The speed of light is the fastest in the universe. At least that’s what Einstein’s principle of general relativity claims. According to him, it is not possible for an object with mass to exceed it in a vacuum. This barrier of nearly 300 million meters per second would therefore be an insurmountable limit.
The speed of light exceeded thanks to quantum physics
However, researchers at the Technical University of Darmstadt (Germany) observed particles going even faster, indicates Interesting Engineering. This happened through the prism of quantum physics. In this domain, particles can express several states at the same time. An atom can therefore be both a wave and a particle.
This plurality of states can give rise to the tunnel effect. This phenomenon consists of crossing an energy barrier while the element which crosses it does not have such energy. But in doing so, the two physicists were able to see that certain particles went beyond the speed of light.
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Nature takes its time…
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Nature takes its time…
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Although quantum physics undermines the theory of general relativity, this observation pushed the two physicists Patrik Schach and Enno Giuesen to wonder about a possible inaccurate measurement of time. They detail in a study published in Science Advances how he intends to verify the passage of time.
An almost imperceptible effect on the scale of a single atom
In their experiment, they propose using a device in which a tunneling particle is used as a clock. At the same time, a non-tunneled particle will serve as a reference. Using a laser pulse, the researchers will oscillate the atoms and start the clock.
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Nature takes its time…
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The challenge will be to succeed in perceiving this gap. According to the study, the effects could be counted in fractions of a second. We are talking here about a difference of 10 to the power of -26 (i.e. 26 digits after the decimal point). But to make the gap more visible, a cloud of atoms rather than a single particle could activate the clock. This will amplify the effect and allow you to check whether the time is calculated correctly or not.
