subatomic particles travel faster than light @ cern

Scientists at the world's largest physics lab say they have clocked subatomic particles traveling faster than light, a feat that - if true - would break a fundamental pillar of science.

The readings have so astounded researchers that they are asking others to independently verify the measurements before claiming an actual discovery.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_BREAKING_LIGHT_SPEED?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

WHAT

http://www.urbandigs.com/seller-nervous.jpg

you guys

YOU GUYS

this has actually made my heart rate go up.

kind of freaking out over here

where is caek

HOOS' heart, going faster than heartbeats! (FTH)

*pours one out for special relativity*

RIP

http://being.publicradio.org/programs/einsteinsethics/images/einstein-pressconference1950.jpg

DON'T TRY IT

particles propelled by einstein rolling in grave

word !

countdown to time machines

Nah, if this was going to mean time travel, the time travelers would already have shown up.

http://cdn.someecards.com/someecards/usercards/1288105095406_6175691.png

Society is in the gutter

this is what happens when you let liberals teach science

Nah, if this was going to mean time travel, the time travelers would already have shown up.

What if it's only that we can go forward in time?

Hey look, is Adam aging faster than the rest of us?

http://i649.photobucket.com/albums/uu216/le_bateau_ivre/g600616996.gif

Srsly, I like that when I will be 80, and people will ask me where I was when this occured, I can say I was on the lol-interent and a kind cool person called HOOS broke the news :)

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ll3g7599ht1qbwlyo.gif

this is maybe not appropriate but I want to post it everywhere

otm tho

Dan exactly why haven't they cast you as Doctor Who yet

I can say I was on the lol-interent and a kind cool person called HOOS broke the news :)

― 'Main Shop of Love' Gigolo (Le Bateau Ivre), Thursday, September 22, 2011 8:05 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

"what's the internet"

"it was what we used before faceweb"

xp: IIRC you have to audition first

lol "faceweb"? we're on faceweb+ now!

I'm posting WITH MY MIND

(because my mind is telling my fingers which letters to type)

srsly my excitement about this this far exceeds my knowledge about the subject.

this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZ-27rdwJPs

Supertomic particles

(because sub is below and their new distinctive feature is above, super?)

i'm from the future but it is p gauche to harp on about it imo

nbd

subatomic particles travel faster than light @ u face

must have been some date

lol

http://cdnimg.visualizeus.com/thumbs/6b/2e/2001,helmet,space,odyssey,stanley,kubrick-6b2ee01030065e6a3eee517c890da0f9_m.jpg

be serious everyone already knew that 'absolute speed' shit dont make no sense

boxedjoy otm

@ this news

http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lbislwKuzw1qef1kjo1_400.gif

if things really got more massive the faster they travel, why would ppl jog to lose weight? qed

shut down cern

w/e at u all freaking out over this, you never experienced it or understood it, its just something someone told you

http://i649.photobucket.com/albums/uu216/le_bateau_ivre/klzFO.gif

cool meme bro

just wanted to use that gif tbh

realizing einstein was a fraud is the "liberace was gay??" of the 21st century

its nice but the door window looks too much like an 'I' xp

icey you are wrong -- we have all been experiencing this all along

nuh uh because its not real is why

*as proven by science

its nice but the door window looks too much like an 'I' xp

― ice cr?m, Thursday, September 22, 2011 10:26 PM (26 seconds ago) Bookmark

is it a window or a metal plate hammered on? because for reals, why build a window that shape into a door.

OR IS IT BECAUSE LIGHT TRAVELS FASTER THROUGH I SHAPED WINDOWS THAN IT USED TO?

we have all been literally traveling through time

these are all important questions and at this point i dont think we can rule anything out

otm

w/e at u all freaking out over this, you never experienced it or understood it, its just something someone told you

― ice cr?m, Thursday, September 22, 2011 8:23 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

i mean come on bro i feel you but something understood as a foundation of physics with implications for our understanding of what's possible in the universe is, in the relative (ha) world we inhabit, a significant thing imo

"fyi actually we are wrong, turns out you can fly"

no one understood it because it didnt make any sense because its not real

the correct metaphor would be physicists telling us we can fly for fifty years then being all OMG TURNS OUT U CANT FLY

no one understood it because it didnt make any sense because its not real

― ice cr?m, Thursday, September 22, 2011 10:32 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

http://i649.photobucket.com/albums/uu216/le_bateau_ivre/tumblr_lhhvxsKvFj1qb82q8o1_500.gif

I can't find what this means, anywhere

srsly, with that metaphor you are saying we all have been living with something going faster than the speed of light, but we only realise it now?

its not is yr 'books' u have to look 'inside'

still dont understand your metaphor. at all.

how is this insignificant for you?

how do kindles fit into this

sideways

now you can read books before they're written

works better on ipad

figures

still dont understand your metaphor. at all.

how is this insignificant for you?

― 'Main Shop of Love' Gigolo (Le Bateau Ivre), Thursday, September 22, 2011 8:38 PM (3 minutes ago)

the only reason we have had to believe "nothing travels faster than light" is because somebody told us

and as it turns out, that somebody was wrong

how many other things are like this?

or something like that

I posted this on Google+ and one of my friends commented "you post the THINKIEST stuff"

mind you, this is the last thing I posted on Google+: http://www.enlightenedlibracreations.com/Store/index.php

loll

thats mad thinky son

what if there were pants that could travel faster than light

djp would know about them

before any of us

these pants have ALREADY RAVED

you might've gotten a better response from ice cram if this thread was called physics nagl

http://i.imgur.com/Okam6.jpg

see he's already started

would physic

http://www.westernherald.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/physics-300x280.jpg

suit + tie: agl
hair: nagl

but both of them together is, surprisingly, kind of agl

yeah nabl

Hair's kind of 19th century, Worked for Douglass, no?

nabl indeed

the only reason we have had to believe "nothing travels faster than light" is because somebody told us

and as it turns out, that somebody was wrong

how many other things are like this?

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Thursday, September 22, 2011 10:42 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

Ok, but then you can apply that to all physics and nature laws, to all research that has ever been done, saying "someone is telling us this, nae mind, that person can be wrong and probably will be". And maybe you can, lord knows I don't know. But accepting and understanding that this is a big change to what mankind has been living by for a century seems like a big deal to me.

agreed.

not gonna lie, I covet the shit out of that tie

. . . and what does all of this have to do with the new Facebook updates? coincidence? i think not.

what's that FTL particle that is used on star trek every time they need some hand-wavy thing -- wasn't that within popular science theory?

i want to say it's called a chronoton, but that's the hand-wavy thing they use for time travel -- there's another one they use more often.

Tachyons?

sorry to be a buzzkill but i have just debunked this.

http://i55.tinypic.com/15oi72g.png

i.e. the motion is apparently superluminal

yeah yeah! tachyons -- that's like a real science thing isn't it?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/64/Tachyon04s.gif/250px-Tachyon04s.gif

take it to ILTMI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Htl3XWUhUOM

Wasn't there a "Thou shalt not travel faster than light" commandment in the bible?

Waaaait, whut? Slowly reading and liveblogging the Bible!

^ the place to turn for answers

http://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/20110922.gif

^ physics: nagl

serious get a white board ffs

ice cream you... really didnt believe in the theory of relativity this whole time?

time is bent, wtf that even mean; the universe is finite, be serious

i mean, like, not to say my own reaction to having it explained to me wasnt "huh wow that doesnt make sense physicists are smart guess its true tho"

the universe is finite, be serious

O RLY

my ice cr?m spoon is bent

that is not even a joke, just a free-association. frozen pudding gets harder than regular ice cream, i assume on account of the eggs or something. SCIENCE!!!!!!

what's next? women getting the vote?

dogs and cats, living together!

accelerated mass hysteria!

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1109.4897v1

^ downloads a lot slower than light

Subir Sarkar, head of particle theory at Oxford University, said: "If this is proved to be true it would be a massive, massive event. It is something nobody was expecting.

"The constancy of the speed of light essentially underpins our understanding of space and time and causality, which is the fact that cause comes before effect.

"Cause cannot come after effect and that is absolutely fundamental to our construction of the physical universe. If we do not have causality, we are buggered."

awesome. I love this.

sheehit

this has gotta be a misread

Cause cannot come after effect and that is absolutely fundamental to our construction of the physical universe. If we do not have causality, we are buggered.

HI DERE DAVID HUME

where is caek

― banana mogul (goole), Thursday, September 22, 2011 6:49 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

i don't understand this or know what's going on but i'm fugging EXCITED

If they'd waited a few days they could have announced this on the anniversary of "Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?" being published, which would have been neat. I'll wait for replication, though - I think it's more likely that something is wrong here rather than what we currently know. But I failed higher physics, twice for some reason, so I'm probably not really understanding anything.

a: CAEK IS FRANTICALLY CHECKING HIS RESULTS
b: he is sipping honeyed wine with cleopatra and suggesting she take a trip with him to versailles

or sipping honeyed wine with a neutrino suggesting a trip 60 nanoseconds into the future </buzz killington>

my sums dont add up

This is the only thing I have thought about since 3:30 est, yesterday.

I sometimes think I ought to pay less attention to Justin Verlander and Rick Perry, and more attention to things like this.

My CERN friends say to hold off on the time machine pre-orders.

clemenza: we now know Verlander is, at least theoretically, capable of throwing faster than the speed of light.

I can say I was on the lol-interent and a kind cool person called HOOS broke the news :)

― 'Main Shop of Love' Gigolo (Le Bateau Ivre), Thursday, September 22, 2011 8:05 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

My CERN friends say to hold off on the time machine pre-orders.

My fantasy football team is going to be magnificent!

Holy Frijoles

September 22, 2011 3:38 P.M.

By Jonah Goldberg

So much for “scientific consensus”:

*pours one out for wiggy woo*

*and scientific consensus*

So much for "holy shit"

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/neutrinos.png

Ban XKCD

which one of those stick men is the hilarious one?

when is that guy going to learn how to draw real people

the XKCD guy single-handedly makes me want to renounce science and make sacrifices to some pagan pig gods

Sacrifices to Jonah Goldberg? Why?

had to google him. handsome fellow.

when is that guy going to learn how to draw real people

― max, Friday, 23 September 2011 15:32 (13 minutes ago)

this is just going to be like cgi garfield, real disappointing

best summary i've read so far:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/09/neutrinos-faster-than-light/

Jung, who is spokesperson for a similar experiment in Japan called T2K, says the tricky part is accurately measuring the time between when the neutrinos are born by slamming a burst of protons into a solid target and when they actually reach the detector. That timing relies on the global positioning system, and the GPS measurements can have uncertainties of tens of nanoseconds. “I would be very interested in how they got a 10-nanosecond uncertainty, because from the systematics of GPS and the electronics, I think that’s a very hard number to get.

When I heard about this, I immediately thought of Mr Gaeta firing up the FTL drive, and then felt sad that he got ejected out of the airlock.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15034414

Jim Al-Khalili, a physicist from the University of Surrey, who suggested that a simple error in the measurement is probably the source of all the fuss. But he has gone further.

"So let me put my money where my mouth is: if the Cern experiment proves to be correct and neutrinos have broken the speed of light, I will eat my boxer shorts on live TV."

@jimalkhalili
Jim Al-Khalili
@tonypressley Don't worry, I have already investigated edible underwear just in case.

ahaha

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/absolute-speed-barrier-broken-cern-claims-neutrinos-clocked-traveling-faster-than-light/2011/09/22/gIQA5Sn9nK_story.html?wpisrc=xs_sl_0001

Alvaro De Rujula, a theoretical physicist at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research outside Geneva from where the neutron beam was fired, said he blamed the readings on a so-far undetected human error.

If not, and it’s a big if, the door would be opened to some wild possibilities.

The average person, said De Rujula, “could, in principle, travel to the past and kill their mother before they were born.”

feel like that's not the best use of the term "the average person"

a chicken in every pot

i hope people protest cern's experiments on the grounds that we can't just allow anybody to travel to the past and kill their mother before they were born; there would be ANARCHY

yeah I didn't complain when they were trying to create black holes that would suck up the planet, but this back to the future shit is where I draw the line

does this mean we finally get hoverboards

can i finally let my mouth write a check my ass can't cash?

if the average person kills their mother, what do the edge of the bell curve people do to her?

can i travel back in time and not ask that?

Haven't these physicists heard ilx's Sluglords read "A Sound of Thunder"?

what would happen if we prevented the velvet underground from releasing their debut album?

no lulu

If they went back in time and prevented Louise Brooks from getting her haircut, no.

guys if time travel were to become possible in the future then we wd probably know about it now tbrr

Tom go back in time and delete ILX, please!

Maybe they are keeping it a secret from us, NV.

considered that but i figure somebody in the future wd be asshole enough to let the cat out of the bag

maybe they signed a clause not to interfere w/ human events and went and lived with the dinosaurs

wait that is just the plot of a fox tv show

be careful, glenn beck!

I was the first one back. You are all my shadow puppets.

if the laws of physics no longer apply why would anyone want to stick around here

guys if time travel were to become possible in the future then we wd probably know about it now tbrr

― Dios mio! This kid is FUN to hit! (Noodle Vague), Friday, September 23, 2011 5:18 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark

Maybe they are keeping it a secret from us, NV.

― When I Stop Meming (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, September 23, 2011 5:19 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark

for real tho all kindsa reasons we wouldn't necessarily know, the least of which being "maybe only forward travel is possible"

what's all this got to do with the price of beef, i ask you

I went back in time and made beef more expensive

so it was you!

you're the reason why avocados are so expensive this year

don't blame me, blame Buffett; I am merely his avatar

maybe all the time travelers want to go to a cool time and this just doesn't qualify b/c there's like a secret awesome libertine party in 2579

I have been to that party and I can tell you it sucks, whiskey was banned in 2575

read that as Libertines party

hyperspace stills, my friend, hyperspace stills

maybe the time space is patrolled by efficient time cops and thus preventing any kind of interference

btw I've been to the future & here's my report

In the year 2525
If man is still alive
If woman can survive
They may find

In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies
Everything you think, do, and say
Is in the pill you took today

In the year 4545
Ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes
You won't find a thing chew
Nobody's gonna look at you

In the year 5555
Your arms are hanging limp at your sides
Your legs got not nothing to do
Some machine is doing that for you

In the year 6565
Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too
From the bottom of a long glass tube

In the year 7510
If God's a-comin' he ought to make it by then
Maybe he'll look around himself and say
Guess it's time for the Judgement day

In the year 8510
God is gonna shake his mighty head
He'll either say I'm pleased where man has been
Or tear it down and start again

In the year 9595
I'm kinda wondering if man is gonna be alive
He's taken everything this old earth can give
And he ain't put back nothing

Now it's been 10,000 years
Man has cried a billion tears
For what he never knew
Now man's reign is through
But through the eternal night
The twinkling of starlight
So very far away
Maybe it's only yesterday

In the year 2525
If man is still alive
If woman can survive
They may find

In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies
Everything you think, do or say
Is in the pill you took today

i can already travel forwards in time thx

i can stand still in time.

http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/05/a-bite-of-stars-a-slug-of-time-and-thou-episode-6/

life has suddenly become so LOST-esque

yo is it true nutrinos got CERNed by a lite kid after FTL beef?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MznLU4USbA

If Busted had really known about the future, then they'd have known that one of them would have ended up eating a crocodile penis in the presence of Ant & Dec.

In the year one million and a half,
Humankind is enslaved by giraffe.
Man must pay for all his misdeeds,
When the treetops are stripped of their leaves!
Whoa-oh!

Wasn't there a Scottish movie that came out right after Trainspotting with one of the same guys in it that had one of the same actors in it that had "In The Year 2525" in the credits?

I hope 2012 has these scientific breakthroughs popping up like once a month.

when will this breakthrough allow me to travel to the diamond planet is what i want to know

Scottish movie was Small Faces. Song was over end credits and was very spooky and effective.

all of this = http://www.gifsoup.com/webroot/animatedgifs/106772_o.gif

Subatomic particles going faster than light in my vagina?

http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId=308405&title=control-asshole-roommate-from

http://www.enlightenedlibracreations.com/Store/index.php

I thought this said Enlightened Liberace Reactions cuz I had just read this:

"realizing einstein was a fraud is the "liberace was gay??" of the 21st century"

and then thought it was a website about enlightened reactions upon discovering Liberace was gay.

calling Einstein a "fraud" is disgusting imo

http://i56.tinypic.com/11c4klc.png

if you meet the troll on the road, kill him

Einstein was a fraud

Abraham Lincoln was a fraud

Your mom is a fraud

This guy I saw at the grocery store putting a single beet in the front pocket of his hoody is a fraud

Bruce Vilanch is a fraud

If Einstein was wrong it will radically re-contextualize the irony inherent in the saying "Great going, Einstein!".

http://www.thedoghousediaries.com/comics/uncategorized/2011-09-23-403c7c4.png

L'esprit de palier voyage dans le temps

huge lols

to avert xp

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/09/neutrino-results-depend-on-exquisite-measurements-of-time-space.ars?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+arstechnica%2Findex+%28Ars+Technica+-+Featured+Content%29

This is a really good article describing the presentation they did today. Sounds like they did their homework.

Can they not, like, try and fire the neutrinos again?

"We don't serve faster-than-light neutrinos in this bar," said the bartender.

A faster-than-light neutrino walks into a bar.

"maybe only forward travel is possible"

Well, this is already allowed. Besides the fact that we do it all the time, you would just need to travel fast enough to end up at a point in the future while you age more slowly (at least when you slow down).

that would be the idea, yes.

But this wouldn't change that, presumably? As far as (sigh) time travel goes, everything is still the same?

We don't serve faster-than-light neutrinos in this bar," said the bartender.

A faster-than-light neutrino walks into a bar.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Friday, September 23, 2011 8:23 PM (19 minutes ago)

Neu!trinos: ahead of their time

Your fine for "Faster than Light" in a "Relativity Zone" is $75 Googles.
Your court date is 10/31/11
If you wish to plead no contest, sign the back of the ticket, fill out a check to the Cern County Court Clerk and mail it to the post office box below.

"maybe only forward travel is possible"

Isn't there some well-supported theory that backwards travel may also be possible, but only as far back as when the time machine is first turned on?

i'll never get my head around backwards time travelling theories, particularly involving faster than light travel. i mean if that worked, won't it just reverse you 'getting into the time machine' and thus you'll just end up back in time doing exactly the same thing you were doing at that time. see, i have no idea.

i think this is also why i'm dubious about these results, i mean einstein was a clever fellow he must have been onto something with his theory. i wouldn't be surprised if cern announce they've fugged up.

but that's just imho, and because i FEAR THE UNKNOWN

I am willing to chalk this up to experimental error for the time being

Here's the paper... http://arxiv.org/abs/1109.4897

News people please note:

Despite the large significance of the measurement reported here and the stability of the
analysis, the potentially great impact of the result motivates the continuation of our studies in
order to investigate possible still unknown systematic effects that could explain the observed
anomaly. We deliberately do not attempt any theoretical or phenomenological interpretation of
the results

164 authors for that paper. Amazing they agreed on anything I would have thought.

from one of the blogs linked:

As mentioned, if the number in this report is correct, neutrinos from previously detected supernova would arrive a LOT earlier than the photons on the order of 3-4 years since the distances involved are like 160,000 years

Since this isn't true (they arrive only a few hours because photon interact with matter and take slightly longer to get here), there's either something strange going on here or there's something introducing error they haven't discovered yet.

seems hard to reconcile this. perhaps something about being close to the earth's gravitational pull gives the neutrinos some sort of speed boost?

hi guys

"Cause cannot come after effect and that is absolutely fundamental to our construction of the physical universe. If we do not have causality, we are buggered."

this guy taught me special relativity. one of the most badass genuinely scary cool physicists i have ever met.

i've been offline and haven't read the paper or even the regular news stories about this though. sounds cool!

hey physics majors/minors

The speed of light being regarded as the maximum possible speed seems (afaik) to be based on the fact that if something traveled faster than it, it could be observed in the "past" and thus its observation could change its origin, violating cause and effect. But what about something being faster than light that was impossible to change or affect? You could observe it without the possibility of causing paradoxes.

Like what?

As soon as there's something going faster than light, even by nanoseconds, you can use it to change the past. Morse messages = information, for instance, or computing possibilities.

Imagine this setup: A is a neutrino source, B is a receiver that turns A off as soon as it detects a neutrino. Set them up very very very close to each other. Result: A is turned off before it sends the neutrino that activates B, so it doesn't send the neutrino, so B doesn't deactivate A, etc etc. Shit just can't be true, man. (quick and dirty, needs finetuning if the instructions are being sent at light speed I guess)

Maybe free will is just a big illusion.

http://www.celebrity-animals.com/animal-pictures/free-willy/willy.jpg

(That's what I first misread.)

Yeah, neutrinos wouldn't work because it is apparently possible to send them out at a certain time (just don't ask me how CERN does this). I'm thinking of something that isn't possible to interact with at all apart from observation.

Read Ted Chiang's "Story of Your Life," Adam B.

Like what?

like a shadow. you can make a shadow move arbitrarily fast by moving the light source away from what it's projecting on. if you move it far enough away, the shadow will move faster than the speed of light. there is no way to catch a ride on that shadow or use it to transmit anything. even if you wanted to use the form of the shadow as a signal, you'd have to send a lightspeed signal back to the person who is casting the shadow to get them to signal. the shape of that triangle is always going to ensure that the signal travels slower than lightspeed.

another example would be the water in a hose. if my hose is full of water, then as soon as i turn it on, water will come from the other end. if i make my hose long enough, it will appear that i'm transmitting water at lightspeed. i forget the reason why this doesn't work for FTL signaling but it doesn't work either.

Doesn't quantum entanglement imply that information can travel faster than the speed of light?

From wikipedia:
"Experimental results have demonstrated that effects due to entanglement travel at least thousands of times faster than the speed of light."

what if you got a big stick thousands of light years long, made of the most rigid material conceivable, and stuck it between two distant transmission posts - wouldn't moving it at one end result in instantaneous movement at the other end? (my guess of an answer is that this isn't how even the most rigid atomic structures work and the movement would travel in a wave from one side to the other at a relatively slow pace? also that having a big stick thousands of light years long is a bit impractical.)

or on the xp, maybe a big QUANTUM stick!

you can stop talking about my penis now

managed to blow yr load three hours before the date started.

the thing about the stick is that the atoms are linked together by a field of forces that propagate at the speed of light. so even if it was infinitely dense, so that there was essentially no space between atoms, the "signal" would still only travel at the speed of light, because that's how fast the "push" is transmitted.

wait explain the shadow thing again?

it is on the wikipedia page for "shadow" under the section "shadow propagation speed"

Read Ted Chiang's "Story of Your Life," AB.

― When I Stop Meming (James Redd and the Blecchs)

i bought his short story collection a week ago so i will!

lol @ hoos joke

Countdown til we just rename The Internet to The Astral Plane rather than The Cloud.

should not hoos' joke be:

the faster-than-light neutrino bartender says, "sorry, we don't serve your kind here"

a man walks into a bar

"ow!"

a man walks into a bar

I've been silent on this issue as I'm not truly educated, and clearly in the minority here, however, prior to this, I've been thinking A LOT about time being 3 separate dimentions, itself (time as a zipper in motion, rather than an arrow) -- which means this breakthrough has never suggested time travel, for me.

The whole unification of everything idea has been lost on me, since the time-space grid (more like space-history grid?) offers gravity as a biproduct due to the size/mass/denisity, and yes, within the bounds of that grid, speed-of-light has demonstrated itself to be the speed limit -- but these rules have never applied beaneath that grid within the realm of quantam mechanics, right?

I just always supected this 'faster than light for subatomic particles' thing was possible, and it would allude to how much more we need to learn about quantam mecahnics.

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=77&threadid=89454#unread

Is there a thread about this on 77?

Woops. No -- just [stuff "smart'' ppl talk about that u never learned abt in school tbh]

also, "dimentions"...

I just always supected this 'faster than light for subatomic particles' thing was possible, and it would allude to how much more we need to learn about quantam mecahnics.

otm imo

i was never clear why c was a hard limit in the first place.

Where is the Questionizer when we need him?

had a chat about this at work today. apparently even the guys who did it don't believe it.

also the italian science ministry put out a press release saying how proud they were of the tunnel between cern and the italian mine where the neutrons were detected. there is no tunnel. they go through solid rock.

http://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/2011/09/something-is-deeply-wrong-minister-and.html

:D

abanana, somewhat related to your post, I remember reading about a theory that postulate that travelling back in time could be possible as long as it happened in a way that could not interfere with the present. I think is this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novikov_self-consistency_principle.

The shadow example is an interesting one. But aside from the fact that it couldn't be used to transmit anything, it's debatable to even consider a shadow a real physical entity.

yeah a shadow is not really a "thing"

interestin piece (for anyone of a philosophical bent) on why time travel is actually a nonsense concept

http://authorservices.wiley.com/bauthor/onlineLibraryTPS.asp?DOI=10.1111/j.1467-9205.2011.01446.x&ArticleID=838743

skip to the end:

It will be objected that what I seem to be saying is that because the
grammar of our language does not accommodate time-travel then it
(time-travel) is not possible. It will be objected, in other words, that
I am illicitly inferring from the limits of our language to an alleged
limit to the possible nature of our world. But I might just as well –
just as rightly – have said this:“Because the grammar of our language
does not accommodate sdlfhjdsfg, then sdlfhjdsfg is not possible.”
Because, strange as it might sound, that is basically correct. Because
sdlfhjdsfg is nonsense; it has not yet been successfully assigned any
meaning; so “it” certainly is not possible. There is, we might usefully
say, no “it.” And the same is true of (what we seemingly wanted to
mean by) time-travel

I think that paper is time traveling in from the past.

0) What in sleep is missing from time-travel is the essential element of
any travel worthy of the name, of tourism and holidaying for instance:
the ability, at least, to go there and back again.The reason, I believe,
why the conclusion that going to sleep is as much travelling through
time as is going to the future in a time-machine is repugnant is that
we are only prepared to call going to the future “travelling through
time” if we can potentially return from the trip.

Oh really.

could it not just be that they are measuring the speed of light more accurately than previous experiments?

ok i know why the speed of light was determined empirically to be a constant -- michelson-morley basically*, and then some predicted experimental measurements which proved correct -- but can caek or others with the chops explain what it is exactly in the cosmos that requires this to be so structurally**?

*which i remember as being "some light was fired off of the top of a fast train and arrived no sooner than some other light fired an equal disance of a non-moving object: hence speed of train adds no velocity to light, as it would eg if you threw a pork pie from the same train"
**my dim memory of the non-euclidean geometry i did as a student converts this to "the speed of light is constant because the universe is THAT MUCH bent", but writing this out tells me some steps got skipped

those interested sending information back in time using faster-than-light particles should read:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/ba/Timescape%281stEd%29.jpg

Can I just interrupt this thread a moment to remind everyone about this, tomorrow: http://dvice.com/archives/2011/09/tevatron-closes.php R.I.P.

Thx, carry on.

**my dim memory of the non-euclidean geometry i did as a student converts this to "the speed of light is constant because the universe is THAT MUCH bent", but writing this out tells me some steps got skipped

are you asking why the speed of light is "c" or why the speed of light is always the same amount? those questions have separate answers. i think the "that much bent" explanation covers why the speed of light is why the speed it is.

the constancy has to do with electromagnetic fields, and making sure that moving through a field doesn't magically change the properties of the field in a way that looks illogical to a person standing still in that field, but i don't know how to break it down for you without pointing to the equations.

like a lot of quantum mechanics and general relativity, it is a lot easier to show how the result proceeds from manipulating the equations as opposed to showing how the result proceeds from logic and intuition.

i was just going over the monty hall problem with my students and we ended up at the same conclusion: we can show it using numbers and equations but we can't really *explain* it per se.

The explanation I got of the speed of light involved all of the simple equation etc., like v=d/t and f=ma and a few more recent ones, and it got to the point where it just had to be c. Also, at the speed of light, any further addition of energy to try to speed up anything would increase it's mass so much that it would offset any speed gain. But this was a long time ago, and I was never able to understand physics anyway. But I got the impression that it was fairly a priori rather than empirical.

it is, basically you just need to make sure that the equations that a person standing still would write for an electromagnetic wave match those that a second person - who is moving past that first person - will write for those waves. certain parts of the equations will be different, but certain parts need to agree. if you explore the consequences of that, you find that everybody sees the electromagnetic field moving at the same speed, whether they are standing still or not. that makes the speed invariant, and then manipulating the equations lets you solve for the value that it takes.

The way I've always thought of this is that the constancy of the speed of light is a POSTULATE of the theory of relativity. There is no reason why it should be constant. It just IS. From there you derive all the equations and if the equations describe the correct physics (which they do) then you can assume the postulate is correct.

P-NASTY, afaik the value of C has been determined with a precision much higher than the difference of the recently reported neutrino speed. So if (big if) this result is confirmed, it would prove neutrinos can travel faster than light, not that c is actually higher than the previously accepted value. What I don't know is whether the theory of relativity would still hold as long as we replace c_light with the speed of neutrinos.

'i was just going over the monty hall problem with my students and we ended up at the same conclusion: we can show it using numbers and equations but we can't really *explain* it per se.'

there are a lot of intuitive angles to approach the monty hall problem -- maybe there is one for c?

daavid i think the postulate is that the equations are complete and that moving and non-moving observers should agree on the equations, the speed of light actually follows from that, not the other way around.

i always found it hard to be intuitive about field equations, since i have never seen, heard, felt, sensed an actual magnetic field, let alone traveled through it at relativistic speed. i think cartoons and animations are probably the best way to approach this but i don't have any good ones to point out to you.

Well, I think you can see it both ways but in the way Einstein wrote it, the constancy of the speed of light is a postulate on its own. From Wikipedia:

The Principle of Relativity – The laws by which the states of physical systems undergo change are not affected, whether these changes of state be referred to the one or the other of two systems in uniform translatory motion relative to each other.

The Principle of Invariant Light Speed – "... light is always propagated in empty space with a definite velocity (speed) c which is independent of the state of motion of the emitting body." (from the preface). That is, light in vacuum propagates with the speed c (a fixed constant, independent of direction) in at least one system of inertial coordinates (the "stationary system"), regardless of the state of motion of the light source.

are the able to send the neutrinos off on their journey and then back again, thus having two neutrinos in the same place at the same time?

are the able to send the neutrinos off on their journey and then back again, thus having two neutrinos in the same place at the same time?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk0Is8-gGSQ

"We don't serve faster-than-light neutrinos in this bar," said the bartender.

A faster-than-light neutrino walks into a bar.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Friday, September 23, 2011 9:23 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

big hoos, did you originate this?

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/10/10/charles-krauthammer-changing-our-world-faster-than-light/

i heard it at work first, but tbf now we don't have causality that doesn't prove anything

whoa

i mean i didn't see it anywhere first, but the framework of the joke is p low hanging fruit imo

O_O that it's verbatim though

neutrino who?
knock knock
neutrino
who's there?
neutrino neutrino neutrino
knock knock
neutrino

i watched nova last night and they said the universe is just a big slideshow, so theres that

http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images/3/35/Obi_hologram.jpg

^ the universe

not a big fan of the universe prequels.

hoos otm

RUH ROH

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21188-more-data-shows-neutrinos-still-faster-than-light.html

Prof. Al-Khalili, who promised to eat his shorts if the FTL neutrino result was confirmed, still isn't convinced though:

http://twitter.com/#!/jimalkhalili/status/137446106429788161

I'm not believing it until they resolve the discrepancy with neutrino speeds measured astronomically.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_limv60r43l1qztotto1_400.jpg

Even a tiny discrepancy between the clocks at Cern and Gran Sasso could be at the root of the faster-than-light results seen in September.

Wouldn't this be the first thing you'd check?

"wait when do the clocks go back in switzerland?"

IT'S A KIND OF TIME TRAVEL

Hope you all kept your time machine receipts...

http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2012/02/breaking-news-error-undoes-faster.html

wtf, cern boffins working with one of the most expensive and important scientific investigations of our time, and they can't even check their fucking optical fibre connections!!?!?

my five year old could measure the speed of light more accurately

I was hoping there would be a flaw in their methodology that they would discover. Loose cable? how boring.

I did find this while looking into FTL ideas:

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SpeedOfLight/FTL.html

just breaking

LOLL

oh dear, another ghost in the machine.

cue Leno jokes abt programing VCR