# Can someone remind me of this experiment about FTL data transmission?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-remind-me-of-this-experiment-about-ftl-data-transmission/522887>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [December 29, 2009, 6:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-remind-me-of-this-experiment-about-ftl-data-transmission/522887 "2009-12-29T06:31:22Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\
**Post date:** [December 29, 2009, 6:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-remind-me-of-this-experiment-about-ftl-data-transmission/522887/1 "2009-12-29T06:31:22Z")

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Please bear with me in that IANA physicist and may be abusing the terminology.

I saw this on a television program some years ago, but I can’t remember the show or the scientist.

Briefly, the experiment purported to show that data can be transmitted at faster than light speed. A music recording was digitized and emitted as photons (maybe ouput through a fiber optic cable?). There was also a receiver, but some kind of light block between the emitter and receiver.

The claim was that the only way light could reach the receiver was by quantum packets passing through the light barrier, which apparently happens either in zero time, or a time that indicates a speed higher than c.

The received material was put back into acoustical form, and was still recognizeable as the original music that was sent. So the experiment claimed this proved FTL data transmission.

Has this experiment been debunked? Has some other explanation of the results been offered?

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**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\
**Post date:** [December 29, 2009, 7:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-remind-me-of-this-experiment-about-ftl-data-transmission/522887/2 "2009-12-29T07:26:48Z")

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I think you mean [this experiment](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BCnter_Nimtz) by Günter Nimtz.

It is thought this is not FTL communication when the experiment is thought about more carefully.

> [@](#):
>
> However, other physicists say that this phenomenon does not allow information to be transmitted faster than light. Aephraim Steinberg, a quantum optics expert at the University of Toronto, Canada, uses the analogy of a train traveling from Chicago to New York, but dropping off train cars at each station along the way, so that the center of the train moves forward at each stop; in this way, the speed of the center of the train exceeds the speed of any of the individual cars.[13]
> 
> SOURCE: [Faster-than-light - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light#Faster_light_.28Casimir_vacuum_and_quantum_tunnelling.29)