Talk:Günter Nimtz

2007 Article
Anyone with more understanding on the subject care to update the article to cover this new claim: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/08/16/scispeed116.xml

It was a "red linked" on Drudge Report on 8/16/07 at 6:43pm. Seems questionable enough not to bother with the main FTL article just yet.

Bsurette 22:44, 16 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I've added a paragraph on this, with cites to Nimtz's e-print, and an article which analyzes the claims. Although I didn't delete the Telegraph article from the external links, news media articles don't really seem up to the task of explaining what was actually in the paper, and the media mostly doesn't seem to be seeking out other physicists for reactions. Kingdon 14:31, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Dr. Nimtz told New Scientist magazine: "For the time being, this is the only violation of special relativity that I know of." Dr. Nimtz should check out the internet; there are a number of people who have made experiments violating special relativity. To mind comes, Dr. Lijun Wang, Dr. Raymond Chiao, and William Walker. Also if you care to check out: http://www.wbabin.net/erdmann/erdmann.htm you'll find experiments showing that magnetic fields and electrostatic fields can be used to transmit information faster than the speed of light. I have forwarded this information to Dr. Nimtz, but he has not returned my email. I also gave Dr. Stahlhofen our web page. He answered me, but it seems he did not understand it correctly; he thinks for some reason that we accidently stumbled onto nearfield superluminal radio wave experiments, which is not the case.Steinhauer 17:50, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Hahaha, yeah I emailed Dr. Nimtz when I was in middle school, I think he gets a lot of sort of crank emails, people with ideas, you know. I was trying to ask him what would happen if a photon were tunneled to a location and then back. He answered my questions with brief informational responses, ignoring my 'ideas'. Understandable.

Copyvio
I'm not sure of the right way to flag this, but much of the text in this article appears to be taken directly from a seven-year-old article on Science News Online. Kyle Maxwell 19:30, 16 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I've removed the offending text and put a note on User talk:Kim Dent-Brown.  It is possible to remove those old revisions from the article history, as described at Oversight (I think a copyvio would just be a "regular" administrator removal of a revision, rather than an oversight removal), but I don't know much about that. Kingdon 13:42, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Mozart
I removed the following text:


 * He contends that information can indeed travel faster than c, casting doubts on both causality and special relativity. In 1995, for example, his research team encoded Mozart's 40th symphony in a microwave beam traveling at 4.7 times c to a receiver.

The most obvious reason was a nit-picky ones (given where this was placed, it wasn't clear whether "he" was Nimtz or Steinberg). But the more fundamental reason is that, although the symphony encoding has been widely reported in the press, it isn't clear what was done with the symphony and why it would matter whether it was a symphony or a simple pulse. If people really want this factoid included, I'm not firmly opposed (if it has a reference, etc, etc). But my past reasoning has always been the symphony does more to muddy the waters and spice things up than to actually explain what the experiment did. Kingdon 18:54, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Einstein quote
I've removed the following:


 * Perhaps Einstein's view on this subject is appropriate here. In the 15th chapter of part I of his book on special relativity, Einstein stated (according to the authorized translation of Robert W. Lawson): ”Let me add a final remark of a fundamental nature. The success of the Farady-Maxwell interpretation of electromagnetic action at a distance resulted in physicists becoming convinced that there are no such things as instantaneous actions at a distance (not involving an intermediary medium) of the type of Newton’s law of gravitation. According to the theory of relativity, action at a distance with the velocity of light always takes the place of instantaneous action at a distance or of action at a distance with an infinite velocity of transmission. This is connected with the fact that the velocity c plays a fundamental role in this theory”. (End of quote) An actual statement that nothing can move faster than the speed of light is not found in his book, and yet Einstein is often quoted as making a statement to this effect.

The text, in addition to having problems with tone, WP:NPOV, and lack of relevance to Nimtz's work, is misinterpreting Einstein. The Einstein quote is pretty much as close to saying "nothing can move faster than c" as one gets in science (which deals in the weight of the evidence, rather than absolute certainties). Kingdon 13:21, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

The reason why I put in the "Einstein quote" is to let people know in Einstein's own words why he believed that nothing could move faster than the speed of light. The added paragraph was not misinterpreting Einstein, since these were his exact words as translated by Robert W. Lawson. The relevance to Nimtz's work is the fact that if it was not for Einstein and those who followed him, Nimtz's experiments would have been accepted without any problem. Before Einstein scientists believed that force fields such as gravity, magnetic fields, and electrostatic fields acted instantaneously over a distance. It was Einstein who changed all that. Furthermore, Nimtz did three experiments in regard to quantum tunneling, the other two were sending a microwave signal through a dielectric barrier, and sending a microwave signal through an undersized waveguide. Both of those experiments also showed superluminal speeds of the microwave signal. I believe these experiments should also be added to the article.Steinhauer 00:03, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Paragraph Removed
I removed the text below. The tone is immature, and the discussion is crackpot. 153.90.113.189 (talk) 23:59, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

-- BELOW IS THE DELETED TEXT --

Transmitting signals faster than light is only prohibited under Einstein's axiomatic assumption of the Speed of Light in the currently observable 4D continuum. A virtual photon is outside of this continuum and is related to the preferred frame of reference. Even in 4D Space a violation of causality due to faster than light signalling in 4D space is counterintuitive. Classical causality is not based on any thought speed limits but on the mere fact that a causing event happens before an effect event linked to it. And if this is just a nano second before and the distance is from Earth to the Moon, classical ausality will not be violated. E.g. if Bob targeted a Laser to the Moon then Alice, on the lunar station, would detect the actual light signal. However, Alice could also detect actual photons arriving with light speed and virtual photons arriving faster than the actual light signal. However the virtual signal would still only arrive after it was initiated by Bob. Certainly no causality problem is to be expected here. Einstein's theories relate to the 4D continuum but not to the configuration space which enfolds 4D space. Even if Bob just had to think of sending the message and the virtual photon would be emitted through a direct tubular emitter in his brain, the decision to send the message is the cause and it would still precede the sending of the message. The problem a lot of scientists seem to have with causality originates in the mathematical mechanisms of Einstein's model. However Einstein himself always regarded the mathematical framework as absolutely dependend and as such inferior to the intuitive problem solving capability of humans. Today many scientists show a tendency to derive hypothesis from a mathematical tool-construct instead of from intuition. Mathematics will not for a long time replace the human genius but can only model it and wait for the next creative thought process and it's subsequent and compulsive adaptation.

neutrality and biography
I modified some sentences that were in conflict with Wikipedia's WP:NPOV policy. However, this article appears to be not a real biography but more a discussion (debate?) about "faster than light" experiments. For a biography, too little is written about the person and this is not an appropriate place for an elaborate debate of the topics that he is working on. Harald88 (talk) 17:18, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Nimtz' Book
Günter Nimtz has a book out now, it should probably be mentioned. [] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.186.61.183 (talk) 16:26, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Biased
This entry is clearly an opinion piece promoting Nimtz's views and claims of priority, summarily dismissing criticisms of his work (even though those criticisms are the mainstream view), and neglecting other contemporaneous research. It has no place on wikipedia in my opinion, but if it is to remain it should be written in an unbiased manner. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.96.2.93 (talk) 22:12, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Indeed. If you look in the history it has recently been extensively edited by GNimtz, which suggests the man himself. -- Escape Orbit  (Talk) 22:23, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Biased II
This entry is clearly an opinion piece criticizing Nimtz's views and claims of priority, summarily dismissing the essence of his work (being as those criticisms are the mainstream view), and neglecting other contemporaneous research, especially that of Lijun Wang, Lene Hau, etc. It has no place on Wikipedia in my opinion, but if it is to remain it should be written in an unbiased manner. 16:00 19 February 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.182.205.254 (talk)

References should provide background on the statement they're attached to
Recently some editors have been changing the reference at the end of the sentence However, Herbert Winful argues that the train analogy is a variant of the "reshaping argument" for superluminal tunneling velocities, but that this argument is not supported by experiment or simulations, which actually show that the transmitted pulse has the same length and shape as the incident pulse. The original reference at the end of this sentence was to this paper by Winful himself, which on p. 12-13 contains Winful's statement that ''The New Scientist article also relates another train analogy that was used to try to explain the results of Nimtz and Stahlhofen ... This analogy is a variant of the so-called “reshaping argument” for the existence of superluminal tunneling velocities [18]. According to that argument, the barrier transmits the front end of the pulse and chops off the back end, resulting in a forward shift of the pulse’s peak and a shortening of the pulse. Unfortunately this argument is supported neither by the experimental observations [19,20] nor by simulations [21]. In all cases the transmitted pulse is the same length and the same shape as the incident pulse, albeit much attenuated in intensity. The reshaping argument simply does not apply to tunneling pulses and needs to be laid to rest.'' So here, the paper in the reference is directly supporting the sentence in the wikipedia article. The editors have been changing this reference to references 8 and 13 (Stefano Longhi et al., "Superluminal optical pulse propagation in periodic Bragg gratings" and G. Nimtz, "Do evanescent modes violate relativistic causality?") which do not provide support for the claim Herbert Winful argues that the train analogy is a variant of the "reshaping argument" for superluminal tunneling velocities, but that this argument is not supported by experiment or simulations. If the editors' intention was to link to these papers because they argue against Winful, a new sentence should be added to the article summarizing whatever claims the papers make relating to Winful's claims, but it makes no sense to add them to the end of a sentence which is solely about what Winful claims about this subject. See Citing_sources which explains that the point of citing sources in the article is to provide background on specific claims made during the article, so that they can be checked by anyone reading it. Hypnosifl (talk) 00:02, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Confusion about references
Dear Hypnosifl,

I am sorry for the confusion concerning the change of references. The "back and forth" of changes was due to the fact that I simply thought this was an error in the Wiki-Update process. I wasn't aware of the fact that you actually changed it back until I saw your post on the talk list. In that context I would like to explain my intention of the reference change.

My name is Alexander Carôt - I am working together with Günter Nimtz on a revisited experiment setup based on his past investigations on superluminal pulse transmission. It is actually Günter Nimtz himself and myself who have written his own WIKI-page and the section we are currently focusing on and it is he himself who wants the reference change. Let me state the sentence first:

"However, Herbert Winful argues that the train analogy is a variant of the "reshaping argument" for superluminal tunneling velocities, but that this argument is not supported by experiment or simulations, which actually show that the transmitted pulse has the same length and shape as the incident pulse."

Actually, the problem is that there is a mistake within the sentence --> "but THAT this argument ...". By correcting this you might understand why Winful's reference cannot remain at the end of this sentence and why we want to change it:

"However, Herbert Winful argues that the train analogy is a variant of the "reshaping argument" for superluminal tunneling velocities, but this argument is not supported by experiment or simulations, which actually show that the transmitted pulse has the same length and shape as the incident pulse."

So far I changed it to that version, nevertheless, I am looking forward to further discussion.

Best regards —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jazzalex (talk • contribs) 12:43, 21 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Hi Alexander, no problem about the misunderstanding--but why do you say that there is a mistake in the quote "but that this argument ..."? The sentence as it stood was grammatically correct, and it correctly summarized Winful's view that the reshaping argument is incorrect because it isn't supported by experiments or simulations (I quoted from p. 12-13 of this paper where Winful writes Unfortunately this argument is supported neither by the experimental observations [19,20] nor by simulations [21].) Perhaps the sentence would be clearer if I changed it to this:"Herbert Winful argues that the train analogy is a variant of the 'reshaping argument' for superluminal tunneling velocities, but he goes on to say that this argument is not actually supported by experiment or simulations, which actually show that the transmitted pulse has the same length and shape as the incident pulse."Then if you like you can add a separate sentence pointing out that Longhi and Nimtz also argue that the reshaping argument is incorrect, even if they don't agree with Winful about his own separate argument for why tunneling doesn't violate the speed-of-light limit. Would this be a satisfactory compromise? Hypnosifl (talk) 19:49, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Hej - I just doublechecked and you are right indeed ! Thanks a lot for clarifying. I will talk to him - and actually - he will soon participate himself in this discussion, which I think makes most sense, since it is all about his work anyways. Also, we would like to edit the text in such a way that it a) on one hand suits the WIKI-regulations and b) his ideas about his page. Currently he isn't very happy with it either. For now I think your text edit suggestions sound great and make sense. Talk soon. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jazzalex (talk • contribs) 23:05, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Neutrality disputed ?
Hello all,

the article claims that the neutrality is disputed. Can anyone give *precise* facts in how far this is the case ? Since superluminal pulse propagation is a highly debated topic I changed the headline "Superluminal quantum tunneling" to "Discussion on superluminal quantum tunneling". This section clearly outlines Nimtz' interpretation and conclusion in contradiction to opposite ones. Since this page is supposed to highlight Nimtz' and his coworkers's point of view it has to clearly show their intention and approach - which it actualy does in a comprehensive manner.

Thanks for letting me know what in your opinion the problem is.

Best regards —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jazzalex (talk • contribs) 15:36, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Hello again,

today I applied some changes to the text, which mainly concern its structure and organization. I have to clearly outline that this is *no* autobiography at all. Furthermore, I divided Nimtz and his opponents's arguments and statements into two sections in order to clearly show the current discrepancy of that topic. Moreover, I do hope that in the current form we can get rid of the neutrality disput: In fact many researchers consider his results as incorrect, however, this page is explicitly about him and his opinion and nevertheless, at least a small group of researchers agree with his point of view.

Please comment - thanks in advance Jazzalex (talk) 09:29, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Hello once again,

so - now I applied some more changes. Thanks to Hypnosifl for further commenting and editing on this. I am hoping we are approaching an agreement of how to best describe Günter Nimtz' past activities - especially in the total sceintific context. If we in fact feel ok with that, would anyone argue against me taking out the "neutrality disputed" tag ? Please let me know -- thanks -- A l e x Jazzalex (talk) 12:17, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Orphan tag removed
Hello all,

with respect to the Orphan tag in the head of the page I finally found (and edited) 6 pages, which now link to Günter Nimtz' page. In comparison with other Wiki pages I considered it correct to eventually remove the Orphan tag. Please let me know if and why anyone might have a different opinion on this.

Thanks in advance for your contribution

-- A l e x --Jazzalex (talk) 19:00, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Fine-tuning
Hello all,

I have figured a number of minor errors (such as wrong references, dead links etc.). Within the next days I will apply the required corrections.

Best

Alex — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jazzalex (talk • contribs) 05:47, 14 January 2013 (UTC) Jazzalex (talk) 21:18, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Günter Nimtz. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20070621222329/http://www.sciencenews.org:80/articles/20000610/fob7.asp to http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20000610/fob7.asp

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 11:36, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

"See chapter"?
The article as of this writing says, "... see chapter Scientific opponents and their interpretations ..." This makes no sense in context--was this section quoted without attribution from another source? IAmNitpicking (talk) 17:44, 5 December 2018 (UTC)