Thursday, August 14, 2008

100,000 Times Faster Than Light!

Physicists spooked by faster-than-light information transfer
But the new experiment shows that direct communication between the photons (at least as we know it) is simply impossible. The team simultaneously measured several properties of both photons, such as phase, when they arrived at their villages and found that they did indeed have a spooky awareness of each other’s behaviour. On the basis of their measurements, the team concluded that if the photons had communicated, they must have done so at least 100,000 times faster than the speed of light — something nearly all physicists thought would be impossible. In other words, these photons cannot know about each other through any sort of normal exchange of information.

Emphasis added by me.

I get a real kick out of things like this.

Just when we think we have Everything Figured Out, we find we're Not Even Close.

It allows for great loopholes in fiction!

Now just try to wrap your head around the idea of retrocausality -- here and here.

I am full of glee!

(Now I must go back to looking at old photos to see if I'm in them, to prove that time travel exists!)

-- via Twitter from reddit

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