Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from coast to coast am on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Proper number off faster than light. How your shadow can
Speaker 2: do it but you can't is really good. Is this
Speaker 2: a material taken from lectures that you've given or you've
Speaker 2: pulled it together over the years.
Speaker 3: Well, I've always had interest. For many many years, I
Speaker 3: had an interest, and I've actually published on some of
Speaker 3: the strange aspects in science journals, some of the strange
Speaker 3: aspects that shadows and laser spots can do when they
Speaker 3: when they go faster than lights. Because even the physics community,
Speaker 3: once they see the logic, they don't disagree with it,
Speaker 3: but they're unaware of it. So if you were to
Speaker 3: go and speak to someone you know that's versed in physics,
Speaker 3: they would say, oh, no, no, that can't happen. But
Speaker 3: once you explain to them the logic of how it
Speaker 3: does happen, they'll say, oh, yeah, yeah, that's kind of cool.
Speaker 3: And it is. So it's really strange. It's it's one
Speaker 3: of these untold stories out there that there's this whole
Speaker 3: universe of things that happen faster than light that we
Speaker 3: don't know. For instance, when you turn on a room
Speaker 3: light the room. At first the room is completely dark,
Speaker 3: and after a second, for sure the room is completely illuminated. Well,
Speaker 3: the boundary between dark and light moves across the law
Speaker 3: faster than light. So if you could see at those speeds,
Speaker 3: you would be able to see a much different universe.
Speaker 3: You would see lots of things moving faster than light
Speaker 3: all the time. And so one of the reasons why
Speaker 3: we can't do it, why we can't see it, is
Speaker 3: because our brains and minds are so slow. That would
Speaker 3: mean that it just doesn't come through. But now with
Speaker 3: modern technology, we can have times rapid time lapse photography
Speaker 3: and see these things.
Speaker 2: You drop a lot of really cool historical facts in
Speaker 2: the book about you know, the the understanding of the
Speaker 2: speed of light, how it developed and changed over the centuries.
Speaker 2: Maybe let's start there, I mean, tell us a little
Speaker 2: bit about and what you cover in the talk about
Speaker 2: the first folks to try to measure the speed light,
Speaker 2: is it Galileo or even before that.
Speaker 3: People have been been speculating about the speed of light
Speaker 3: since since in most of recorded history. For instance, as
Speaker 3: you noted, let's see Aristotle and you clip back in
Speaker 3: the you know BC times they sort of thought that.
Speaker 3: They sort of thought that what happens is light doesn't
Speaker 3: come from an object, from a star, or from a
Speaker 3: light to you. Light goes from your eye to the
Speaker 3: object you're seeing. And for most of human history that's
Speaker 3: the way humans thought. It was. Every now and then
Speaker 3: someone would say, no it I think it's the other way.
Speaker 3: But that was not what most people believed. And it
Speaker 3: was only around one thousand a d that that it
Speaker 3: was more and more realized that no, no, no, that
Speaker 3: that's not the way it is. Light actually comes goes
Speaker 3: from something and comes to us, and that's when so
Speaker 3: back in the DC times, people thought, well, the Steed
Speaker 3: light must be infinite, because when your eyes are closed,
Speaker 3: you don't see something, and then when you open your eyes,
Speaker 3: then light goes out from your eyes and you can
Speaker 3: see things, even stars that are far away. Therefore, the
Speaker 3: speedelite must be effectically infinite. But once people realized that
Speaker 3: light was coming from other things into their eye, then
Speaker 3: people realize, well, maybe it's not infinite, maybe it's it's
Speaker 3: got some speed. But for many years they just couldn't
Speaker 3: measured it. It was so fast, as I like to tell
Speaker 3: my students, there's really only three numbers in conceptual astrosoutics.
Speaker 3: One is infinity, which means it was really too fast
Speaker 3: or too big to measure. One is one means that
Speaker 3: we measured it. It's one of those, and the other
Speaker 3: is zero. The third number and astrophys this is zero
Speaker 3: because it means it's too small to measure. It might
Speaker 3: be there, we don't know its size, but it's effectively zero.
Speaker 3: So for a lot of human history, the speedlite was
Speaker 3: infinite because it was just too fast to measure. We
Speaker 3: couldn't do it. So people like Galileo they tried to
Speaker 3: do it. They would go to the mountaintops or hilltops,
Speaker 3: and then someone else could in another hilltop, and they
Speaker 3: had lanterns, and they had black things they could, you know,
Speaker 3: they could put over the lanterns. And so they would
Speaker 3: make deal feel you and your your hilltop. When you
Speaker 3: see me uncover my lanterns, you uncover your lantern and
Speaker 3: I'll count the amount of seconds it takes before I
Speaker 3: can see your lanterns. And so Galileo did this and
Speaker 3: other people did this, and they found out wall it
Speaker 3: was out a second. No, it's about two seconds. No,
Speaker 3: it's about half a second. And they realized they weren't
Speaker 3: getting a consistent answer, and Galileo realized that, no, I
Speaker 3: just don't believe it. It was infinitely fast. What we're
Speaker 3: really measuring is how long it takes to uncover the lanterns.
Speaker 3: They're not really measuring anything to do with the state
Speaker 3: of light. So many efforts measured the super fast speed
Speaker 3: of light just fouled until suddenly, in the sixteen hundred,
Speaker 3: someone who was not famous just happened to be doing
Speaker 3: something that some people didn't, you know, think would be
Speaker 3: all that interesting, and they got a result that they
Speaker 3: didn't understand. But that result was the door. That door
Speaker 3: was that we went through is the finite speed of light.
Speaker 3: And that person was Olay Roamer and a Roamer. What
Speaker 3: they were doing is they were just watching the moons
Speaker 3: of Jupiter. And when the moons of Jupiter, particularly Iisle,
Speaker 3: would go behind Jupiter go in front of Jupiter, and
Speaker 3: Romer noticed it was just something odd about the timing
Speaker 3: of these eclipses, and the eclipses would take longer in
Speaker 3: some circumstances and shorter in other circumstances, and it just
Speaker 3: didn't seem to make sense. And so meanwhile, on the
Speaker 3: other people on the next bill trying to uncover lanterns,
Speaker 3: but the roamer was saying, hey, wait a minute, can
Speaker 3: you understand this? And the answer it turns out that
Speaker 3: Olay Rummer was actually the first to discover the finite
Speaker 3: speed of light, and to measure it was in a
Speaker 3: small fraction of the not super actively, but relatively accurately,
Speaker 3: like but we know it today. The discovery was just
Speaker 3: a bit of a surprise, and it advanced human knowledge
Speaker 3: in a great way by just a sort of a
Speaker 3: thirddipitous results.
Speaker 2: You write a couple of different places in the book
Speaker 2: about there being more than one speed of light? Can
Speaker 2: you explain that?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 3: So now we know in modern science we know a
Speaker 3: lot about the speed of lighte. And we know that
Speaker 3: the speed a light in objects. So when you look
Speaker 3: through water, the speed light and water is not the
Speaker 3: same as the speed a light in air or in vacuum.
Speaker 3: Speed light through air and vacuum are actually very similar.
Speaker 3: It's a very small fractional percentage difference between us. But
Speaker 3: in water it's like third flower. But there's different even
Speaker 3: kinds of light. We now know things about the way
Speaker 3: light works, and there's phases, and there's something called the
Speaker 3: group velocity. The group colosity is more of us how
Speaker 3: long it will take light to go from you to
Speaker 3: a mirror to bounce back. If you measure that speed,
Speaker 3: which we can now do with great accuracy, you're measuring
Speaker 3: the group philosity of light. Also thing it's called the
Speaker 3: phase velocity. Words, if you measure how much light is deflected,
Speaker 3: that tells. But that's not all that important.
Speaker 1: Really.
Speaker 3: It's important for understanding the details of physics and how
Speaker 3: things work. But in terms of the conceptual speed light,
Speaker 3: we now know that the speed light and glass is
Speaker 3: different than the speed light and water, and the speed
Speaker 3: light and water is different than the speed a light
Speaker 3: and air, which is slightly different than the speed light
Speaker 3: and vacuum. And the fastest that we know that anything
Speaker 3: can pass you by is the speed a light in vacuum,
Speaker 3: and so we call that the speed of light, but
Speaker 3: it really means fastest speed that we know of in
Speaker 3: terms of something that has energy and mass can go.
Speaker 2: Understand the speed of light is not just an exercise
Speaker 2: in and of itself. I mean it helps to understand
Speaker 2: the much bigger picture of the universe we live in
Speaker 2: and the nature of reality.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, so light is just a fundamental thing. It's
Speaker 3: one of the used to dominate the universe. The photons
Speaker 3: that the make up light used to have the most
Speaker 3: energy in the unit. But now the universe has evolved
Speaker 3: that the light has has become less comparatively energetic where
Speaker 3: it's mass, and now something called dark energy have not
Speaker 3: diluted like light. So now light is there's lots of
Speaker 3: there's like billions of pieces of photons for every atom
Speaker 3: in that we know of. But still the amount of
Speaker 3: energy in light is down, has gone down down a lot,
Speaker 3: and so now light is more isn't most useful for
Speaker 3: its mass and its energy doesn't the energy it has,
Speaker 3: it's most useful for what it can tell us because
Speaker 3: it's acrossed the universe from far away, and so when
Speaker 3: we look at it near and far and we can
Speaker 3: try to decode what it is. Light was created someplace,
Speaker 3: Light was reflected from someplace, was emitted in some place,
Speaker 3: and we we we pieced together the universe from the
Speaker 3: light we see pretty much.
Speaker 2: You have some fun exercises in the book. There's no
Speaker 2: way we can cover all of them, but one of
Speaker 2: them early in the book is an aside where you
Speaker 2: the title is nothing can go fast faster than light,
Speaker 2: which is I think probably the general assumption that most
Speaker 2: of us non scientists would suggest. But you say that,
Speaker 2: if you were to head into local university and ask
Speaker 2: a random physics student if anything or if shadows could
Speaker 2: go faster than light, you're probably going to get an
Speaker 2: answer no, nothing would go faster than light. But they'd
Speaker 2: be wrong, right.
Speaker 3: Yes, they would be wrong. So it's an amazing thing.
Speaker 3: I've given talks and I've had you know, good physicists
Speaker 3: in the audience object saying oh no, that can't happen,
Speaker 3: and then when I try to detail it, they don't
Speaker 3: even want to let me continue. So we get into
Speaker 3: an awkward part where I say, oh no. But then
Speaker 3: I think at another university that has justice prestigious scientists
Speaker 3: and they a lot of it, they say, oh, yeah, this
Speaker 3: is really interesting, this is really great. So yeah, if
Speaker 3: you were to go to this experiment, you might find
Speaker 3: people there who would seem to disagree with this, but
Speaker 3: unless what you can do is you can tell them
Speaker 3: to look up my articles, not only my articles, there
Speaker 3: are other articles, and then to read this book. And
Speaker 3: it really it makes it very clear and it's been
Speaker 3: measured in the last too, that shadows and laser spots
Speaker 3: and illumination fronts, like when you turn on the light
Speaker 3: in the room, they all can move, and they do
Speaker 3: move faster than life.
Speaker 2: And you say, you write that you've submitted papers to
Speaker 2: recognize physics journals and had them rejected because that editors say,
Speaker 2: oh no, there's no way this paper is flawed because
Speaker 2: nothing can go faster than light. They're wrong.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that has happened too. So what happens is we
Speaker 3: we have editors that know. So when you send in
Speaker 3: use some research, you send it into a journal. So
Speaker 3: the journal you send it into the editor signs an editor.
Speaker 3: Then the editor has what's called referees. You can picture
Speaker 3: there are scientists and sit around with stripes on them
Speaker 3: and they advise the editor as to whether this piece
Speaker 3: of science writing that was submitted to journal should be
Speaker 3: published or not. Many things submitted to journals are not
Speaker 3: published because the editor, on advice of the referee usually said,
Speaker 3: oh no. So we now know for some journals some
Speaker 3: editors are are cluing and they understand what we're doing
Speaker 3: and that this is correct. But if we get the
Speaker 3: wrong editor and the wrong editor submits it to the
Speaker 3: wrong referee, then we just get back a wrote rejection
Speaker 3: which we know to try to push pass. We try
Speaker 3: to find we asked that editors send to a different
Speaker 3: referee where we ask that another editor takeover. And so
Speaker 3: since we are able to publish our stuff, that is
Speaker 3: a successful tactic. But you're right, we've gotten just you know,
Speaker 3: back an immediate thing saying oh no, this can't be
Speaker 3: right because someone hasn't thought it through. They just they
Speaker 3: remember some you know, some adage that says nothing to
Speaker 3: go faster than light, but which is nothing can pack
Speaker 3: with masks can pack you faster than lights. So far
Speaker 3: as we know, we don't have any examples of that.
Speaker 3: But shadows can go way, the spots can go, things
Speaker 3: can go, and these things can be very very interesting
Speaker 3: and tell us things about the universe that we didn't
Speaker 3: know before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you have one experiment in the book that where
Speaker 2: you point a laser pointer at the moon and it
Speaker 2: can go. You can whip it around and it could
Speaker 2: go faster than the speed of light RT.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So one of my favorite favorite thought experiments, and
Speaker 3: there's a lot of conceptual thought experiments in the book,
Speaker 3: is let's say you're seat here on your here on Earth,
Speaker 3: and let's say there is this big dome out one
Speaker 3: light year away. So if it's one light year away,
Speaker 3: it takes light a whole year to get there. So
Speaker 3: now you have your laser pointer. Uh, so you take
Speaker 3: your laser pointer and you point it at one spot
Speaker 3: in the dome. And even though you point it there,
Speaker 3: it's going to take a year for light to get there.
Speaker 3: But then in one second, you take your laser pointer
Speaker 3: and you shift it around to one hundred and eighty
Speaker 3: degrees around to the to the other side of the dome.
Speaker 3: So after a year that takes like to get there,
Speaker 3: the laser spot will cross. We'll go all the way
Speaker 3: around that dome in a second. But that dome has
Speaker 3: has a rate, has a circumference greater than a light year,
Speaker 3: So that spot is moving greater than a light year
Speaker 3: in a second, which means the spot has a superluminal speed.
Speaker 3: Now there's no information being created on the dome that's
Speaker 3: moving on the dome faster than light. The laser spot
Speaker 3: is the superposition of unrelated photons that are hitting at
Speaker 3: different places, and so that is what is appearing appearing
Speaker 3: to move faster than light. But yes, there's these things.
Speaker 3: You know, we don't have a dome out at one
Speaker 3: light year, but these thought experiments are very clear demonstrations
Speaker 3: that things laser spots can move. So if you take
Speaker 3: your laser spot, maybe we don't have a dome light
Speaker 3: year away. What we do have is things that are
Speaker 3: closer to the moon. If you just try your local
Speaker 3: wall and you take your laser pointer and you s
Speaker 3: creep it around the wall, you can't move your arm
Speaker 3: fast enough to make it go faster than light. Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: but the moon is far enough away that if you
Speaker 3: take your laser pointer and you sweep it past the
Speaker 3: moon at a reasonable speed not too fast, that that
Speaker 3: layer spot, if you could see it, would move faster
Speaker 3: than light across the moon.
Speaker 2: You have a chapter that deals with how to make
Speaker 2: a magnetic field move faster than light? So what is
Speaker 2: there a simple answer to that, a simple explanation that
Speaker 2: we would understand.
Speaker 3: Well, that's a tough one because okay, yeah, the magnetic
Speaker 3: kal minds are actually not something you can grab onto.
Speaker 3: There are conceptual lines of h of uh that has
Speaker 3: something to do with magnetism. So yeah, so we draw
Speaker 3: them in and then when the ninetism changes, you turn
Speaker 3: a magnet or something like that. Yeah, these magnetic kial
Speaker 3: minds can can move faster than light. That that's very clear,
Speaker 3: but it's not that easy to explain. So I did
Speaker 3: could go do some effort in the book to do it,
Speaker 3: but I don't know if that would work here in
Speaker 3: the in the Coast to Coast forum.
Speaker 2: Okay, very well, you know you do touch on here
Speaker 2: and there the differences between relativity and quantum mechanics, and
Speaker 2: try as I might to get my head around it,
Speaker 2: I just can't do it. But it seems to be
Speaker 2: a lot of what quantum mechanics concludes to be real
Speaker 2: and true is at odds with what we think of
Speaker 2: as relativity. I don't know how they coexist, but they.
Speaker 3: Do, right, Yeah, so they are not in We don't
Speaker 3: always know how they interact, and we're sometimes surprised. But
Speaker 3: there is quantum mechanics does not contradict special relativity. In fact,
Speaker 3: there's there are types of quantum mechanics, quantum electrodynamics and
Speaker 3: and things like that that incorporates special relativity into them.
Speaker 3: The classic quantum mechanics, the Schrodinger equation, it's called that
Speaker 3: can be brought into conflict with the concepts of special relativity.
Speaker 3: But physicists do know that special relativity is right and
Speaker 3: that it does fit into quantum mechanics. But that doesn't
Speaker 3: mean there's there's some really strange quantum mechanics experiments out
Speaker 3: there that it appears that information is being transferred faster
Speaker 3: than light, but it is not when it is when
Speaker 3: it's looked at it very detailed, it's just the appearance
Speaker 3: that it is. It's not really going faster than life.
Speaker 3: And how that is is just absolutely fascinating. How it
Speaker 3: seems like something on one side and something far away.
Speaker 3: They seem like they know about each other, but they're
Speaker 3: not communicating. And so if you look at the details
Speaker 3: of it, which I try to explain in some of
Speaker 3: the chapters in my book, you can see that there's
Speaker 3: no real communication going on there. There's correlations which we
Speaker 3: don't understand why this correlation, but there's no communication.
Speaker 1: Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
Speaker 1: oneam Eastern and go to Coast to coastam dot com
Speaker 1: for more