Breaking the ultimate speed limit (Full Version)

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TheHeretic -> Breaking the ultimate speed limit (9/27/2011 8:34:21 PM)

Last week, CERN made the startling announcement that they had recorded particles moving faster than the speed of light. I saw one article by a String theorist, suggesting the neutrinos never exceeded light speed, but simply took a shortcut by leaving the universe, but all the other reports I've seen say it's a matter of finding the glitch in the experiment. Gotta be, right? Nothing goes faster than light. That is something we know for sure about how the universe works.

Just a question though, before we dismiss the whole thing. Even if it is just to be intrigued by the String possibilities, how much faith do you have that what we now know about how the universe works, is any sort of final answer?


Edit to add a slideshow link.

http://www.livescience.com/16214-implications-faster-light-neutrinos.html



TreasureKY -> RE: Breaking the ultimate speed limit (9/27/2011 8:42:10 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: TheHeretic

... how much faith do you have that what we now know about how the universe works, is any sort of final answer?


Little. 

How sure were the "learned men" of yore that the sun, moon and stars revolved around the earth?  [;)]



HeatherMcLeather -> RE: Breaking the ultimate speed limit (9/27/2011 8:51:24 PM)

quote:

how much faith do you have that what we now know about how the universe works, is any sort of final answer?
Zero, zip, nada, none. We don't even know what most of the universe is made of, or even if it exists, so how can we possibly know how it all works.



willbeurdaddy -> RE: Breaking the ultimate speed limit (9/27/2011 8:56:28 PM)

I was originally taught that Einstein never said nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, just that anything with mass could not be accelerated to beyond the speed of light. That doesnt preclude something ALWAYS traveling faster than the speed of light, nor for anything massless being accelerated past the speed of light. That seems to have lost favor, based on this debate over neutrinos. Time to reembrace Einstein?

Like most states of science, I think the prevailing theories are generally correct, but special cases of more universal laws (eg Newtonian mechanics is a special case of Special relativity is a special case of General Relativity).



FirmhandKY -> RE: Breaking the ultimate speed limit (9/27/2011 9:03:58 PM)

I'd say we "know" a lot less than we think we do.

I always find it humorous how some people claim how advanced and knowledgeable we now are, and how science somehow "disproves" a lot of stuff, especially religion or any type of spiritualism.   This is an especially prevalent belief of antagonistic atheists (who have simply replaced one belief system with another, but claim otherwise - it's science, for God's sake, doncha know  [:D]  ...).

Remember the thread where Brainacsub claimed that "we fully understood gravity" and such, and then couldn't explain the Pioneer anomaly?

There is also the problem of teleportation (and other issues involved with quantum entanglement) and the (possibly) related "universe as a hologram" problem.  And now, evidence that seems to suggest that the speed of light might not actually be the universal speed limit.

sarcasm/ Yeah, we've learned just about everything that there is to know now.  /sarcasm

I think that in just about every century "learned men" have worried about or claimed that the human race is either close to knowing everything there is to know, or already does.

So far, they've all been wrong.  I think we are wrong now about how well we really understand this reality.

Firm



FirmhandKY -> RE: Breaking the ultimate speed limit (9/27/2011 9:06:37 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: HeatherMcLeather

quote:

how much faith do you have that what we now know about how the universe works, is any sort of final answer?
Zero, zip, nada, none. We don't even know what most of the universe is made of, or even if it exists, so how can we possibly know how it all works.

Oh, hell, I forgot all about "Dark Matter" and "Dark Energy", which are simply deus ex machina explanations because the current theories of physics just don't work.

Firm



HeatherMcLeather -> RE: Breaking the ultimate speed limit (9/27/2011 9:23:38 PM)

quote:

the current theories of physics just don't work
I thought perhaps this bit bore repeating, just for emphasis. [:D]



willbeurdaddy -> RE: Breaking the ultimate speed limit (9/27/2011 10:07:29 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: HeatherMcLeather

quote:

the current theories of physics just don't work
I thought perhaps this bit bore repeating, just for emphasis. [:D]


Thats way overstated. All of the theories work fine to explain the universe as we know it now. It is only when you get to singularities that they dont.



DomKen -> RE: Breaking the ultimate speed limit (9/27/2011 10:08:37 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: willbeurdaddy

I was originally taught that Einstein never said nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, just that anything with mass could not be accelerated to beyond the speed of light. That doesnt preclude something ALWAYS traveling faster than the speed of light, nor for anything massless being accelerated past the speed of light. That seems to have lost favor, based on this debate over neutrinos. Time to reembrace Einstein?

Like most states of science, I think the prevailing theories are generally correct, but special cases of more universal laws (eg Newtonian mechanics is a special case of Special relativity is a special case of General Relativity).

I've talkd to my physicist friend about this. She says the response inside the physics world is broken down into 2 main camps. First that the experiment made a measurement error. Synchronizing clocks precisely over such a distance is not that easy. The second is that we were wrong about nuetrinos having a rest mass. If nuetrinos have no inherent mass then there is no reason they couldn't travel faster than C.

The idea that C is not a limit on the speed of massy particles is not even really being considered. There are simply too many other pieces of data confirming that.



SternSkipper -> RE: Breaking the ultimate speed limit (9/27/2011 10:39:47 PM)

quote:

I was originally taught that Einstein never said nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, just that anything with mass could not be accelerated to beyond the speed of light. That doesnt preclude something ALWAYS traveling faster than the speed of light, nor for anything massless being accelerated past the speed of light. That seems to have lost favor, based on this debate over neutrinos. Time to reembrace Einstein?


Yeah, they taught you right, but just like black and white TV, there have been changes.

But you mean "Special Relativity"

Most recent event-
In late September 2011, physicists working at the OPERA experiment published results that seemed to suggest beams of neutrinos had travelled from CERN (in Geneva, Switzerland) to LNGS (at the Gran Sasso, Italy) faster than the speed of light, arriving (60.7 ± 6.9 (stat.) ± 7.4 (sys.)) nanoseconds early (corresponding to about 18 metres in a total distance of 730 kilometres) These findings have yet to be independently verified. and the OPERA researchers say they are going to "investigate possible still unknown systematic effects that could explain the observed anomaly" and "deliberately do not attempt any theoretical or phenomenological interpretation of the results."[link=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light#cite_note-OPERA-51][/link]

Loosely translated, it probably hasn't happened yet.
But it's the height of arrogance to presume we closed the definition of light speed at the publication his paper on special relativity. And if he was alive, he'd be the first to tell you that.



FatDomDaddy -> RE: Breaking the ultimate speed limit (9/27/2011 10:44:25 PM)

BUT BUT BUT.... there is a consensus! It's settled science!

You are just a denier.... why do you hate America!



TheHeretic -> RE: Breaking the ultimate speed limit (9/27/2011 10:48:05 PM)

Those folks at CERN are nuts anyway. They are even working on an experiment suggesting the sun plays a role in our climate, and it is all settled that man is behind that. [8|]

The best line I've come across on this, is that if it turns out to be some problem in the methodology, they'll call it the Phantom of the OPERA.



willbeurdaddy -> RE: Breaking the ultimate speed limit (9/27/2011 10:56:14 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: SternSkipper

But it's the height of arrogance to presume we closed the definition of light speed at the publication his paper on special relativity.


100+ years and running. I dont think he's sweating it.




HeatherMcLeather -> RE: Breaking the ultimate speed limit (9/27/2011 11:00:52 PM)

quote:

Thats way overstated. All of the theories work fine to explain the universe as we know it now. It is only when you get to singularities that they dont.
Singularities like 83% of the matter and 73% of the energy in the universe being conspicuous only by it's absence? [:D]



Real0ne -> RE: Breaking the ultimate speed limit (9/27/2011 11:06:09 PM)

Thats because "real" science ended after 1900.  Professor wheatstone in the 1800's talked about particles going faster than light and messmer and a few others. 

Wheatston was only 40,000 miles per second off.  As usual the wiki people clueless what they are talking about.

The exact speed of wheatstones experiment would have been (pi/2)*186000, yep you got it 292miles per second.

the speed of light is nothing more than a constant, like any other constant that has its specific application.

The real problem is that no one here except of course me knows why it applies to some things and other things there is no speed limit.

Of course its still great to see some of you come up from the dark ages and take a breath of what to me is quite stale air.




HeatherMcLeather -> RE: Breaking the ultimate speed limit (9/27/2011 11:11:06 PM)

[sm=rofl.gif][sm=rofl.gif][sm=rofl.gif][sm=mademyday.gif][sm=yourock.gif][sm=rofl.gif][sm=rofl.gif]



Real0ne -> RE: Breaking the ultimate speed limit (9/27/2011 11:20:29 PM)

feel free to hazzard your wildest "guess", if you are even in the same universe as the correct answer I will give you an A+.



SternSkipper -> RE: Breaking the ultimate speed limit (9/27/2011 11:25:01 PM)

quote:

100+ years and running. I dont think he's sweating it.


Oh great, a cafeteria physics expert. Ummmmm how should I put this,,, I never said anything about it being proven 'very soon' in regard to a physical demonstration... So yeah, you may not have to change those pee pants in your lifetime. What I said was that it would be arrogant to believe that it would always be as "you book learned' at Jim Jones. With a unified theory being sought and actually closed upon from many directions.... you may get the word even before you've reached your goo goo stage again at the assisted living center.




HeatherMcLeather -> RE: Breaking the ultimate speed limit (9/27/2011 11:28:46 PM)

Because the Crown, in the person of Henry VII,  so decreed in the Augsburg Charter, a little known accord signed with Jakob Fugger in 1493?




Real0ne -> RE: Breaking the ultimate speed limit (9/27/2011 11:34:17 PM)

Thank goodness those anceint treaties are all bullshit and no longer in force eh?  LMAO

strike 1



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