Thursday, August 16, 2007

Beam me up Scotty

By Libby

I don't pretend to understand the science behind this, but how cool is it that someone broke the speed of light.
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.

Well that could come in handy when you're late for work.
The scientists were investigating a phenomenon called quantum tunnelling, which allows sub-atomic particles to break apparently unbreakable laws.

Therein lies the roots of my mathophobia. I've never been able to accept absolute values. I always point out if there was such a thing, then mutations would be impossible and we see those all the time in natural processes that rely on math for their explanations.

In any event, I love it when rules like this are broken. It makes me believe me in space travel of the Star Trek sort. I always dreamed of joining the Starship Federation, from the very first episode of the series.

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