Re: Faster Than Light Travel - Reply

Steve Pugh wrote:

> I've heard of this experiment before. The music was meant to be
> transmitted at about 4.5c. I can't remember why but people
> are getting very suspicious of it. It might turn out to be another
> Cold Fusion cock up.

Frankly, anything which pokes a hole in such a well-tested principle as
no-FTL is suspicious! The results showed that the speed had to be
greater than 4.5c, and if memory serves, had to be greater than 16000 c.
Measurement of such small times is still an interesting engineering
exercise though, one fraught with chances of error. We're still a long,
long way from making this a useful phenomenon, if ever. But it appears,
on the best evidence to hand, to be real rather than mismeasurement.

As for Cold Fusion - see some of the latest papers on the subject. A lot
of work has been done quitely on this, if only to disprove it. Tritium
production and other otherwise-inexplicable nuclear effects are now
being observed regularly, even repeatably, but still not enough
neutrons. The effect is definitely there, but possibly/probably is not
fusion as such. It may be Casimir effect within the crystal lattice
though, ie Vacuum Energy. It's a net energy producer though, figures as
high as 1000 kj per j input have been measured, for several days. In
engineering terms, it _appears_ that we're NOT very far away from
getting a new power source. This one is quite exciting. I believe a firm
in the US is currently renting experimental kits for about $2500 so even
the smallest college can do some hands-on experimentation. 
    
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