Help Find Flaw

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jollyrgr
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Help Find Flaw

Post by jollyrgr »

Okay, I need to know the trick here: <p>http://www.scienceblog.com/light.html<p>Is this a bunch of crap or is it something meaningful?
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Chris Smith
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Re: Help Find Flaw

Post by Chris Smith »

The part of slowing down light is old news. <p>Sodium vapor and iridium vapor has slowed light down almost to a complete stop with the help of lasers, again old news. <p>Speeding it up faster than light however is debatable or at least a use in semantics? <p>What they have done is instantaneous motions or action between photon pairs at a distance. [quantum computing] <p>The actions of one photon mimic the action of the other, apart from each other, yet there is no time involved which suggests a phenomena that could be called “faster than light”.<p> Einstein knew of this and left a back door open to his equation saying that light is a constant, [the C in MC squared] but not an absolute.
Newz2000
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Re: Help Find Flaw

Post by Newz2000 »

I've found people often generally say "the speed of light" when what they mean is "the speed of light in a vacuum." Same is true with sound. As was recently brought back to my attention, the speed of sound differs depending on what is transmitting the sound.<p>I did a quick google and found this decent overview:
http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/ma ... .Ph.r.html<p>I just searched for "speed of light change" and it was the fifth result. Unfortunately, like so many other "science" websites, the author totally fails to quote sources to collaborate the information. But what he describes there matches up to what I learned in physics.
Bernius1
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Re: Help Find Flaw

Post by Bernius1 »

In the last year or so, they used a crystal ( Cadmium mix, I believe), about 6" long, and proved that light can go faster than light. It's debatable, because of the short distance. BUT , read Mr.Feynman, and he says that light goes from A to B NOT in the shortest distance, but the shortest TIME. In "SIX EASY PIECES", a book I HIGHLY recommend, he shows that the hot-asphalt-water-mirage effect is due to this 'shortest-time' factor. And sub-baryonic particles have been shown to go backwards in time (femto-seconds, y'all trekkites!), so from a quantum perspective, it's possible, as long as the crystal allows for a shorter TIME than vacuum. The real question is; Why ? Are the photons being absorbed, or just bouncing off the electrons ? Is it a vector analysis question, where the photons don't scatter, with the 'sigma' probability amplitude coming straight out the far end ? A glass surface reflects partially, and transmits the rest. So, if 2% of the photons arrive 'early', you need a sure detector, to discriminate the time of arrival. Personally, I'd foresee IC's with photonic crystals instead of the aluminum deposition. It would vastly decrease propagation delays on VLSIC's.
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ncstateboy81
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Re: Help Find Flaw

Post by ncstateboy81 »

A google search for the method (Stimulated Brillouin Scattering) the article mentioned brought up this website:http://www.npl.co.uk/photonics/nonlinear/sbsandsrs.html
The original article mentions the previous accomplishments using different media to slow light, but the awesome achievement is that they were able to slow (and even accelerate) light using primarily optical means. I won't pretend to be at all knowledgeable on quantum physics, but here is my attempt to see how light could travel "faster than light".
I'm notorious for making questionable analogies, but it sounds like light in some ways can be compared to water. Based on the article, it sounds like the luminosity is similar to a Reynold's number. If the light it bright enough you go from a laminar to a turbulent flow. If it's something like that, I can see how it could possibly go faster since it is breaking up the pressure heads.
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Re: Help Find Flaw

Post by Newz2000 »

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by ncstateboy81:
I'm notorious for making questionable analogies<hr></blockquote><p>Me too!<p>Speeding up light is going to require re-thinking and understanding much of what we now think we know. (that sentence is a mouthful!)<p>The article you mentioned made me think about time travel...<p>I, personally, have mastered the task of traveling through time. Of course, my technique is somewhat limited because I can only travel one way and only at a constant speed, but still, it has some uses. <p>I take that back. After thinking about it a moment I realized I can go at multiple speeds, although I have little control over that aspect. It always seems to go faster when I'm having fun.
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Re: Help Find Flaw

Post by Will »

NC ---81 - I don't know whether or not your analogy is questionable but I think it's at least inverted - As fluid flow mass flow increases so does the Reynolds Number after the transition period flow changes from laminar to turbulent which means that fluid particles instead of travelling in a straight line, gain velocity components orthogonal to a pipe axis i.e. they have to travel further but not in the intended direction. . .and . . . the rate of flow i.e. average in-line velocity changes from being directly proportional to differential (Accelerating Head) pressure to being proportional to the square root of it i.e. if you double the Head in the laminar region you multiply the flow (average velocity) by 2.0. If you double it in the turbulent region you increase the flow by the root of 2.0 i.e. 1.414. This isn't too big a deal to me - I (With some ideas about plumbing but essentially zero knowledge of quantum physics) simply believe that it's possible to decrease the speed of light but not to increase it.
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Bernius1
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Re: Help Find Flaw

Post by Bernius1 »

MATT !!! NO REFERENCES TO LOVE LIFE IN A TECHNICAL FORUM !!!<p>That said, all of Quantum Electro-Dynamics is rooted in probability amplitude, and randomness cannot be ignored. So if a certain crystal is able, like a tunnel diode, to cause photons to do what they love to do ; arrive at their destination in the shortest time ; then as long as that crystal allows for a very high probability of ? tunneling photons ? , then it'll work. I always remember that the math is the predictive language of science, like op-amp ckt's derived from their transfer function.
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Chris Smith
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Re: Help Find Flaw

Post by Chris Smith »

The time perspective is the question here, rather than "going faster than light".<p> It seems that all these new things we are learning are not making light go faster, but rather they are having to do with the dimension of time and not light speed. <p>The conjugate [spelling?] laser and backwards time issue has been around for more than twenty years now, but its simply semantic to say that the actual light is going faster, rather than saying were discovering new meanings and concepts to what time actually is.<p>[ August 23, 2005: Message edited by: Chris Smith ]</p>
Bernius1
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Re: Help Find Flaw

Post by Bernius1 »

Chris, agreed. But I think that time, or " delta-T approaching zero", that is the EXACT MOMENT, is an illusion. I believe that there is a threshold, like a wavefront to time, which we're always surfing. Maybe a nanosecond blur. That allows for Quantum time shifting, but not a trip back to grandma. And it would explain why a dynamic force, in every INSTANT of time still has value, like the scalar/vector comparison. And why , if you had a differential that was discontinuous at a certain point, the physical model doesn't cease to exist or act. It would also add to the interpretation of Brownian motion, the movement of electrons in the shell, and 'faster than light' problems. The question is how to quantify and detect it in a subjective sphere of observation. Well, gotta go, my nanosecond of coffeebreak is over !!
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Chris Smith
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Re: Help Find Flaw

Post by Chris Smith »

I think what were going to find is that time, like all other physical properties in the universe isn’t quite what we thought it to be. Carl Sagan mentioned about 13 dimensions right after the big bang, and that was heady. <p> I think we will be able to “quantify” time like we have the “C” in constant, but where that leads for now will be a great mystery. <p>Yes, time is not about jumping back one hundred years, or even forward more than the Space-Time function can support, [like a package of two vectors] but perhaps we can tweak it a little for now, and like bouncing off of a berm, we find we can reinforce gravity and traction to enhance something else down the road?<p>[ August 24, 2005: Message edited by: Chris Smith ]</p>
Bernius1
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Re: Help Find Flaw

Post by Bernius1 »

I agree. If rearward travel is 1 femtosecond in a 'threshold' of 4 fsec's, then media which exploit that quantum dynamic would see a 25% increase in transmission rate. And, as you have to BUY something to get a discount, you'd get a 'time' discount as you go forward. But considering that electricity is notably slower then light, the photonic/fibre optic medium is necessary to realize a quantifiable benefit.
Give it 50 years. Chemically, I think new materials will be found/created based on these properties. And if they can use X-rays, all the better. They tend to have good transmissivity !
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Chris Smith
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Re: Help Find Flaw

Post by Chris Smith »

Time and the expansion of space are parallel to each other.
To get from one to the other, isn’t time or travel, and any small tweak in one should grossly affect the other. <p>We seem to be playing around that threshold at the moment with the entangled photon pair.
Bernius1
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Re: Help Find Flaw

Post by Bernius1 »

Chris, what a lovely can of worms ! My understanding of the 'entangled pair' is this; The only true relationship that the pair shares is identical frequency and phase. Like the exact color of cyan in color TV. So the decillion other photons have differing phase and frequency. Big deal. How could you accurately discriminate ? Trekkies ??????
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Chris Smith
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Re: Help Find Flaw

Post by Chris Smith »

The interesting point of the entangled pair is when you separate them by distance, they act as one with out any time frame involved? <p>No back and forth across distance, but Rather instantaneously they act in concert.
[By what mechanism is the mystery for now]<p>When you crash one, the other ceases to exist as a photon at the EXACT moment in time regardless of distance apart. <p>For one to communicate to the other, one would suspect a time lapse must occur based on the actual distance light travels, [at a minimum], yet even distance between photons take exactly zero amounts of time to “happen” for the both of them to act on each other, or to disappear from our view and back into energy.<p> One experiment sent two photons in opposite directions down a light pipe, and as time went by, they got further and further apart from each other. Yet when one was crashed into a solid object, at that exact moment in time the other one self annihilate its photon existence back into energy even though the light pipe was longer and the photon could continue down its path. <p> It happened in ZERO time? <p>Communication between the two should have involved the distance between each other, times the time it takes to travel that distance.
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