A place for the discussion of all things not closely related to the sport and its competitive side. (Locked down several times a year during the major championships)
Puzzling results from Cern, home of the Large Hadron Collider, have confounded physicists because subatomic particles seem to have beaten the speed of light.
Neutrinos sent through the ground from Cern toward the Gran Sasso laboratory 732km away in Italy seemed to show up a tiny fraction of a second early.
The results - which threatens to upend a century of physics - were put online for scrutiny by other scientists.
I saw that in the paper this morning. While it would astound me if there were NOT ways to break the USL, I am skeptical that THIS instance is one of them. Maybe. Cool if it were.
Note that Warp technology ( ) does NOT break the USL; it merely bends space to take short-cuts (worm-holes too). Live long and prosper!
But the title was EVERYTHING. We do KNOW somethings.
The funkiest human that ever lived was James Brown. GH owns more then one Hawaiian shirt. Marlow and T&Fnut are one and the same Deep fried butter and chocolate covered bacon will shorten your life. Super models do not marry janitors Galen Rupp looks to be around 12 years old I could go on but you get the point!
I guess I just don't get the significance of this. Apparently these neutrinos have been scampering about exceeding the speed limit undetected for lo these many billioneums ..so what? The report sort of glosses over how you shoot whatever underground from Switzerland to Italy. I thought these atomic race tracks were circular. Is theres a sub-terranium drag strip we are not aware of? How does this knowledge facilitate transporting a 180# man from LA to NY in a nanosecond? Just musing aloud...
lonewolf wrote:I guess I just don't get the significance of this. Apparently these neutrinos have been scampering about exceeding the speed limit undetected for lo these many billioneums ..so what? The report sort of glosses over how you shoot whatever underground from Switzerland to Italy. I thought these atomic race tracks were circular. Is theres a sub-terranium drag strip we are not aware of? How does this knowledge facilitate transporting a 180# man from LA to NY in a nanosecond? Just musing aloud...
The neutrinos are barely affected by a mass that has such low density as the earth, with almost all of them going right through; some have to get to the detector so a few get stopped but not many. The neutrinos do not go around the accelerator, as they have no charge.
In the course of doing the experiments, the researchers noticed that the particles showed up 60 billionths of a second earlier than they would have done if they had travelled at the speed of light.
This is a tiny fractional change - just 20 parts in a million - but one that occurs consistently.
The team measured the travel times of neutrino bunches some 16,000 times, and have reached a level of statistical significance that in scientific circles would count as a formal discovery.
But the group understands that what are known as "systematic errors" could easily make an erroneous result look like a breaking of the ultimate speed limit.
The systematic effect does not have to be too large. I am guessing that they measurement is based on the frequency with which they get Tau versions but I find it confusing if that is the mechanism. Specifically, my confusion is that the high speed of neutrinos means that they take longer on our clocks to decay than on their clocks. But, how does this calculation work when you have v > c and what partical is it when the mass has gone through an expansion due to terms of the form 1/((1-(v^2/c^2))^1/2 [going from memory here]??
So where is JRM to adjudicate this issue and tell me where my thinking is skewed?
26mi235 wrote:But, how does this calculation work when you have v > c and what partical is it when the mass has gone through an expansion due to terms of the form 1/((1-(v^2/c^2))^1/2 [going from memory here]??
Um . . . yeah . . . that's how I remember it too . . . but then again, I ALWAYS forget to carry the 1.
Pego wrote:My bet is that this will turn out to be an error.
Yes. Very likely. This reminds me a bit of the "excitement" over cold fusion years ago. I didn't believe it (on the "too good to be true" principle), but it got a lot of play and raised hopes before it turned out to be nothing.
I've been told that I am wrong about a lot of things by lots of people over many years, but since neutrinos can break the light-speed barrier and all of what was assumed to be reality is no longer true, then I feel entirely justified: Turns out I have probably always been right about everything!
Since I read the news blurbs I have been watching for neutrinos and from what I can see, they really do move awfully fast.
Had dinner with one of my climbing buddies who was a math/philosophy major and knows physics inside and out, does differential equations for fun. He's thinking this is real, that they were as rigorous and thorough as scientists can be, and that it will stand up to repeat testing and analysis. Said it will require the development of an entirely new branch of mathematics to describe what happens when something goes faster than the speed of light, but that may not happen in our lifetime.
Apparently the neutrinos were not just "fired" randomly through space and earth and air and building foundations and graves and olive tree roots and landfills and whatnot, but through a 435 mile long manmade thing, not a fiberoptic filament or such, but some sort of tube containing I don't know what, I didn't need to hear all the details.
DrJay wrote:Apparently the neutrinos were not just "fired" randomly through space and earth and air and building foundations and graves and olive tree roots and landfills and whatnot, but through a 435 mile long manmade thing, not a fiberoptic filament or such, but some sort of tube containing I don't know what, I didn't need to hear all the details.
Speed of light in a vaccum would be one speed and then speed of light that was wind aided would have to be faster. I'm I the only genius who understands this?
SQUACKEE wrote:Speed of light in a vaccum would be one speed and then speed of light that was wind aided would have to be faster. I'm I the only genius who understands this?
SQUACKEE wrote:Speed of light in a vaccum would be one speed and then speed of light that was wind aided would have to be faster. I'm I the only genius who understands this?
Do you have reference[frame]s for that?
Reference frame, smethness blame, Iz gotz common cents baby, like dah.
SQUACKEE wrote:Speed of light in a vaccum would be one speed and then speed of light that was wind aided would have to be faster. I'm I the only genius who understands this?
Actually that's completely incorrect by the special theory of relativity. It was disproved in the Michelson-Morley experiment.
SQUACKEE wrote:Speed of light in a vaccum would be one speed and then speed of light that was wind aided would have to be faster. I'm I the only genius who understands this?
Actually that's completely incorrect by the special theory of relativity. It was disproved in the Michelson-Morley experiment.
Seriously, it took and experiment to disprove my incredibly stoopid and insane idea?
Pego wrote:My bet is that this will turn out to be an error.
Yes. Very likely. This reminds me a bit of the "excitement" over cold fusion years ago. I didn't believe it (on the "too good to be true" principle), but it got a lot of play and raised hopes before it turned out to be nothing.
Speaking of the LHC, it played a key part in the first episode of the new Nova series, The Fabric Of The Cosmos. Actually made physics almost understandable to me! JRW, did you watch? Thoughts on the whole presentation?
) does NOT break the USL; it merely bends space to take short-cuts (worm-holes too). Live long and prosper! 
