Comments on: Latency is 4-eva’

By: charlotte

charlotte — Sat, 01 Apr 2006 08:40:51 +0000

this is just gay add some games beause theirs nothing to do

By: Patrick Mineault

Patrick Mineault — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 23:48:27 +0000

There’s some confusion as to what the theoretical limit of the speed of light means. There ARE phenomena that can appear to move faster than light: for example, if you would move an object at a spped near to that of light in front of a light source, the shadow line from a far away distance would appear to move faster than light. These are only apparent however. You cannot use this to send information.

You have to be careful when you read science magazines in which they tell you that they found something or other to move things faster than light. For example you can craft an apparatus that will phase shift a wave packet in a fashion that if you measure the wave packet in from one end to the other it will appear to have moved faster than light. I remember reading about that in a science magazine myself. However in tiny print it was explained that in fact the apparatus incurred its phase shift by modifying the shape of the wave packet, and that the speed up was only apparent, and could not be used to transmit info. Science magazines are worst than tabloids in many ways.
Sending something faster than light in a fixed time frame (whatever that means in a special relativity context) means causality breaks down. What that would imply on a high-level scale is largely unknown. But I think it’s safe to say that unless you’re a photon in an EPR experiment, don’t expect to break causality in your lifetime.

By: erikbianchi

erikbianchi — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 22:09:39 +0000

A loooooooonnnnnnngggggg time ago I remember reading in some science publication how some scientist where theorizing about moving data faster then the speed of light using sound. I know how it sounds but I swore I read it!!

-erik

By: Rahsun McAfee

Rahsun McAfee — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 15:36:58 +0000

Well……how would OC lines deal with this problem. Though very expensive we are talking about fiber optic lines and therefore the speed of light…right? I remember when I worked at AT&T in Atlanta before it became Comcast and their was a tech from Bellsouth who started to work at AT&T. He was saying how they did have some homes up North that they were running test Fiber to the Curve lines. Which basically means that instead of running fiber to an amp or something and then switching to coax (like cable does) they were running Fiber right to the outside of peoples homes or a neighborhood. He said it was expensive but repairing it was fairly simple and at the time the speed was insane. He said they had to some how buff the speed cause it was too much for the peoples modem and it was causing problems. Tall Tell? Beats me, but sounded realistic. I’m sure technology like that will help in future. Go here fore speed info: http://www.directglobalcommunications.com/OC3_OC12.htm

By: Patrick Mineault

Patrick Mineault — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 06:10:43 +0000

Well, the distance between New York and London is approximately 5500 kms, so that to ping London at the speed of light you would have light to travel 11000 kms, at a speed of 300,000km/s… So that the baseline lag is around 35 milliseconds. That’s huge! Next time your client bugs you about FlashComm lag, blame it on the speed of light ;)