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FTL (Faster Than Light) communications?

I remember seeing a spot on tv news several years ago about a small group of researchers who claimed they had sent an audio signal (human voice from a recording I believe) through a transmitter device which emitted the signal several microseconds BEFORE they had sent it!

As I recall, they said microwaves were somehow employed to allegedly accomplish this feat.

Even if FTL is possible, would not the fact that humans perceive time as linear preclude their being able to notice this effect -- since they themselves were not sent through the device along with the signal?

I think either their equipment was out of calibration, in which case the joke's on them, poor bastards, or they flat out fudged the numbers. If this were real and recreatable in the lab, one would think we'd be hearing about its progress virtually every week. It seems to me, therefore, that this has gone the way of the infamous cold fusion experiments which initially generated such furor.

Anyone care to take a stab at how a communications phenomenon like this could be measured??

-Ray

Reply to
Ray L. Volts
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Yes, and plenty on these and other newsgroups already have.

Care to do a bit of research, rather than just trolling? You might start by searching sci.electronics.design for the term "FTL". Or the term "group delay".

Reply to
Walter Harley

I'm sure Jim Thompson has a chip to handle it somewhere in his extensive, home-designed inventory.

--

"What is now proved was once only imagin'd." - William Blake, 1793.
Reply to
Paul Burridge

rayvolts posted:

Absolutely! It is done by very careful application of a KS144689 List 3 Legpuller.

Don

Reply to
Dbowey 

--
I'm sure that Jim has, in his library, things which you wouldn't even
dare to dream about, and I'm also sure that the only thing you can be
sure of of is that you're a know-nothing poser with delusions of
grandeur.  Grandeur, in your case, thinking that you know how to clean
toilets without chipping the bowl.
Reply to
John Fields

Or chipping his teeth. ROTFLMAO!

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.
Reply to
Jim Thompson

Good call!

--
Best Regards,
Mike
Reply to
Active8

That's a matter for the Feds. His private life is no concern of mine.

Hehe! Yeah, whatever.

--

"What is now proved was once only imagin'd." - William Blake, 1793.
Reply to
Paul Burridge

Right0- Burridge typifies the riffraff who come on USENET to shoot their f--g mouth off with a bunch of specious verbiage in some puerile attempt at appearing clever. You never see this crowd do anything productive- the same vermin also whine about un-professional posting. These people are sleazy unemployable rejects- the UK appears to be full of scum like this- a consequence of the end of the colonial era where there is no place left to eject the things- Australia is filled up.

Reply to
Fred Bloggs

Outrageous! I haven't been so insulted since Monday.

--

"What is now proved was once only imagin'd." - William Blake, 1793.
Reply to
Paul Burridge 

--
Putting the "received before it was transmitted' hokum aside,
determining whether superluminal communications exists is dead easy.

What you do is set up two identical communications channels and feed
their inputs with a single pulse, then measure the difference in
arrival times of the output pulses. The difference which exists will
be due to the fact that both channels aren't exactly identical, and
once that systematic delay difference is noted, the superluminal
signalling device (SSD) is introduced into one of the channels and the
measurement made again. Now, once the result of the measurement is
normalized by subtracting out the systematic delay, the delay
exhibited by the superluminal channel should be less than that
exhibited by the control channel.  The measurement should be made many
times, of course, with the SSD moved back and forth between channels
to make sure whether or not the short delay follows the SSD.
Reply to
John Fields

In article , John Fields wrote: [...]

I disagree. The experiment needs to have 2 way communications at a speed faster than light. You have to send the signal from on location, have it cause something at another and return a signal to the first. Without the return trip the FLT could be an illusion.

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kensmith@rahul.net   forging knowledge
Reply to
Ken Smith

I like that but hey we are not as bad as we would have been if we hadn't diluted the seed over the last couple of hundred years with our exports. :)

Reply to
Mjolinor

Am I missing something here? Why not set up a measurement station somewhere, and send (by conventional means... microwave, light, fiber optics, coax) a sample of the transmitted signal (from the transmit site) and the received signal (from receive site) to the common observer? It's trivial to subtract out the prop delays. The measurement site could obviously be at the transmitter, eliminating one of the comm links.

John

Reply to
John Larkin

I have just found this scribbled in one of the notebooks of my departed friend, Noah: "I have a truly marvellous demonstration (based on causality) of the impossibility of faster-than-light communication, which this margin is too narrow to contain..."

--
John Miller
Email address: domain, n4vu.com; username, jsm

First law of debate:
        Never argue with a fool.  People might not know the difference.
Reply to
John Miller 

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Dunno...
Reply to
John Fields

Is there in fact a causality violation which precludes FTL communications?

John

Reply to
John Larkin

You'd have to ask Noah, but I suspect that what would violate causality is actually any scenario in which the signal arrives before it was sent.

--
John Miller
Email address: domain, n4vu.com; username, jsm

"All God's children are not beautiful.  Most of God's children are, in fact,
barely presentable."
        -Fran Lebowitz
Reply to
John Miller

[...]

Who/what is this "common observer" and how do you they/it didn't decide what to tell you some time after the experiment is all over. If you can't prove they/it didn't, you haven't really proven FTL.

If you form the path into a simple loop, so you can see both ends, you can't rule out crosstalk.

This is why I say you need to send the signal to some device and return an answer back. If you do that you can rule out the delayed decide and the crosstalk.

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kensmith@rahul.net   forging knowledge
Reply to
Ken Smith

Because the only way to find out if your transmission got received is to compare something.

The only way is to have a transponder, say, on the moon, with your transmitter and receiver in a lab or whatever. When you receive the signal, you damn well better send the right signal "on time", or all Hell will break loose.

Remember thiotimoline?

Cheers! Rich

Reply to
Rich Grise

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