Speed of light broken

German scientists claim to have broken the light-speed barrier, which could blow away the known limitations of modern networking, but the technology is unlikely to make it into a product — if at all — until most administrators working today have retired.

Exceeding the speed of light, approximately 300,000km 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.

But two German physicists claim to have forced light to overcome its own speed limit using the strange phenomenon known as "quantum tunnelling".

Gunter Nimtz, one of the physicists from the University of Koblenz, told New Scientist magazine: "For the time being, this is the only violation of special relativity that I know of."

However, the scientists' claims should be treated with some scepticism until they have been investigated by the wider scientific community, according to Dr Kevin McIsaac, an analyst at Sydney-based firm IBRS, who holds a PhD in theoretical atomic physics.