Quantum Tunnel Shows Particles Can Break the Speed of Light
As I mentioned here <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=24837545" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=24837545</a> a few days ago in an earlier post on the same topic, I raised the matter of how this finding gels with other related physics.  There, I asked  physics experts to explain the issues to this dummy but so far none have been prepared to  take the bait.<p>If, for instance, particles can exceed <i>c0</i> (the speed of light in a vacuum) during tunnelling then how does this fit with the fact that vacuum permittivity and vacuum permeability &#x27;also sets&#x27; the speed of <i>c</i> through the relationship:<p>c = 1&#x2F;(μ0 ε0)^0.5<p>This means that either a particle has to completely &#x27;vanish&#x27; from the physical world during tunnelling or that μ and ε don&#x27;t apply during this time, or that they change value.  It seems to me the ramifications of this are very significant.<p>The corollary of this is that if the wave function collapses outside spacetime then it&#x27;s meaningless to discuss the particle&#x27;s speed. That said, some months ago I read a report that some group actually measured (or estimated) the time of an election&#x27;s quantum jump from one shell to another.  If this is actually measurable time then it seems that the wave function is not outside or independent of spacetime (perhaps at these super-fast speeds&#x2F;super-short times we&#x27;re seeing the granularity of matter and or the intersection of the quantum and relativistic worlds).  That would be fun wouldn&#x27;t it.<p>That&#x27;s a super rough outline of my point (it&#x27;s too involved here  to go into other possibilities that arise from QED etc., and I don&#x27;t claim sufficient fluency to put them cogently).  There&#x27;s a bit more in that earlier post (but sorry I didn&#x27;t explain what I was driving at very well).