Instant is faster than light

[Deckerd]

Apologies for cross posting.

Article in this morning's Metro:

"You have to travel very quickly to be somewhere 'in an instant', say scientists - 10,000 times the speed of light. The speed of 'instantly' has been determined by investigating a phenomenon known as quantum entanglement. Scientists created sub-atomic particles that were interdependent - so what happened to one instantly affected the other, reported Nature. A signal passing between entangled photons 18km (11 miles) apart must travel at least 10,000 times faster than light, which travels at 186,000 miles per second, scientists at Switzerland's Geneva University found."

Now bearing in mind this is the Metro we're talking about (free paper produced by the Daily Mail) and is very brief, perhaps they actually got one sentence correct...

 

[Meredith]

I thought instant was instant and not 10,000c . Unless there is another peed limit in the universe, "the speed of quantum entanglement"

 

[Robert Maxwell]

The shortest length of time that is possible to measure (and relevant to the physics of the universe) is Planck Time, which is really... really... really small. I wonder if this is what they are alluding to.

 

[Lindley]

That number is probably just an artifact of the timing resolution of the instruments and the distance used. I doubt they meant it as an upper bound, although the paper probably interpreted it as such.

 

[IJD GAF]

I used to figure there had to be a "speed of time" which was faster than the speed of light -- basically, instant.

Now, as I understand relativity, isn't the concept of "instant" impossible? Isn't it virtually meaningless to discuss what is ocurring "right now" on the other side of the universe? Now is meaningless. Now doesn't exist. It's sort of a tree-falls-in-the-forest thing on a larger scale. Right?

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I used to figure there had to be a "speed of time" which was faster than the speed of light -- basically, instant.

Now, as I understand relativity, isn't the concept of "instant" impossible? Isn't it virtually meaningless to discuss what is ocurring "right now" on the other side of the universe? Now is meaningless. Now doesn't exist. It's sort of a tree-falls-in-the-forest thing on a larger scale. Right?

That's true, until you start dealing with quantum entanglement, where particles can react to each other from vast, relativistic-scale distances, "instantly."

I'm glad I never went into quantum mechanics. My head would have exploded by now.

 

[BolianAuthor]

I used to figure there had to be a "speed of time" which was faster than the speed of light -- basically, instant.

Now, as I understand relativity, isn't the concept of "instant" impossible? Isn't it virtually meaningless to discuss what is ocurring "right now" on the other side of the universe? Now is meaningless. Now doesn't exist. It's sort of a tree-falls-in-the-forest thing on a larger scale. Right?

Time has no speed... time is an element of nature, not a physical force. Time is always ongoing, so even if you could "slow down" or "freeze" time, which are both not possible, all you would really have, is a segment of time, where things happen at a much slower rate, or not at all... but time as an entity, would still be passing, at the usual rate.