At 1:53 PM 12/8/4, Keith Nagel wrote: >Hi Horace. > >I wanted to address you points with the article text, but >the link has gone sour... > >Anyway, I think your differentiation is moot. I can build >a radio circuit that displays behavior EXACTLY as shown >in the graph.
Yes, but that is not *my* point. My point is that the graph is really a histogram comprised of individual photon measurements. Some are faster than light. The subject measurements (in the graph) show that, but conventional QM, especially QED shows that to be true theoretically also. Some photons can be *statistically* depended upon to be faster than light. The method I suggest takes advantage of that fact to transmit data faster than light on average. I don't know of any method for detecting single photon radio waves, but such a method might exist. >The link I posted to Nimtz illustrates >how this can be done ( my own work is unpublished or >I'd link you to it instead). The key issue remains, how do we >define velocity? It could be defined, for a two way data transmission system, as repeated meaningful transmission of data x over distance d, and return in average time t of transmission t of a meaningful response message f(x), as v = t/(2d). Achieving FTL is then the condition v > c, or t < 2d/c. I think the method I proposed achieves this. >As the authors point out, the older notions >of group and phase velocity need be extended to include >a third velocity, what they call the "signal velocity" >or what I call the transistion or shock velocity. > >Horace writes: >>I think it is fairly well known in QM that all photons >>do not travel at c, but rather have a distribution of travel times. > >Really? Are you saying that photons in a vacuum can travel >faster or slower than c according to QM? That doesn't >seem right to me. Or are you trying to describe the fact >that photons tend to take all possible paths from the >source to the receiver and therefore arrival times can >vary. I seem to remember this from Feynmans QED, and I've seen >the exact same thing with free space antennae. Both. In his book *QED - The Strange Theory of Light and Matter*, Princeton University Press, 1985, Feynman states on page 89: "The major contribution of P(A to B) occurs at the conventional speed of light - when (X_2 - X_1) is equal to (T_2 - T_1). - where one would expect it all to occur, but there is also an amplitude for light to go faster (or slower) that the conventional speed of light. You found out in the last lecture that light doesn't only go in straight lines; now you you find out it doesn't only go at the speed of light!" He does go on to say [importantly]: "It may surprise you that there is an amplitude for a photon to go faster or slower than the conventional speed c. The amplitudes for these possibilities are very small compared to the contribution from speed c; in fact they canel out when light travels over long distances." It appears (from the data) the subject experimenters found a means of extending the range of the alternative amplitudes through use of polarized photons and a birefringent fiber. In any event, I think the data published in the graph support the FTL communications means I proposed. Regards, Horace Heffner
