German scientists claims to have broken speed of light

Discussion
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Did anyone else read or hear about this? Think it's true?

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From http://www.intomobile.com/2007/08/20/german-scientists-claims-to-have-broken-speed-of-light-could-quantum-tunneling-allow-instant-communication.html :

German scientists claims to have broken speed of light - could quantum tunneling allow instant communication?

Posted by Will on Monday, August 20th, 2007 at 5:14 pm under Technologies, General
Tagged: instant, instantaneous, light, photons, quantum, speed and tunneling

We’re used to breaking the speed limit laws on our local highways and byways - they’re more like suggested speeds than real, hard limits to us. Unlike these laws governing the speed of our vehicles, the law governing the speed of light cannot ever be broken. Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity prohibits the transmission light faster than 300,000km per second - and it’s a basic tenet of physics that requires an infinite amount of energy to propel anything past the speed of light.

Apparently, German physicists, Günter Nimtz and Alfons Stahlhofen, from the University of Koblenz are claiming that they have successfully broken the speed barrier - the speed of light. In an experiement involving two prism halves, the pair of scientists claimed to have observed the instantaneous transmission of microwave photons between the two halves of the prism, which were separated by a 3 foot gap. The scientists claim to have taken advantage of a phenomenon known as “quantum tunneling” to force light to move instantaneously across this gap.



The principle of quantum tunneling allows sub-atomic particles to break the speed of light, and allowed for the faster-than-light travel of these photons. But, could this phenomenon be leveraged to develop technology that would allow instantaneous, or almost instantaneous communication between distant locations? As of now, the answer is most likely a resounding “no.” Regardless of the principle of “quantum tunneling,” information still cannot be passed instantaneously through any distance.

Another note - this story has been circulating the internets like wildfire, but we should all take this claim with a grain of salt. Discoveries like this need to be replicated and substantiated by other scientists before we can believe the findings of a single research group. We hope this experiment will prove to be valid, but we just don’t know yet.

As far as instant wireless communication goes, it’s an amazing proposition for now. Hopefully, it’ll become more of a reality in the future. But how cool would that be? “Where you at?” “China.” “Cool.”

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Somebody is way over-reacting to this news. As the article says:
“Regardless of the principle of “quantum tunneling,” information still
cannot be passed instantaneously through any distance.” It’s been known
for decades that Special Relativity does not forbid faster-than-light
influences, while forbidding only faster-than-light signaling (i.e.
information transmission). At http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_paradox it
says: “The ‘spooky action at a distance’ that so disturbed the authors of
EPR consistently occurs in numerous and widely replicated experiments”.
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_teleportation and especially
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheeler’s_delayed_choice_experiment . The
delayed-choice double-slit experiment is one of the spookiest things about
quantum theory. I summarize it in my book
<http://humanknowledge.net/Thoughts.html> this way:

* Double-slit interference. Quanta (e.g. photons or electrons) are
emitted one by one toward a screen protected by a barrier with two slits.
When it is checked which slit each quantum passes through, they impact the
screen directly behind the transited slit. When it is not checked, they
impact the screen in an interference pattern suggesting that each quantum
travels as a wave through both slits and interferes with itself.
* Delayed choice. In a modified double-slit experiment, one may choose
to replace the screen, a moment before each quantum hits it, with a detector
that can determine which slit the quantum transited. The choice can happen
well after the quantum has transited the slitted barrier, and yet this
delayed choice again determines whether the quantum self-interferes on the
screen or is counted by one of the two detectors !

Even if the slit pair is one light year away, your last-second choice about
how to detect the impact of a photon mysteriously and instantly influences
whether the photon acts like it 1) passed through a single one of the two
slits a year earlier, or 2) passed through both slits a year earlier and
interfered with itself. This is why quantum theorists talk of the universe
as being in a "superposition" of multiple states, and that acts of
observation then "collapse the wave function" into a single (or at least
more-constrained) history of what happened earlier in the universe's
lifetime.

The experimental reality of quantum physics makes it much easier to accept
an even wilder idea: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_realism . Such
many-worlds (or "ensemble") theories can be seen as the best alternative to
cosmological arguments for the existence of some order-causing agency (which
gets personified as "God"). The tricky question then becomes: what happens
to ethics when every possible world is in some sense "real", and for every
bad choice you could ever make, there is a "real" universe in which "you" in
fact made it? The answer lies ultimately in those scare quotes around
"you", and the metaphysical theory of identity...

OK, back to work, I've still got some code to check in.