math is.

- It's much easier to make computer animations of things we know exist based on laws we also know exist.

-ChriS