Hello Kelly and Timothy
The following was forwarded to me from colleagues at IDA.
I forward it to you with no implied endorsement.
I was told that Lewis Research Center is offering grants to
people with innovative interstellar propulsion ideas. (See the
referenced site.)
Regards
Rex
> Subject: FW: faster than light
>
> Interesting site
>
> http://www.lerc.nasa.gov/WWW/bpp/TM-98-208400.htm
>
> http://www.lerc.nasa.gov/WWW/bpp/
>
> "Regarding other faster-than-light possibilities, there have also been
> some intriguing experimental effects. Photons have been measured to
> tunnel across a photonic band-gap barrier at 1.7 times the speed of light
> [37]. Even though the author concludes that information did not
> travel faster than light, the results are intriguing. It has been
> suggested to conduct similar experiments using matter rather than photons
> to
> unambiguously test the information transfer rate. In addition, recent
> experiments of the rest mass of the electron antineutrino have measured
> an imaginary value [55]. Even though this result is attributed to possible
> errors, an imaginary mass value could be a signature characteristic of
> a tachyon (hypothetical faster-than-light particles). It has been
> suggested to revisit this and other similar data to determine if this can
> be
> credibly interpreted as evidence of tachyons. It was also pointed out that
> other experiments have been suggested to search for evidence of
> tachyons [56]."
>
> [37] Chiao, R. Y., Steinberg, A. M., and Kwiat, P. G. (1994) "The Photonic
> Tunneling Time and the Superluminal Propagation of Wave Packets," Proc. of
> the Adriatico
> Workshop on Quantum Interferometry, DeMartini, Denardo, and
> Zeilinger, eds., World Scientific, Singapore, p. 258.
>
> [55] Stoeffl, W. and Decman D. J. (1995) "Anomalous Structure in the Beta
> Decay of Gaseous Molecular Tritium," Physical Review Letters,
> 75:3237-3240.
>
> [56] Chiao, R. Y., Kozhekin, A. E., and Kurizki G. (1996) "Tachyonlike
> Excitations in Inverted Two-Level Media," Phys. Rev. Lett. 77:1254