Speed of light broken?

[Kodachrome]

It would have a snowball effect, the more people believing in said theory, the more fortified it becomes, and therefore the harder it is to break free from.

that's not how science works.

science also doesn't take one experiment over nearly a century of research and evidence.

wait for Fermilab's corroboration, that's all we can do.

That's what I've been thinking. For the time being anything more than a resounding "hmmm" by anyone not involved with CERN or the scientific community would be unfair to the scientific process. All this speculation by laymen over a maybe is just silly.

[knell]

we chalk it up to an error because that's most likely what it is, considering the past century of so of tests....

if it's repeated, awesome... guess what will be different? some textbooks will need to be re-written, and some new equations will need to be written, maybe leading to a unified theory that (relatively) very few people will care about.... that's about the extent of it.

[bigfootspartan]

It would have a snowball effect, the more people believing in said theory, the more fortified it becomes, and therefore the harder it is to break free from.

that's not how science works.

science also doesn't take one experiment over nearly a century of research and evidence.

wait for Fermilab's corroboration, that's all we can do.

+1. I have to argue the opposite Mortal. The more people who believe in a theory the more the theory begins to encompass. The bigger the theory gets the more likely it is that someone will find a way to disprove it.

It's the whole reason why we use null hypotheses when we calculate statistics. You can't ever prove a theory right. It's impossible. You can however, prove a theory wrong. I can't think of any physics examples, but a biology example would be: Null Hypothesis - Drug A will not change the natural history of Disease A. We can then prove that wrong, implying that Drug A does, in fact, change the natural history of Disease A. However, if another study comes out disproving our implication, then our theory that Drug A is useful in treating Disease A is refuted.

The reason why this is so crazy, is because the speed of light is used as a reference range for most calculations in physics. If it is true that these particles are really moving faster than light, physicists have to re-explore all the advancements that have been made since relativity.

Anyways, favorite quote from the comments section:

"When was the last time they check the speed of light?
It might be slowing down making the Muon Neutrinos look faster?"

[knell]

it's probably an error, but knell don't be such a hardliner. after all that's not what science is about, a scientist will always consider the possibility of laws being wrong if you can prove it with repeatable results.

sorry, I thought that was the message I was trying to portray. If any corroborating labs confirm this, it will be exciting for physicists and redefine our universe. Reality as a whole will look shockingly similar to the way it does now, though... facts like these are good for nerdy hard ons but not much else.

[noam]

classical physics tends to deliver absolutes though doesn't it??

unless you're talking Quantum when probabilities are the order of the day

thats about the limit of my science knowledge, im with Kodachrome, sit back and let the science G's figure this one out

[LACE]

What a claim! It hasn't even been confirmed yet so..yeah. There is a possibility that this is wrong, for instance some are thinking that the neutrino was detected before the full wave had peaked.So you can just imagine that they observed a neutrino as a sine wave rising to a peak and then lowering back to flat. And the neutrino's detected at the moment of the peak.. but if it starts detecting neutrino's before the peak (resulting in errors) you have a neutrino that leaves point A and seems to arrive at point B faster than the speed of light.. But you have only really observed the start of the arrival, not the actual arrival. Kinda like saying the train is at the station when you feel the wind, not when its really there in front of you. I don't know it's interesting nonetheless.

Edit: If this really is so then..I don't even know what's the point anymore..

[Gewze]

unless they got it wrong 15'000 times which is retarded and i highly doubt that because they must have done calibration tests before use. then surely the rule has been obliterated.

calibrate something wrong once, you will get flawed results even if you test it a million trillion billion times

but what im saying is BEFORE they started the tests. they would have calibrated it with the speed of light and other sources with a known speed and set it so it was accurate.

[wub]

Everything I need to know about physics, I learnt from the opening 5mins of Half Life.

[Crosby]

Scientific debate in snh is a massive
Your pissing in the wind if you expect people to look at what your trying to say unbiasedly, let alone consider it a possibility

[Perfecture]

Irony - When I clicked to open this thread my internet slowed down and it took like 3 mins to open.

[lloydnoise]

read today that 1 possibilty is that Neutrinos are just finding a space time shortcut and technically are still within SOL limits, cool idea..
ALSO, is it just me or is entanglement effectively a faster than light transmission of information through the Universe??

[kay]

ALSO, is it just me or is entanglement effectively a faster than light transmission of information through the Universe??

Yes, based on our current definitions. Which is why it's a bit odd.

[LACE]

read today that 1 possibilty is that Neutrinos are just finding a space time shortcut and technically are still within SOL limits, cool idea..
ALSO, is it just me or is entanglement effectively a faster than light transmission of information through the Universe??

Definitely seems to be faster, at least 100,000 times faster then the speed of light. But we can't transfer any information through entanglement =/

[noam]

read today that 1 possibilty is that Neutrinos are just finding a space time shortcut and technically are still within SOL limits, cool idea..
ALSO, is it just me or is entanglement effectively a faster than light transmission of information through the Universe??

Definitely seems to be faster, at least 100,000 times faster then the speed of light. But we can't transfer any information through entanglement =/

yes we can

unless i've mistaken what you're saying

there's been several experiments in 'teleportation' via entanglement which have resulted in the transportation of information over [relatively] large distances

the experiment concerning Caesium atoms is the most advanced its gotten, according to Michio Kaku's book Physics of the Impossible

they are able to encode information and transport it via photon's/a laser

its not faster than the speed of light however, but it is the effectively teleportation using entanglement... i think

[lloydnoise]

read today that 1 possibilty is that Neutrinos are just finding a space time shortcut and technically are still within SOL limits, cool idea..
ALSO, is it just me or is entanglement effectively a faster than light transmission of information through the Universe??

Definitely seems to be faster, at least 100,000 times faster then the speed of light. But we can't transfer any information through entanglement =/

entanglement is the physical manifestation of instant data transfer through space so, yes, yes we can. I'm just wondering, why the global boner when:
A) It's far from proven and more likely to be an error or some other phenomena (could still be cool)
B) It in no way is more mindboggling or game changing than entanglement if you are using light speed as the ultimate limit..
in fact 6 kilometres a second faster almost sounds like a joke when compared with what actually occurs to information when it is entangled

[ascent]

http://webcast.web.cern.ch/webcast/

to anyone interested. should have posted earlier.

[LACE]

Yeah you're right noam.. it is possible to transfer information these days.

its not faster than the speed of light however, but it is the effectively teleportation using entanglement... i think

http://resources.metapress.com/pdf-prev ... ze=largest
Here's a preview of what I was reading about the speed of light issue..edit that to 10,000 times. Not sure what to think of it. =/
Time to quit smoking buds. =D

[kay]

read today that 1 possibilty is that Neutrinos are just finding a space time shortcut and technically are still within SOL limits, cool idea..
ALSO, is it just me or is entanglement effectively a faster than light transmission of information through the Universe??

Definitely seems to be faster, at least 100,000 times faster then the speed of light. But we can't transfer any information through entanglement =/

entanglement is the physical manifestation of instant data transfer through space so, yes, yes we can. I'm just wondering, why the global boner when:
A) It's far from proven and more likely to be an error or some other phenomena (could still be cool)
B) It in no way is more mindboggling or game changing than entanglement if you are using light speed as the ultimate limit..
in fact 6 kilometres a second faster almost sounds like a joke when compared with what actually occurs to information when it is entangled

I think it's because entanglement allows instantaneous transfer of information (ie takes no time at all) whilst this issue here involves particles moving faster than the speed of light. There are slight (but important) differences between the two. Also, the entanglement quandary has been around for some time now so it's pretty much in the background now, whereas this potential new finding is, well, new.

[WhosZena]

but what would happened if they stopped measuring it...

[ascent]

archive of the live stream : http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1384486