Scientists claim to have broken the ultimate speed record - by making photons travel faster than light.
Exceeding the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second, is supposed to be completely impossible.
According to Einstein's special theory of relativity, it would take
an infinite amount of energy to accelerate an object through the light
barrier.
Travelling faster than light also turns back time with bizarre consequences.
An astronaut moving beyond light speed would theoretically arrive at his destination before leaving.
But
two German physicists now claim to have forced light to overcome its
own speed limit using the strange phenomenon known as quantum
tunnelling.
The research, published in the new Scientist
magazine, involved an experiment in which microwave photons, energetic
packets of light, appeared to travel "instantaneously" between two
prisms forming the halves of a cube placed a metre apart.
When the prisms were placed together, photons fired at one edge passed straight through them, as expected.
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