Sunday, July 24, 2011

Time Travel’s Not Possible, Say Scientists

A team of physicists have determined that we'll never, ever be able to visit bygone eras, because nothing can travel faster than the speed of light—just like Albert Einstein said; guess you'll never get to thwart World War I or make out with Clark Gable after all.

Based at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, the scientists focused on measuring how quickly a photon—"the fundamental quanta of light"—can travel; not as fast as light can, they concluded:

"By showing that single photons cannot travel faster than the speed of light, our results bring a closure to the debate on the true speed of information carried by a single photon," said [research team leader] Du [Shengwang], assistant professor of physics.

"Our findings will also likely have potential applications by giving scientists a better picture on the transmission of quantum information."


The scientists' research paper appears in Physical Review Letters.


Discovery News

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