Talk:Günter Nimtz

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[edit] 2007 Article

Anyone with more understanding on the subject care to update the article to cover this new claim: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/08/16/scispeed116.xml

It was a "red linked" on Drudge Report on 8/16/07 at 6:43pm. Seems questionable enough not to bother with the main FTL article just yet.

Bsurette 22:44, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

I've added a paragraph on this, with cites to Nimtz's e-print, and an article which analyzes the claims. Although I didn't delete the Telegraph article from the external links, news media articles don't really seem up to the task of explaining what was actually in the paper, and the media mostly doesn't seem to be seeking out other physicists for reactions. Kingdon 14:31, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Dr. Nimtz told New Scientist magazine: "For the time being, this is the only violation of special relativity that I know of." Dr. Nimtz should check out the internet; there are a number of people who have made experiments violating special relativity. To mind comes, Dr. Lijun Wang, Dr. Raymond Chiao, and William Walker. Also if you care to check out: http://www.wbabin.net/erdmann/erdmann.htm you'll find experiments showing that magnetic fields and electrostatic fields can be used to transmit information faster than the speed of light. I have forwarded this information to Dr. Nimtz, but he has not returned my email. I also gave Dr. Stahlhofen our web page. He answered me, but it seems he did not understand it correctly; he thinks for some reason that we accidently stumbled onto nearfield superluminal radio wave experiments, which is not the case.Steinhauer 17:50, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Copyvio

I'm not sure of the right way to flag this, but much of the text in this article appears to be taken directly from a seven-year-old article on Science News Online. Kyle Maxwell 19:30, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I've removed the offending text and put a note on User talk:Kim Dent-Brown. It is possible to remove those old revisions from the article history, as described at Wikipedia:Oversight (I think a copyvio would just be a "regular" administrator removal of a revision, rather than an oversight removal), but I don't know much about that. Kingdon 13:42, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mozart

I removed the following text:

He contends that information can indeed travel faster than c, casting doubts on both causality and special relativity. In 1995, for example, his research team encoded Mozart's 40th symphony in a microwave beam traveling at 4.7 times c to a receiver.

The most obvious reason was a nit-picky ones (given where this was placed, it wasn't clear whether "he" was Nimtz or Steinberg). But the more fundamental reason is that, although the symphony encoding has been widely reported in the press, it isn't clear what was done with the symphony and why it would matter whether it was a symphony or a simple pulse. If people really want this factoid included, I'm not firmly opposed (if it has a reference, etc, etc). But my past reasoning has always been the symphony does more to muddy the waters and spice things up than to actually explain what the experiment did. Kingdon 18:54, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Einstein quote

I've removed the following:

Perhaps Einstein's view on this subject is appropriate here. In the 15th chapter of part I of his book on special relativity, Einstein stated (according to the authorized translation of Robert W. Lawson): ”Let me add a final remark of a fundamental nature. The success of the Farady-Maxwell interpretation of electromagnetic action at a distance resulted in physicists becoming convinced that there are no such things as instantaneous actions at a distance (not involving an intermediary medium) of the type of Newton’s law of gravitation. According to the theory of relativity, action at a distance with the velocity of light always takes the place of instantaneous action at a distance or of action at a distance with an infinite velocity of transmission. This is connected with the fact that the velocity c plays a fundamental role in this theory”. (End of quote) An actual statement that nothing can move faster than the speed of light is not found in his book, and yet Einstein is often quoted as making a statement to this effect.

The text, in addition to having problems with tone, WP:NPOV, and lack of relevance to Nimtz's work, is misinterpreting Einstein. The Einstein quote is pretty much as close to saying "nothing can move faster than c" as one gets in science (which deals in the weight of the evidence, rather than absolute certainties). Kingdon 13:21, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

The reason why I put in the "Einstein quote" is to let people know in Einstein's own words why he believed that nothing could move faster than the speed of light. The added paragraph was not misinterpreting Einstein, since these were his exact words as translated by Robert W. Lawson. The relevance to Nimtz's work is the fact that if it was not for Einstein and those who followed him, Nimtz's experiments would have been accepted without any problem. Before Einstein scientists believed that force fields such as gravity, magnetic fields, and electrostatic fields acted instantaneously over a distance. It was Einstein who changed all that. Furthermore, Nimtz did three experiments in regard to quantum tunneling, the other two were sending a microwave signal through a dielectric barrier, and sending a microwave signal through an undersized waveguide. Both of those experiments also showed superluminal speeds of the microwave signal. I believe these experiments should also be added to the article.Steinhauer 00:03, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Paragraph Removed

I removed the text below. The tone is immature, and the discussion is crackpot. 153.90.113.189 (talk) 23:59, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

-- BELOW IS THE DELETED TEXT --

Transmitting signals faster than light is only prohibited under Einstein's axiomatic assumption of the Speed of Light in the currently observable 4D continuum. A virtual photon is outside of this continuum and is related to the preferred frame of reference. Even in 4D Space a violation of causality due to faster than light signalling in 4D space is counterintuitive. Classical causality is not based on any thought speed limits but on the mere fact that a causing event happens before an effect event linked to it. And if this is just a nano second before and the distance is from Earth to the Moon, classical ausality will not be violated. E.g. if Bob targeted a Laser to the Moon then Alice, on the lunar station, would detect the actual light signal. However, Alice could also detect actual photons arriving with light speed and virtual photons arriving faster than the actual light signal. However the virtual signal would still only arrive after it was initiated by Bob. Certainly no causality problem is to be expected here. Einstein's theories relate to the 4D continuum but not to the configuration space which enfolds 4D space. Even if Bob just had to think of sending the message and the virtual photon would be emitted through a direct tubular emitter in his brain, the decision to send the message is the cause and it would still precede the sending of the message. The problem a lot of scientists seem to have with causality originates in the mathematical mechanisms of Einstein's model. However Einstein himself always regarded the mathematical framework as absolutely dependend and as such inferior to the intuitive problem solving capability of humans. Today many scientists show a tendency to derive hypothesis from a mathematical tool-construct instead of from intuition. Mathematics will not for a long time replace the human genius but can only model it and wait for the next creative thought process and it's subsequent and compulsive adaptation.