Information Theory - Part 4: Relativity
Moving on, Charles Seife next looks at the theory of relativity in Decoding the Universe . One of the most famous dictums of that theory is that “nothing can go faster than the speed of light”. Except that’s not what the theory says. That statement is an oversimplification: “Some things can go faster than the speed of light. Even light itself can break light speed, in a sense.” Huh? Both those statements have been proven in multiple experiments, and no, they don’t necessarily involve quantum mechanics! Even good old non-quantum experiments have shown those two statements to be true. The exact details of those experiments aren’t relevant to this blog, so I won’t get into them. Regardless, don’t such experiments prove that the speed limit imposed by relativity is being violated? It gets a bit murky, but this is what most scientists say relativity really says: “The true rule is that information can’t travel faster than the speed of light. You cannot take a bit of inform...