Einstein got a lot right. He also got a few things wrong, such as his distrust of Quantum Mechanics and his basic rule that nothing can travel faster-than-light. John Singleton of Los Alamos didn’t let Einstein get in the way of developing a gizmo that can force radio waves to travel faster than the speed of light, possibly ushering in a new era of communications.
One possible use for faster than light radio waves — which are packed into a very powerful wave the size of a pencil point — could be the creation of a new generation of cell phones that communicate directly to satellites, rather than transmitting through relay towers as they now do.
Those phones would have more reliable service and would also be more difficult for hackers to intercept, Singleton said.
Speedy radio waves could also revolutionize the computing industry. Data could be transferred more quickly, and if used in semiconductors, it would mean faster caches and the ability to communicate across separate pieces of silicon nearly instantly.
In the health field, faster than light radio waves could be in extremely targeted chemotherapy, where a patient takes the drugs, and the radio waves are used to activate them very specifically in the area around a tumor, Singleton said.
