#speed of

[dobbybot]

Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own set of laws.

[dobbybot]

Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own set of laws.

[dobbybot]

Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own set of laws.

[thatentropydude]

The Speed of Light has been Broken!

The speed of light was broken by two physicists, Gunter Nimtz and Alfons Stahlhofen, in Germany from the University of Koblenz. This seriously questions Einstein's theory that no object or information can move faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. An example of what could happen with this is time travel, but not like you imagine: If you went for a car trip faster than the speed of light, you'd arrive at your destination before you'd even leave, theoretically, of course. As Dr Guenter Nimtz said: "The effect cannot be used to go back in time, only to reduce the time between cause and effect a little bit."

But how did they do it? Hmmm... I need more research...

- http://www.interestingfacts.org/?page=fact&id=194

[jonathancorley-blog]

0.07 Seconds and Olympic Sound

With the London Olympics coming up, there have been any number of Olympic related commercials on TV recently. A recent commercial drew some vague analogy to swimming in order to sell the latest hot gizmo, Michael Phelps' 2008 win by .01 seconds was mentioned. This got me to thinking about how very little .01 seconds is, and what minute factors might cause a .01 second victory to become subject to something other than the skill of the athletes. (a slight variation between water temp in different sections of the pool, or variations in the minute water currents present, etc...) The one that stuck with me as being the most easy to actually calculate was whether the cue for the swimmers to start was from a blown horn, what the location of that horn is, and whether the difference in distance to the swimmers from the horn might actually produce a different start time based on when the sound reaches them. According to our good friend Google, the speed of sound at sea level is 340.29 m / s. So in .01 seconds, sound will travel about 3.4 m. And from the wikipedia article on Olympic sized swimming pools, the width of such a pool is 25m, with each lane measuring 2.5 m, for 10 lanes total. So if the horn were blown from a location on one end of a line directly drawn through the swimmers on the starting block, the swimmer furthest from the horn would be at a starting disadvantage of over .07 seconds, or 7 times the margin by which Michael Phelps won his gold in 2008. Different locations of the horn would produce varying results, but none would be fair to all swimmers unless each lane had its own speaker transmitting the sound. Now this is where Google has failed me and I'm prevailing on the crowd sourcing method: does anyone actually know how Olympic swimmers get their cue to start? Is it a horn and if so, where is it located? Is there also a light they can see ahead? It seems as though an automated visual cue or horns located in each lane would be the only fair way to give each swimmer an equal start. My assumption is that one of the above is probably true, but it seemed an interesting exercise in thought anyway and makes one wonder about whether the thin margins of victory in such events are really meaningful.

via: xkcdforum, minstrel