Particles measured faster than the speed of light

[SmearglePaints]

You say it like its a bad thing; theory is the highest level of certainty in science.

It is a bad thing. It's remarkably arrogant to assume something is the "highest level of certainty" after only barely a hundred years of consideration and thousands of years more of human existence. I'll believe that light speed is "top speed" in a few million years, thanks.

 

[Green Zubat]

It is a bad thing. It's remarkably arrogant to assume something is the "highest level of certainty" after only barely a hundred years of consideration and thousands of years more of human existence. I'll believe that light speed is "top speed" in a few million years, thanks.

Science is founded on assumption. You can't definitively prove anything, only ponder what happened make an appropriate hyposthesis and then find as much evidence to support it as possible. If, at the end of the day, no one can find anything to refute your hypothesis then it can be accepted as theory - not the gospel truth, but theory - because there's always the possibility that something may eventually come to light that knocks your theory right out of the sky, in which case you need to find a new theory. Theories are the best you can hope to get in science. They can never be proved, only disproved - that is the scientific method.

Take gravity, for instance. We all believe in it, use it to explain all sorts of things, from falling to planetary motions. However, there can never be any definitive proof that its there, that its real. There could always be something else going on. All we have is the evidence we can gather to support its existence (which, in gravity's case, is a lot). Even the most basic theories we accept as fact (even our own existences) have a tiny chance of being disproved later on. Nothing is 100% certain. Nevertheless, you can get damn close, and that's the point of theories; you might not be able to achieve 100% certainty, but 99.9% isn't bad either.

A user on another forum I encountered put it best here:

I don't think any theory is ever 'a fact'. There is always some (perhaps infinitisemally small) chance in principle that an experiment will disprove it. The apple might fly upward one day, who is to say it can't.

For instance, perhaps nature has setup a timescale, such that after 13.8777777777 billion years, the laws of physics change.

Still, I think most people will say, well there is something objective and 'factual' at the heart of it.. Its just that we can never identically know for sure if it is b/c of human ignorance.

Newtonian physics, and other semi classical theories (like special and general relativity) have passed hundreds of thousands of experimental data points. We are nearly, but not quite, sure that they are indeed factual.

GR [General Relativity] for instance, is probably correct at most scales, but even today, amongst active scientists there is some fiddling room at large extra galactic scales for some modifications. But if I was a betting man, I would put my money on the tried and true.

So, to say something's a theory is quite the testament, to be honest. Saying something's "just a theory" demonstrates a lack of fundamental scientific knowledge.

 

[SmearglePaints]

So, to say something's a theory is quite the testament, to be honest. Saying something's "just a theory" demonstrates a lack of fundamental scientific knowledge.

I understand scientific principles perfectly. In fact, my entire doubt of theories is based on what you just said: that theories have a chance of being proven wrong.

 

[Hector]

If this were the case, FTL travel would be theoretically possible. Not to mention it would break much of quantum physics as we know it.

 

[Dorothy]

Not too much of a big deal.

It's an incredibly big deal, since it proves that travel beyond the speed of light is possible.

 

[SmearglePaints]

It's an incredibly big deal, since it proves that travel beyond the speed of light is possible.

Something that Star Trek has shown us for decades.

 

[Dorothy]

Something that Star Trek has shown us for decades.

Star Trek is not a scientific model.

 

[SmearglePaints]

Star Trek is not a scientific model.

So? I've seen FTL forms of travel in fiction for decades, so I'm not exactly going to be surprised or thrilled to see it realized in real-life. I know it's possible because I've already been shown it is.

 

[Dorothy]

So? I've seen FTL forms of travel in fiction for decades, so I'm not exactly going to be surprised or thrilled to see it realized in real-life. I know it's possible because I've already been shown it is.

Except fiction is just that. Now we know that FTL travel is possible in real life.

 

[H-con]

So? I've seen FTL forms of travel in fiction for decades, so I'm not exactly going to be surprised or thrilled to see it realized in real-life. I know it's possible because I've already been shown it is.

You know it's possible because you've been shown it's possible? Funny, because this is the first experiment ever showing that (and even the results from this experiment aren't necessarily correct). I suggest you report your findings to the scientific community in that case. That is, of course, if Star Trek and other series and movies count as examples. I for one would stick to the lab.

 

[SmearglePaints]

Except fiction is just that. Now we know that FTL travel is possible in real life.

You know it's possible because you've been shown it's possible? Funny, because this is the first experiment ever showing that (and even the results from this experiment aren't necessarily correct). I suggest you report your findings to the scientific community in that case. That is, of course, if Star Trek and other series and movies count as examples. I for one would stick to the lab.

Neither of you really seem to understand what I'm saying, so I won't bother to correct your reading comprehension.

 

[Kalavinka]

Then clarify, instead of acting holier-than-thou.

 

[SmearglePaints]

Then clarify, instead of acting holier-than-thou.

I shouldn't have to clarify since my original post made my perspective very clear.

 

[Chronos]

I shouldn't have to clarify since my original post made my perspective very clear.

Cop out reply, tbh.

This is a VERY big deal, as this could potentially change up a lot in the science world. It is alarming to me that anybody would think that this is just a simple rewrite of a single law and that's all. There's a lot more to it than that, and could lead to many more interesting discoveries in the future.

 

[naeem]

i really like the work of this scientist, and appreciate him very much. i did't know about it ever. very nice information sharing. thanks for awarness

 

[Volphied]

BBC News - Faster-than-light neutrino experiment to be run again

Scientists who announced that sub-atomic particles might be able to travel faster than light are to rerun their experiment in a different way.

This will address criticisms and allow the physicists to shore up their analysis as much as possible before submitting it for publication.

Dr Sergio Bertolucci said it was vital not to "fool around" given the staggering implications of the result.

So they are doing all they can to rule out more pedestrian explanations.

Physicists working on the Opera experiment announced the perplexing findings last month.

Neutrinos sent through the ground from Cern (the home of the Large Hadron Collider) in Geneva toward the Gran Sasso laboratory 732km away in Italy seemed to show up a tiny fraction of a second earlier than light would have.

The speed of light is widely regarded as the Universe's ultimate velocity limit. Outlined first by James Clerk Maxwell and then by Albert Einstein in his theory of special relativity, much of modern physics relies on the idea that nothing can travel faster than light.

For many, the most comforting explanation is that some repeated "systematic error" has so far eluded the experimenters.

Since September, more than 80 scientific papers about the finding have been posted to the arXiv pre-print server. Most propose theoretical solutions for the observation; a few claim to find problems.

Dr Bertolucci, the director of research at Cern, told BBC News: "In the last few days we have started to send a different time structure of the beam to Gran Sasso.

"This will allow Opera to repeat the measurement, removing some of the possible systematics."

The neutrinos that emerge at Gran Sasso start off as a beam of proton particles at Cern. Through a series of complex interactions, neutrino particles are generated from this beam and stream through the Earth's crust to Italy.

Originally, Cern fired the protons in a long pulse lasting 10 microseconds (10 millionths of a second).

The neutrinos showed up 60 nanoseconds (60 billionths of a second) earlier than light would have over the same distance.

However, the time measurement is not direct; the researchers cannot know how long it took an individual neutrino to travel from Switzerland to Italy.

Instead, the measurement must be performed statistically: the scientists superimpose the neutrinos' "arrival times" on the protons' "departure times", over and over again and taking an average.

But some physicists say that any wrong assumptions made when relating these data sets could produce a misleading result.

This should be addressed by the new measurements, in which protons are sent in a series of short bursts - lasting just one or two nanoseconds, thousands of times shorter - with a large gap (roughly 500 nanoseconds) in between each burst.

This system, says Dr Bertolucci, is more efficient: "For every neutrino event at Gran Sasso, you can connect it unambiguously with the batch of protons at Cern," he explained.

Clicking in

Physicist Matt Strassler, who raised concerns about the original methods, welcomed the new experimental design.

Writing on his blog, Prof Strassler, from Rutgers University in New Jersey, said: "It's like sending a series of loud and isolated clicks instead of a long blast on a horn; in the latter case you have to figure out exactly when the horn starts and stops, but in the former you just hear each click and then it's already over."

The re-jigged neutrino run will end in November, when Cern has to switch from accelerating protons to accelerating lead ions. Opera scientists hope to include these measurements in the manuscript they will submit for publication in a scientific journal.

One of the main challenges to the collaboration's work comes from Nobel laureate Sheldon Glashow and his Boston University colleague Andrew Cohen.

In a recent paper, the physicists argue that if neutrinos can travel faster than the speed of light, they would rapidly lose energy, depleting the beam of more energetic particles. This phenomenon was not seen by the Opera experiment.

Cross checks

Dr Bertolucci called this study "elegant", but added: "An experimentalist has to prove that a measurement is either right or wrong. If you interpret every new measurement with older theories, you will never get a new theory.

"More than a century ago, Michelson and Morley measured the speed of light in the direction Earth was moving and in the opposite direction. They found the speed was equal in both directions."

This result helped to spur the development of the radical new theory of special relativity.

"If they had interpreted it using classical, Newtonian theory they would never have published," said Dr Bertolucci.

Next year, teams working on two other Gran Sasso experiments - Borexino and Icarus - will begin independent cross-checks of Opera's results.

The US Minos experiment and Japan's T2K experiment will also test the observations. It is likely to be several months before they report back.

 

[MegaCharr]

^Hmmmm....Mabe Pokemon can be discovered as real now...

 

[Kalavinka]

^Hmmmm....Mabe Pokemon can be discovered as real now...

And this experiment is supposed to turn fiction** into reality...how?

**by which I obviously mean stories and the like, not the possibility of superluminal travel

 

[MegaCharr]

And this experiment is supposed to turn fiction** into reality...how?

**by which I obviously mean stories and the like, not the possibility of superluminal travel

What I mean is traveling to other worlds in faster time and finding life...This universe is allways expanding so..We know so little about what were in so...Why not a chance?...Mabe some day but not today....

....So you honestly beleave that we are the only ones in this universe...HA!...I dont think so...but if we are...Then you win

 

[Kalavinka]

....So you honestly beleave that we are the only ones in this universe...HA!...I dont think so...but if we are...Then you win

No, I do not, but as much as many of us like to fantasise otherwise, I highly doubt Pokémon (or any other fictional story, for that matter) would be such an example, unless you're somehow able to turn dreams into reality.