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IPredict: Speed of light actually exceeded by 2015

4 points by PythonDeveloper ↗ HN
Okay all you theoretical zealots, save your anger and your rage for someone else. You won't get my goat on this one.

It's widely accepted that c0, the speed of light in a vacuum, which has a refractive index of 1.0, is 299,792,458 meters per second (1).

The speed of light is widely seen as finite and the upper limit of any movement of anything with a positive rest mass. Most texts state with absolute conviction (something that is supposed to be unattainable in science) that even in experiments where the speed of light is exceeded, since the group velocity of the wave carries no information (wait, what?) it's not really occurring.

Science also assumes that a vacuum is the ultimate medium through which light can travel, which is why the speed of light (aka c0) is always quoted as measured in a vacuum.

I predict that by the end of 2015, subject to the end of the world later this year, experiments in superconductivity will show that light passing through a superconductive field having a refractive index of less than 1 will result in light exceeding c0, until that light encounters another field with a refractive index of 1 or more.

I also predict that we won't know what the hell to do with this, since CPU processing and memory access can't currently handle information at even c0 speeds, and passing information across the superconductive substrate at a refractive index of 0.9999999999 will cause a backlog of information at the CPU or memory controller, negating the benefit.

Nonetheless, the speed of light will be broken, causing either (a) the opening of scientific minds and the cessation of arbitrary unproven limits to fit mathematical models or, most likely, (b) the redirection and application of millions of man hours of the greatest minds in science to disprove this finding in order to preserve the status quo.

What say you?

References : (1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light

4 comments

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PythonDeveloper
Math majors, please correct me if I'm mistaken, but by my calculations, we won't be able to handle C0 speed data in CPUs until we hit 15 Phz (Petahertz) ( or 15,000,000 Ghz ) clock frequencies AND data/memory operations take 1 cycle, assuming 20 nanometer scale.

While we haven't seen the Lorentz factor (1) (mass expends to infinite as speed of light is approached), we're still only 3/15000000 of the way there. If Lorentz was correct (his theory can't be proved until we reach the speed of light or very close to it), then we'll never be able to compute at C0 speed, or even 50% of C0 speed AND convey information.

I suspect he's not, since, as I postulated above, the speed of light is NOT fixed but relative to our inability to measure in field with a refractive index less than 1.

I also believe that the reason we use a refractive index of 1 for a vacuum and not 0 is to allow for the possibility of finding a field with a refractive index of less than 1.

References: (1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_factor

Compofchef
Magnets, how do they work?
PythonDeveloper
Superconductivity is as near as we can come to cancelling the effect of gravitation, so this is more like anti-magnetism.

A vacuum is still subject to gravitational waves, and we have had no way to test without gravitational waves to date.

cludge
HowTo: test without gravitational waves

Step 1: Reverse the Polarity

Step 2: Done