Sign up to see the future, today<\/p>\n
Can\u2019t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech<\/p>\n
Scientists broadly deem faster-than-light transmission of mass or information impossible, as it would violate the laws of general relativity and causality, essentially meaning that such signals would be capable of time travel<\/a> and the many paradoxes that would entail.<\/p>\n But what if the subject itself has no mass at all? As detailed in a new paper<\/a> published in the journal Nature, an international team of researchers claims it has observed \u201cdark points\u201d within light waves that can move faster than the speed of light, confirming a prediction dating back to the 1970s.<\/p>\n These \u201cdark points\u201d observed by the researchers are effectively small \u201choles\u201d or vortices within the light wave structure itself that can move faster than their surroundings, the team posits.<\/p>\n \u201cAs strange as it sounds \u2014 imagine a vortex in a river overtaking the flow of water in which it exists \u2014 the phenomenon is real,\u201d an official press release<\/a> reads. \u201cUntil now, this was based on theory.\u201d<\/p>\n Since the observed vortices don\u2019t carry information or have any mass, they technically don\u2019t violate Einstein\u2019s laws of general relativity.<\/p>\n They are also darker than darkness itself. According to the paper, these vortices are \u201czero points\u201d at which the light wave\u2019s amplitude drops to zero.<\/p>\n \u201cIn simpler terms, they are points of complete darkness embedded within the light field,\u201d the press release reads.<\/p>\n To capture the movement of these vortices in real time, the researchers used a modified high-speed electron microscope to capture moments over just three quadrillionths of a second.<\/p>\n By stacking hundreds of images across many experiments, the team created a timelapse, watching as the vortices clashed into each other, occasionally exceeding the speed of light itself.<\/p>\n