Speed of Light...BROKEN! Holy Hole in Relativity, Batman!

So the real huge effect of this is the shattering of a belief system. Light speed calculations are suitable for those phenomena ocuring at light speed.

 

This is bogus.

IF CONFIRMED (which will take a long time), these results will result in a reassessment of existing theories. The results have not been confirmed yet.

The whole "science as a belief system" paradigm is bogus. Science is a method for acquiring knowledge. Those who consider it a belief system do so because they themselves lack any method for acquiring knowledge. To them, everything is a belief system, because that's all they know.

The glorification of "shattering belief systems" is just the Hollywood cowboy mentality meeting up with a deficiency in science education.

 

Actually, god is not mocked so to speak. That is,. we are, and if you doubt that, you are an imbecile. It matters not in truth whether a theory is relevant.
I am speaking to the, "this is huge", assessment.

In every practical analysis, the ingenuity of man proves ingenuous, that is artless, to the light of being.

 

Yes, when we look at the sky, we are looking into the past. When we see this object, we are seeing light that was emitted about 13 billion years ago. It does not mean that our present position even existed back then, so I don't really get your confusion.

 

Sorry, I don't understand you, altho you sound very arrogant. Perhaps you can say this a different way? By the way, I mostly agree with KeithBC.

 

What I am saying is that we are biological and our biology trumps in the most practical way, any understanding we may obtain.

If you are hearing things from reading, it is the tone of voice in your own head,
I mean nothing but respect.

Perhaps it is arrogant to believe you had discovered something about the world.
We seek to multiply our effect, better and more efficient, but we do not create ourselves. And for all our striving we still have not gone beyond burning things, that is burning to ashes in the fire of metabolism. Now is as good as it gets.

 

The physical laws of the universe have been in place long before humans started interpreting them. Anything we discover about the universe only has implications in regards to our belief system and our ability to use our knowledge of the existing universal laws in any kind of practical (or abstract for that matter) manner.

Gravity existed before humans perceived gravity, but did that make its discovery any less important to humanity?

 

I agree that knowledge of the physical helps increase our effects, predominately through breaking the bonds on conception, that is knowledge is material taking up space, the known universe being made of information, and consequently can only flow into an open mind.


The thimble prevented untold deaths from blood poisoning. Any information we can glean about our environment can be beneficial and we give the world all the meaning it has for us. To me, a new physical paradigm just allows for what we already observe plainly.

One of the bonds on conception, the speed of light, makes synchronicity seem like coincidence.

Is it of huge import, does it reduce suffering. I guess it is a matter of timing and application. Certainly potential exists in untold quantity at every turn.

 

speed of light can suck it

 

A particle's speed isn't determined by it's size, its size is determined by it's speed; as a particle with mass is accelerated (moves faster) it becomes smaller and more massive. At the speed of light it would have infinite speed and mass and no size.

Photons don't have a 'size'; they are massless and always travel at the speed of light. According to relativity, particles with mass cannot be accelerated from a velocity less than light to a velocity greater than light because it would require infinite energy (i.e. even if it COULD acquire 'infinite energy' - a mathematical abstraction that physically meaningless - it would STILL never go faster than light).

However, Einstein's theory does not prohibit particles with mass that travel faster than light, it just says that any such particles (called tachyons) would have to ALWAYS travel faster than light. Very few physicists think tachyons exist, and the consensus is that the recent measurement of faster than light neutrinos most likely are the result of a subtle bug in the experiment.

But if the results are proven correct, it wouldn't necessarily be the undoing of Einstein's theory, which has already been proven correct in its most important predictions. We already know that Einstein's relativity in its current formulation at least is incomplete because it can't be reconciled with certain aspects of quantum mechanics and predicts physically meaningless values under certain conditions. In the unlikely event that it is confirmed that some neutrinos move faster than light, it would only require a major rethinking of Einsteinian relativity if it was found that they could be accelerated from a speed below light to a speed above light, which is not necessarily what was observed here (if indeed the observation holds up under scrutiny).

 

So it looks like the clocks were probably synchronized wrong. It wasn't taken into account that the gravity of the earth would distort time at a lower elevation, something that is explained by the special theory of relativity.

http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111005/full/news.2011.575.html

 

i never understand why they publish these things before they're 100% sure it's all accurate. makes them look kinda stupid....

 

My understanding is that they did not rush it into publication. They spent a long time reviewing their own work, looking for errors, but when they found none, they published so that others could review and try to find the error, if any.

 

clock sync!! one of the most obvious parts that can go wrong. even i thought of that and i am not an expert. either they checked it and it came back ok, and this Contaldi guy is just looking to get his own name in the news, or they didn't check it correctly at all which makes me wonder why they even published.

Contaldi's premise does seem kinda shaky to me though. first year physics students learn that clocks tick at different rates at different altitudes. so it seems kinda unlikely the scientists at CERN and Gran Sasso forgot about that.

 

Alright, so I have purposely decided NOT to weigh in on this story for various reasons, but I feel that I need to now since the discussion has gotten so far out of hand.

First off, let me (no this isn't bragging but it is necessary to be taken seriously) explain that I actually have credentials in the field so I hopefully can help resolve this issue. I have a Bachelor's of Science in Mathematics and Physics. I currently am a second year Ph.D. student at a major research university studying Mathematics with a strong research interest in Mathematical Physics.

Anyways, let me bring to attention a few things:

1. Although the lab that made the observations of the neutrinos 'exceeding the speed of light' has thoroughly double-checked their results, it means nothing until the entire academic community has had their chance to first validate those findings and more importantly, REPLICATE them in their own labs.

2. There could be a slew of reasons for the measurements the lab made. For one, the machines used to detect the neutrino velocity could have one of literally thousands of faulty parts in it. Remember, the 60 nanoseconds they found is NOT significantly faster than the expected speed (of light or slightly below if indeed neutrinos have mass...) so it is more likely to me (and to most people working in science) that the measurement devices need to be thoroughly tested by OUTSIDERS before any conclusions be made.

3. The popular media does ANYTHING it can do in order to sensationalize upon abstract scientific findings. Remember the so-called "God Particle" crap? No real scientist would call the Higgs-Boson such a sensational name. REAL science does not try to make its results MORE exciting than they really are. Real science lets the results themselves speak for themselves without hype. That is why I would NOT believe a word of a Reuter's article on Particle Physics. I would, however, be a tad more interested if this appeared in a peer-reviewed journal on Particle Physics. So please supply me with such a link (not just a citation) if you have one.

To Summarize: There are literally thousands of reasons that this laboratory could have incorrectly measured this data. You have to keep in your mind that it isn't exactly 'simple' to measure the speed of a NEUTRINO (an elementary particle). It is an INDIRECT measurement. Literally dozens steps need to be taken in order to obtain the 'velocity' data. Even the slightest fault in any of those steps could cause this rather slight discrepancy.

I also must repeat that in real science, a result obtained by ONE laboratory does NOT imply anything at all. The statements that we call "scientific laws" are labeled as such after literally hundreds of unaffiliated laboratories have performed the experiment and obtained IDENTICAL results. As a scientist, I will continue to put my faith in the law that states the following: An entity in the Universe, be it energy or matter (remember they are interchangeable...) cannot pass from having a velocity of less than "c" to having a velocity greater than "c". Nor can such an entity traveling at a velocity greater than "c" pass to having a velocity less than "c". I hope you note the subtle meaning in that theorem. It does NOT say that nothing can travel faster than light. It just says nothing can pass through the speed of light. So even if we find out that neutrinos DO travel faster than light, it would simply imply that they have always been traveling faster than "c" and always will. The real shock would be if we found that they BROKE through a velocity of "c".

I hope this helps clear up some of the blatant misconceptions thrown around in this thread so far. Again, I am NOT trying to be a braggart by throwing down my 'qualifications' but I am just trying to say "Hey, I think I can actually HELP in this argument. So give me a listen!"

Thanks. And bring on the replies. I am ready.

 

Thanks for that excellent post.

One question: when I learned Special Relativity 40 years ago, there was no mention at all of the possibility of anything going faster than c. But now I hear you and others say the law states that nothing can pass thru the limit. Did something happen that I'm not aware of? Some new theory?

 

Well, current experiment aside, no one has found anything going faster than light, so it is all just speculation.

However, the equations in Special Relativity do not exclude the possibility of something going faster than light if it has an imaginary mass (i.e. its mass is the square root of a negative number). No one has the slightest idea what that would physically mean, if anything, but the equations work out if you try it.

While it is a big stretch to visualize some real object having an imaginary mass, it is a much bigger stretch to visualize an imaginary mass becoming real or vice versa. Hence the assumption that an object can't go through the light barrier.

TBH, it's all pretty bizarre speculation. Which is why the current experiment is so interesting.

 

Look up the "tachyon" on wikipedia. That should give a better explanation that I could about the possible particles that stay above "c" at all times. I would post more about it but I would need to embed equations involving radicals and exponents and that is not possible on the forums. If you still need some properties of the tachyon cleared up, I will write up some equations on LaTeX (the official math/physics typesetting program) and post them in here. Just let me know!

 

Is it not just the photon? Theres an interesting gluon - photon diagram http://sites.google.com/site/qalifba/gluon-phton.pdf?attredirects=0 which would explain.

(Its OK to download)

 

At most, it's an adjustment a la Newton to Eienstein