From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!seismo!hao!hplabs!sri-unix!KANorman.ES@PARC-MAXC
Newsgroups: net.physics
Title: Re: faster than light
Article-I.D.: sri-unix.5046
Posted: Sun Jan 16 13:41:57 1983
Received: Thu Jan 20 04:56:10 1983

The following statemant is true, yet it is not possible to physically construct
such a structure:

	"An electrical signal in a conductor, under suitable conditions of very
	low L and C values, can be made to pass through a conductor at a
	velocity considerably greater than that of light."


The real difficulty is designing such a wave guide. The propogation delay in an
homogeneous medium is

	Tpd= (L0 * C0))**0.5 = (<mu>0 * <mu>r * <epsilon>0 * <epsilon>r )**0.5

Where <mu>0 = 4*<pi>*10**-7 Henry/meter
	<epsilon>0= 8.85*10**-12  Farad/meter
and both <mu>r and <epsilon>r are both necessarily greater than 1.
Thus where both are 1, the minimum value of 3.33*10**-9 seconds/ meter which
is also known as 3*10**8 meters/second.

	One may claim to find materials with <mu>r less than one, or those with
<epsilon>r less than one, but this exceedingly unlikely in this physical universe.
If you can find one or both, please send a sample to me, I'll pay the postage!

		Kevin Norman
		Xerox Corp.