We Interupt The Usual Sturm Und Drang: EINSTEIN WRONG!?!?

[Bill Mattocks]

If true, this is BIG BIG stuff. Wow.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/22/science-light-idUSL5E7KM4CW20110922

Finding could overturn laws of physics

* Scientists confident measurements correct (Adds background and quotes)

By Robert Evans

GENEVA, Sept 22 (Reuters) - An international team of scientists said on Thursday they had recorded sub-atomic particles travelling faster than light -- a finding that could overturn one of Einstein's long-accepted fundamental laws of the universe.

Antonio Ereditato, spokesman for the researchers, told Reuters that measurements taken over three years showed neutrinos pumped from CERN near Geneva to Gran Sasso in Italy had arrived 60 nanoseconds quicker than light would have done.

"We have high confidence in our results. We have checked and rechecked for anything that could have distorted our measurements but we found nothing," he said. "We now want colleagues to check them independently."

If confirmed, the discovery would undermine Albert Einstein's 1905 theory of special relativity, which says that the speed of light is a "cosmic constant" and that nothing in the universe can travel faster.

That assertion, which has withstood over a century of testing, is one of the key elements of the so-called Standard Model of physics, which attempts to describe the way the universe and everything in it works.

 

[Steve]

Badass!

 

[Blindside]

Very very cool.

 

[Sukerkin]

Aye, the LHC is providing some very chewy food for thought at present too. Like Newtonian physics, it may yet turn out to be the case that the Standard Model is a good enough approximation for most things but is not the 'true' description of how things hold together. Exciting times.

 

[bluekey88]

wow...that is stunning news! The implications for this are huge if these observations are confirmed.

Peace,
Erik

 

[Carol]

I'm just wow'ed by all of this.

I love that we can perform experiments such as beaming neutrinos for hundreds of miles through the earth's crust.

I'm thrilled that we have the means to measure this precisely enough to account for a small change.

And I am amazed that this is the result! Damn...I want to learn more!

 

[billc]

Don't they realize that the debate on this is over and that every scientist knows that Einstein is right. Do those scientists work for the oil companies?

 

[billc]

Are these guys just speed of light deniers? If only Al Gore would do a slide show on Einstein, we wouldn't have these scientists questioning the scientific consensus on objects moving faster than the speed of light.

 

[Sukerkin]

I dug this up this from the infamous Wikipedia after a quick search as I recalled hearing many years ago that neutrinos had been observed decelerating through the 'light barrier':

Even though supernova observations indicate that neutrinos propagate at the speed of light, it is not clear whether this result holds at higher energies. In particular, in the context of the Standard-Model Extension,[SUP][29][/SUP][SUP][30][/SUP][SUP][31][/SUP] a realistic effective theory that includes Lorentz invariance violations, neutrinos experience Lorentz-violating oscillations and can travel faster than light at high energies.

And I was surprised to find this addendum already added :

In September 2011 CERN released data suggesting that neutrinos can travel faster than the speed of light.[SUP][32][/SUP] The results released by CERN are currently being scrutinised for errors.

 

[billc]

Hmmm...no doubts about the honesty of these guys, or where they recieved their funding? And yet, anyone who doubts the science behind the belief in manmade global warming is a fool who doesn't get that all real scientists know that global warming is happening. And this new possible discovery is just accepted and all is fine. These guys didn't even have data destroyed on them to keep them from researching their theories, and it doesn't seem as if other scientists tried to get them prohibited from the peer reviewed journals by threatening to get the editors of those journals fired. This discovery does prove one thing, God does indeed have a sense of humor.

If confirmed, the discovery would undermine Albert Einstein's 1905 theory of special relativity, which says that the speed of light is a "cosmic constant" and that nothing in the universe can travel faster.

That assertion, which has withstood over a century of testing, is one of the key elements of the so-called Standard Model of physics, which attempts to describe the way the universe and everything in it works.

Does anyone see the irony here on martialtalk?

 

[Sukerkin]

That'll be because global warming is happening, BillC. Where the debate lies there is on what our contribution to it as a species is and what we can do to ameliorate the effects.

Saving energy, using fewer resources for the same outcome and polluting as little as possible are sensible courses of action in their own right, regardless of whether there is an anthropomorphic component to planetary climate change or not.

Given that there has been warming during a solar low is especially worrying.

Anyhow, very little to do with the extremely interesting OP ...

... it won't be all that long before the verification and re-analysis of these results begins. After all, the real strength of science is that you can never prove anything is right, you can only prove it is wrong. That's why even fundamentals have to be challenged and shaken up on occasion.

 

[Empty Hands]

How ironic that Bill's thread title was both proven and then itself interrupted in the course of the thread.

 

[elder999]

Don't they realize that the debate on this is over and that every scientist knows that Einstein is right. Do those scientists work for the oil companies?

Haha....I said he was wrong five years ago in this thread.

Told ya so....:lfao:

Thanks, though, Bill. The implications, while not completely unexpected, are going to be somewhat staggering.

 

[Empty Hands]

The implications, while not completely unexpected, are going to be somewhat staggering.

Could the implications be tempered somewhat because neutrinos are mass-less particles? It seems like that should make a difference, since they are already a special case.

 

[Carol]

Could the implications be tempered somewhat because neutrinos are mass-less particles? It seems like that should make a difference, since they are already a special case.

The engineer-not-a-scientist says yes because where E=MC^2, if M = 0 then, strictly speaking, that value sets both sides of the equation to 0.

The people that have higher science cred than me have said that neutrinos and other high-energy particles may be more of a unique situation...which is probably a better explanation.

 

[elder999]

Could the implications be tempered somewhat because neutrinos are mass-less particles? It seems like that should make a difference, since they are already a special case.

I was thinking long term, technological implications-I'll always be an engineer first. :lfao: (So, in terms of those implications, no)

Though it does lend weight (see what I did there? :lfao: ) to the premise (put forward here by me quite some time ago) that the photon has mass....... :lfao:

 

[Carol]

I was thinking long term, technological implications-I'll always be an engineer first. :lfao: (So, in terms of those implications, no)

Though it does lend weight (see what I did there? :lfao: ) to the premise (put forward here by me quite some time ago) that the photon has mass....... :lfao:

God Hates Engineers

 

[granfire]

and the lay woman sits back with a beer and a pretzl.....how ever did this old thing continue revolving with this faulty theory looming....
wake me up when gravity is threatening to fail....

 

[Monroe]

and the lay woman sits back with a beer and a pretzl.....how ever did this old thing continue revolving with this faulty theory looming....
wake me up when gravity is threatening to fail....

Oh please don't say that. I was really relying on that one to keep the bodies underground. Zombie attack!

 

[granfire]

Oh please don't say that. I was really relying on that one to keep the bodies underground. Zombie attack!

Nothing a good pump shotgun can't handle!