Superluminal Electromagnetic and Gravitational Fields Generated in the Nearfield of Dipole Sources

Abstract

In this paper the fields generated by an electric dipole and a gravitational quadrapole are shown to propagate superluminally in the nearfield of the source and reduce to the speed of light as the fields propagate into the farfield. A theoretical derivation of the generated fields using Maxwell's equations is presented followed by a theoretical analysis of the phase and group speed of the propagating fields. This theoretical prediction is then verified by a numerical simulation which demonstrates the superluminal propagation of modulated signals in the nearfield of their sources. An experiment using simple dipole antennas is also presented which verifies the theoretically expected superluminal propagation of transverse electromagnetic fields in the nearfield of the source. The phase speed, group speed, and information speed of these systems are compared and shown to differ. Provided the noise of a signal is small and the modulation method is known, it is shown that the information speed can be approximately the same as the superluminal group speed. According to relativity theory, it is known that between moving reference frames, superluminal signals can propagate backwards in time enabling violations of causality. Several explanations are presented which may resolve this dilemma.