Posted by Nicholas | Have you seen this article? I doubt it, because it wasn’t featured very prominently. I almost missed it myself. It was on the Daily Telegraph news site, where I frequently visit, but it was in the second string list of articles at the bottom. And yet this story, if it is true, is devastating. Think of it – we have always been told that it is impossible (not almost impossible or maybe impossible, but im-bloody-possible) for anything to travel faster than the speed of light. And that’s that, end of discussion. Then all of a sudden these two scientists announce that they have managed to make an object travel “instantaneously” between to points. That is to say, in no time at all. No time at all, of course, is faster than the speed of 186,000 miles per second that light takes to go from A to B.
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I have no idea if this is true or not, or if these claims have been examined, or if they simply misread their data, but if Dr. Nimtz and Dr. Stahlhofen have actually achieved this, the implications are mind-boggling. As the article says, this is “an achievement that would undermine our entire understanding of space and time.” That doesn’t happen very often. Among other things, it would not rule out time travel, which has long been the stuff of science fiction. That idea is mind boggling! If it truly is achievable, you not only would be faced with where you want to go for your vacation, but when. I’d love to see ancient Egypt, and I’d also love to see Victorian London… to be going on with. I know one of the arguments that has been raised against time travel has been that if it ever becomes possible, next year or in a million years time, how come we don’t see tourists from the future about the place? This begs the question: Will we know what they look like? I’ve never been convinced by that argument. I always thought time travel was impossible because of E=MC2 but now, who knows? I just rather doubt that, in the event that it is possible, it will arrive in time for me to enjoy it, but meanwhile I will keep an eye open for future developments about this claim of Drs. Nimtz and Stahlhofen.
Come to think of it, those two people walking down the street outside my house… How do I know they are not history students from the years 5000 on a field trip?
This posting originally appeared at A Gentleman’s Domain
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