Even though research on the subject is still on the fringes of mainstream science but will natural phenomena that carries information faster than the speed of light be the future of astronomy?
By: Ringo Bones
Many a scientist who criticize SETI – the Search for
Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence – using radio waves as a “dead end” because the
186,000 miles-per-second is just too slow for practical interstellar, never
mind intergalactic, communications seems to be currently ignored by the
mainstream global scientific community. And so are those who are currently
investigating into superluminar phenomena in nature that allows data and information
propagation across free space faster than the 186,000 miles-per-second /
400,000 kilometers-per-second speed limit of the speed of light. But if a
naturally occurring phenomena – or an intelligently cleaver coaxing of it –
that allows data transfer and communication faster-than-the-speed-of light not
just represent the future of SETI but also of all branches of astronomy as well?
Hints of a faster-than-light data communications that might
occur naturally has not only been speculated but also inferred in scientific
investigations ever since physicist began exploring the limits of Albert
Einstein’s General Relativity when it was published back in 1916.
Astrophysicists during the early 1970s had uncovered – based on data suggested
by the Standard Model quantum mechanics particle accelerator results at that
time – that during the few seconds after the Big Bang, the universe might have
expanded many times faster-than-light, perhaps even sever billion times faster,
but most of them point to a faster-than-light hyperinflation expansion space of
the early universe several seconds old despite current particle accelerators are
still not powerful enough to replicate such conditions.
Mainstream astronomy’s most exotic – I.e. weirdest
telescopes / astronomical instruments have hinted superluminar /
faster-than-light phenomena since their operation. Various neutrino detectors
that are buried a couple of miles beneath the surface of our planet has since
shown that supernova neutrinos often arrive before the light of the star
undergoing supernova explosion. Case in point is the Supernova 1987A that was
seen back in 1987 whose neutrinos from the supernova’s Large Magellanic Cloud
location arrived to Earth 3 hours before optical telescopes saw the supernova
back in February 23, 1987 because shockwaves from stars going supernova travel
10,000 times slower than the neutrinos before the shockwave blows the entire
star despite neutrinos still travelling at 186,000 miles per second.
Speaking of other exotic / weird astronomical instruments
that suggest the existence of superluminar / faster-than-light propagation of
information in free space, the LIGO – which stands for Laser Interferometer
Gravity-Wave Observatory, the National Science Foundation’s current most
ambitious – and NSF’s current most expensive science experiment at 367-million
US dollars (2002 dollars) has since been upgraded after it failed to detect any
gravitational waves during its operation from 2002 to 2010. The upgraded super-LIGO
is slated to detect concrete evidence of gravitational waves produced by very
energetic astronomical phenomena – like the ones produced via the collision between
two neutron stars or the collision of two black holes – as predicted by Albert
Einstein’s General Relativity when it was published back in 1916. But does LIGO’s
failure to detect gravity waves borne of mainstream astrophysics’ assumption
that the force of gravity propagates across the cosmos at 186,000 miles per
second – i.e. the speed of light?
During the early 1970s, a US Naval Observatory associate
professor Thomas Van Flandern performed a calculation which he later published
in “Physics Letters A” titled “The Speed of Gravity – What Experiments Say” which
demonstrated that the force of gravity propagated at least 20-billion times
faster than the speed of light and may propagate instantaneously across the
universe. Given that Prof. Stephen Hawking had noted in his A Brief History of
Time that the force of gravity propagates at the speed of light across the
universe, does the discrepancy between the two warrants a more thorough investigation
of naturally occurring superluminar / faster-than-light phenomena?
Is mainstream science
in general – at present – extremely skeptical when it comes to conducting
experiments / research / reexaminations of empirical evidences of natural
phenomena suggesting the existence of faster-than-light information and signal
propagation across free space? Well, currenly accepted ones suggesting the
existence of faster-than-light information / data propagation, like Albert
Einstein’s Quantum Entanglement in which he nicknamed as the “spooky action at
a distance”, Quantum Tunnelling, the EPR Experiment Paradox – i.e. the Albert
Einstein Boris Podolsky Nathan Rosen Experiment Paradox – all date back from
the 1930s and more recent experiments suggesting the existence of superluminar
phenomena that warrant further investigation seems to be quickly swept under
the rug by mainstream science.
If proven to be true, superluminar phenomena /
faster-than-light phenomena which could form the basis for Superluminar
Astronomy / Faster-Than-Light Astronomy could well revolutionize the science of
astronomy as we know it. Not just by changing our overall picture of the
universe but also having the ability to control robotic spacecraft on distant
planets as if they were just a few miles away using a data transfer / signal
transfer method faster than the speed of light. Imagine being able to control
those robotic rovers on Mars without the 20-minute delay due to the 186,000
miles-per-second speed limit of the speed of light which takes radio waves as
much as 20 minutes to reach the surface of the planet Mars; Or being able to
finally join the “Cosmic Internet” that allowed the free sharing ideas of
intelligent beings across the universe using signals that allow the transfer of
information and signals several billion times faster than the speed of light
across the vast emptiness of interstellar space.
