12 replies to this topic

[duke_Qa]

I guess this was one of those "what the hell did they just say?" moments for me when I heard it on the news yesterday. Neutrinos observed in cern have apparently been proven to travel faster than the speed of light. Not that I'm a physicist but I believe this might give us hope of many fancy new laws of physics

http://io9.com/58429...ster-than-light

http://www.guardian....icles-neutrinos

They are not sure yet though, but when they have no other choice but to ask others to test it to see if they get different results, they have probably done most of the tests they could do to see if they did something stupid themselves...

[Puppeteer]

Neither being an expert on physics, nor being interested enough to google it, I do wonder why they thought the speed of a photon was the maximum speed - as if the 'speed of light' was a universal absolute. It's not the only elementary particle! But then, I guess it's dual-particle/wave behaviour might explain that.
Oh wait, mass zero. Okay, I get it.

[Nertea]

It's cool, but not really as important as the news media it making this out to be. Similar results were detected a year or two ago, and turned out to be basically average variations in positions due to quantum mechanical effects.

A more interesting development is the lack of supersymmetric particles in the LHC experiments, which is kindof a problem for the Standard particle physics model.

[Pasidon]

I love saying nothing more than the phrase: Einstein was wrong. Now may we please obsess about other scientific minds, like Oppenheimer? But I always suspected a particle could in fact travel faster than the observed light in our modern environment... our star and technologies can rarely match the maximum nanoseconds, but now that we're mastering optic rinses, we can match the speed of light and accelerate photons beyond our observed speeds. I've even theorized that a class-0 White Dwarf star accelerates particles well beyond 100 nanoseconds, reaching into the untold area of picoseconds.

[some_weirdGuy]

Why are they talking about it as if it's some new discovery?
Has everyone gotten so caught up in the excitement that they've forgotten about Tachyons and other such particles?

[Pasidon]

When has any civilian-based discovery been advertised before years of scrutiny?

Edited by {IP}Pasidon, 24 September 2011 - 05:41 AM.

[Allathar]

Neither being an expert on physics, nor being interested enough to google it, I do wonder why they thought the speed of a photon was the maximum speed - as if the 'speed of light' was a universal absolute. It's not the only elementary particle! But then, I guess it's dual-particle/wave behaviour might explain that.
Oh wait, mass zero. Okay, I get it.

Weren't there particles with negative mass? Some type of anti-matter, I believe.

[Neth]

That's cool, it would be interesting, I'm more confused by something being able to have a negative mass though..how does that work?

[Vortigern]

It helps to remember that every time a physicist uses the word 'quantum' you can happily substitute 'magic' to achieve more or less the same meaning.

Also, SWG, I seem to recall reading that there's actually no such thing as tachyons, though how anyone can disprove the existence of a particle that supposedly exists in dimensions beyond those which we can perceive I have no idea.

[duke_Qa]

As far as i remember tachyons were theoretical purely theoretical, so yeah...

another article on the events

All I can hope for is that this gives us some easy access to some supereasy energy source. My father will be pissed since all his work in hydro-power will be worth naught, but what can you do,

[Elvenlord]

I doubt it, at least not anytime soon. It would definitely require more energy than it gives out.

[Pasidon]

This study is already used in a super easy power source... solar. I don't think faster photons would do the deed any more justice.

[duke_Qa]

The more people understand the laws of the universe, the more likely we are to find some energy source that is better than what we currently have. e=mc2 and all that has to be relevant for something of the sort, but I'm no physicist so I can't say what will help and what will not.

At worst, we might get the general public more interested in science, causing more money to be funneled into the field and more bright minds to go there and not for game design