CERN claims faster-than-light particle measured

by botchtowersociety 37 Replies latest social current

  • Blind Willie McTell
    Blind Willie McTell

    I hope they install this new particle in my Intel PC and then maybe Microsoft Windows 7 will boot up in less than 23 minutes .....

    Willie

  • Glander
    Glander

    The horses ass bully will be along directly to poopoo the whole thing....

  • darth frosty
  • GLTirebiter
    GLTirebiter

    60 nsec early arrival on a 2.4 msec path? It doesn't take much experimental error to account for that.

  • glenster
  • Snoozy
  • bohm
    bohm

    it is important to emphasize the scientists are not saying: "Hey guys, Einstein got it all wrong" but rather "we made an experiment, and according to einstein we are 60ns off. we have checked and double checked some 15'000 times and we cant figure out why we have a systematic error of 60ns. help pls."

    they look like some of the best experimental physics has to offer, and they are doing what they are supposed to: report experiments so they can be reproduced and the 60ns accounted for. Which they properly will, but i strongly doubt it is something trivial like the distance.

  • botchtowersociety
    botchtowersociety

    Which they properly will, but i strongly doubt it is something trivial like the distance.

    Here is the relevant paper.

    http://arxiv.org/abs/1109.4897

    At 60ns off, that is only about 17.9 meters @299,792 kms, distance wise. The two endpoints are 732 km apart. Maybe there is a compounding error between distance and something else, but they claim their margin for error on distance is only 20cm.

    Or it could be a timing error.

    http://motls.blogspot.com/2011/09/italian-out-of-tune-superluminal.html

    I am sure these guys have that part of it nailed. So maybe it is an error in the electronic equipment.

    However, Fermilab got a similar result in the MINOS experiment, but threw it out because the margin of error was too large.

    http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/09/neutrino-experiment-sees-them-apparently-moving-faster-than-light.ars

    But what if it is the other way around? What if, in fact, their results are accurate and there is no violation of the speed of light? Maybe they have accomplished a more accurate measurement of c. Neutrinos interact far more weakly with matter than photons do, and c in a vacuum is the true measure, not in a medium, which is slower (and even space isn't a perfect vacuum).

  • PSacramento
    PSacramento

    If one law of physics is called into question, what does that mean for the rest?

    Should we be ready to accept that, as time goes by and we get a better understanding of the universe that we can end up realizing that the laws we have are really no such thing?

    Perhaps, but we will just have to wait and see.

    Remember, not to long ago people KNEW that man couldn't fly, people KNEW that space travel was impossible, people KNEW that lots of things that we NOW KNOW to NOT be the case.

    Who knows what we will know 100 or 200 or 1000 years from now?

  • botchtowersociety
    botchtowersociety
    Remember, not to long ago people KNEW that man couldn't fly, people KNEW that space travel was impossible, people KNEW that lots of things that we NOW KNOW to NOT be the case.

    All of these are engineering questions, not physical ones. There was nothing in physics that said heavier than air flight was impossible, or that space flight was. Same thing with the sound barrier. Engineering problems can be solved.

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