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On September 23 2011 05:13 imallinson wrote:Show nested quote +On September 23 2011 05:10 gurrpp wrote:On September 23 2011 04:58 scFoX wrote:On September 23 2011 04:52 Googity wrote: They ran the same test over 15,000 times always coming up with the same results. The only reason they published their data is so that another laboratory could possibly run the same tests. If multiple labs come up with the same information then physics as we know it just got thrown out the window. Physics as we know it can't be "thrown out of the window." Many people seem to be forgetting that for a new theory to work, it has to explain plausibly everything that is already taken into account by the Standard Model. Of course, it doesn't rule out cases like this, but violations of key concepts are only possible in extreme cases (otherwise we would have discovered it before). We'll have to see what other labs have to say in view of this data. One of the great things about science is when everyone puts their head together and pushes back the limits of human knowledge. Keep in mind, we don't have a theory that explains all physical phenomenon anyway. We have two theories, special and general relativity, and then string theory, which tries to reconcile the two. Last time I checked there has been no evidence to suggest string theory is true. If it turns out that there is no universal speed limit, then we really do have to throw out everything we know, since the speed of light is important for all of physics. Fortunately, its probably systematic error, so I wouldn't worry about having to throw out everything. String theory doesn't try to reconcile special and general relativity. Special relativity is, as the name implies, a special case of general relativity. String theory, along with other theories of everything are trying to reconcile general relativity and quantum mechanics. Although this is a really over simplified way of looking at it.
My bad, its been quite a few years since
On September 23 2011 05:15 OrchidThief wrote:Show nested quote +On September 23 2011 05:10 gurrpp wrote:On September 23 2011 04:58 scFoX wrote:On September 23 2011 04:52 Googity wrote: They ran the same test over 15,000 times always coming up with the same results. The only reason they published their data is so that another laboratory could possibly run the same tests. If multiple labs come up with the same information then physics as we know it just got thrown out the window. Physics as we know it can't be "thrown out of the window." Many people seem to be forgetting that for a new theory to work, it has to explain plausibly everything that is already taken into account by the Standard Model. Of course, it doesn't rule out cases like this, but violations of key concepts are only possible in extreme cases (otherwise we would have discovered it before). We'll have to see what other labs have to say in view of this data. One of the great things about science is when everyone puts their head together and pushes back the limits of human knowledge. Keep in mind, we don't have a theory that explains all physical phenomenon anyway. We have two theories, special and general relativity, and then string theory, which tries to reconcile the two. Last time I checked there has been no evidence to suggest string theory is true. If it turns out that there is no universal speed limit, then we really do have to throw out everything we know, since the speed of light is important for all of physics. Fortunately, its probably systematic error, so I wouldn't worry about having to throw out everything. Even if this is real, everything that has been developed so far in the engineering world is based on the current speed of light, and it works. It'd end up being a special condition, like what relativity theory is, "are we in a realm of parameters where this matters", "no, good, we'll go with the classical mechanics then".
That's purely from an engineering perspective. I'm sure if you're a physicist this would be huge, however. No one accepts that newtonian mechanics are true. However, they still do approximate things quite well.
Still, there is some engineering which relies on our current ideas of quantum physics. Off the top of my head I can only think of quantum computing, however unfruitful that has been.
Again, I'm not a physicist, just an engineer who's mildly interested. To me physics is the most settled of the sciences. Its kind of exciting to think that a century of scientific progress hinges on 60 nanoseconds. Rarely is a scientific field in a position where the validity of one result can completely change the paradigm for the field. Usually you have a lot of data over a period of time accumulates until there is a new paradigm that the scientific community accepts.
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there's nothing wrong with changing rules....just sayin.
if it turns out something can go faster than speed of light, then so be it, new door just opened up. its exciting!
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I bet we will never be able to explain everything. There is always some discovery to make and something waiting to be discovered. Its pretty amazing the universe we live in. Moral of the story: never take anything in science as the ultimate truth, rather just accept what you know for the time being until you find something better that overturns it.
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Really a very interesting thing to have happened, clearly they are not 100% sure about what really happened during the experiment and wanted to take the post down to be safe and make sure they have checked all there variables before they make any real announcement. If true though could really through a wrench into everything we thought we knew about the universe. But as always you need to wait for other scientist to preform the experiment and get the same results.
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On September 23 2011 04:43 Tuba wrote: Most of me expects them to discover it was some kind of error... But the kid in me wants it to be some kind of new groundbreaking science that takes us closer to cruising around the galaxy in spaceships.
Thumbs up to this! Exactly my thoughts!
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Wow this gave me nerd chills. I shall be eagerly awaiting the results.
It's going to be far more likely that there's some sort of error in there system though.
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not sure but I can tell you some basic theories on faster than light particles.
Scientists say its impossible tot exceed the speed of light as in accelerate to a faster speed then it. However its possible that there are subatomic particles that always are faster than the speed of light. You just can't get to faster then light from sublight speed. there's no problems with something being faster then light, and by no problems i mean there's no laws of physics that say its impossible.
not sure if its relevant but hope its at least makes sense.
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Well there MAY be a mistake, even though it's highly improbable, there was this scientist that once crashed a satellite because he forgot to convert meters to miles so... The paper said that they were on this experiment for three years so a mistake on the distance is not likely to be there. Really interesting for physic though, hope they can figure it out.
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I think this is saying the neutrinos arrive 60ms faster than light when shot through the tube. Which might not necessarily be 60ms faster than c
Maybe the neutrinos are traveling at c, and light is traveling at ~0.9999999c through this tube.
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On September 23 2011 05:27 andis35 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 23 2011 05:23 DwmC_Foefen wrote: Maybe they made an error in the length of the tube? 732km is long distance, prone to mistakes ? Maybe even a couple of cm's could make a difference?
Dunno lol, but this shit, I find it interesting :p are you serious? Its not some kind of school project, they have most advance technologies possible and you think they couldnt measure the lenght of the tube??? There are always errors in science experiments. In school your % error is much higher than when professional scientists work yet they are not even capable of being 100% accurate.
Even the SI kilogram, which is defined by an actual metal artifact in a vault in Europe, is off by like 40 atoms (the smoothness of the surface throws it off). So even our weights and lengths are inaccurate.
Often the simplest questions are the best asked in terms of science. So we mustache, did they measure the thing right??
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oh faster then light travel using these wouldn't work and even if it did you'd end up going backwards in time which causes problems.
FTL travel breaks down because nothing can cross the light speed wall and you can't instantaneously switch speed to FTL. I can get more specific but I'd need to go check the book I have on it.
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When moving at the speed of light, time stands still relative to the object that's in motion. So would these neutrinos technically be traveling backwards in time? Basically reaching there destination slightly before (billionth of a second) sooner than they would if they were traveling at the speed of light?
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On September 23 2011 05:09 imallinson wrote:Show nested quote +On September 23 2011 04:58 scFoX wrote:On September 23 2011 04:52 Googity wrote: They ran the same test over 15,000 times always coming up with the same results. The only reason they published their data is so that another laboratory could possibly run the same tests. If multiple labs come up with the same information then physics as we know it just got thrown out the window. Physics as we know it can't be "thrown out of the window." Many people seem to be forgetting that for a new theory to work, it has to explain plausibly everything that is already taken into account by the Standard Model. Of course, it doesn't rule out cases like this, but violations of key concepts are only possible in extreme cases (otherwise we would have discovered it before). We'll have to see what other labs have to say in view of this data. One of the great things about science is when everyone puts their head together and pushes back the limits of human knowledge. This isn't a new theory, it's data. If new data comes up that doesn't agree with your current model then you have to seriously start questioning that model.
yes and no, some formulas are known to be incorrect but is still heavily used. if new data is introduced which disagrees with the current model that does not mean you discard the entire model, it just means that model is incorrect for a particular situation, such as extremely small scale, so you develop a new model which aplies better to the new data while still using the old one for stuff that is known to work, since it probably is simpler to work with than the more advanced one.
example: when calculating the gravity towards earth we say we accelerate by 9.82 meters/square seconds, we know this to be incorrect so why do we use it? because its basicly correct and using the formula (M1*M2)/(r squared) is more complex while yielding almost the same result.
my guess is that this is incorrect, I have some theories which would explain it but nothing Im willing to present as my un-yielding opinion. if the experts find it correct I will look into it more.
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I'm guessing it it somehow related to gravity. Since neutrinos are not massless (as far as we know) there is a very very slight gravitational pull on the nuetrino itself. My guess is that the particle is somehow distorting spacetime and it's actually shortening the distance which is making it appear that it travels faster than the speed of light.
There are lot of articles discussing theories involving neutrinos and gravity and I'm guessing that it's related to this somehow.
Just based on my limited knowledge of quantuum mechanics.
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On September 23 2011 05:52 R3demption wrote:Show nested quote +On September 23 2011 05:27 andis35 wrote:On September 23 2011 05:23 DwmC_Foefen wrote: Maybe they made an error in the length of the tube? 732km is long distance, prone to mistakes ? Maybe even a couple of cm's could make a difference?
Dunno lol, but this shit, I find it interesting :p are you serious? Its not some kind of school project, they have most advance technologies possible and you think they couldnt measure the lenght of the tube??? There are always errors in science experiments. In school your % error is much higher than when professional scientists work yet they are not even capable of being 100% accurate. Even the SI kilogram, which is defined by an actual metal artifact in a vault in Europe, is off by like 40 atoms (the smoothness of the surface throws it off). So even our weights and lengths are inaccurate. Often the simplest questions are the best asked in terms of science. So we mustache, did they measure the thing right??
lengths are accurate now as they've been redefined based on the speed of light which is constant. Can get you the exact definition of a meter if you want.
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This experiment definitely exists, but nothing is published yet and no peer-review is done. Let's wait for their final results.
I doubt this result holds true, as it is totally inconsistent with the observations of Supernova1987A. In the case of this Supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud (our tiny neighbour galaxy), the neutrinos were detected 3 hours before the light.
This can be explained by stellar physics (neutrinos ignore matter and are set free before the visible light), but even if one takes it for real it shows that neutrinos can not be faster than light by much, certainly not by as much as claimed here:
3 lighthours / 150000 lightyears ~= 2.3 × 10^-9; this is the fraction that neutrinos could be faster than light
The distance from Gran Sasso to CERN is ~700km, which translates this into 700km/300000(km/s) * 2.3 × 10^-9 = 5*10^-12 seconds.
This is much smaller than what they claim to have measured.
edit: the neutrinos could be at other energies as ther one detected during the Supernova-event, but even so there should be a high energy dependence of the velocity be seen in the data to make these results consistent. Not to speak of all the theoretical problems that would arise (faster-than-light particles do basically go back in time according to special relativity).
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On September 23 2011 04:44 Warlike Prince wrote: my guess, the curvature of the earth is to blame. 700km is enough distance on land that if it went right through the ground it would not have to travel quite than far.
With measurements requiring such precision, it is next to impossible that the scientists involved overlooked something that big.
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Nice. Really looking forward to it. Thanks for posting.
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Holy crap! This would be so huge.
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