Apparently, the particles traveled between two measurement stations about 60 ns faster than they should have at the speed of light. Their margin of error is ~10 ns. They're currently talking to Fermilab and other physicists to figure out what's going on.
Do you realize how disappointing it will be if we move as fast/faster than the speed of light, only to find that we're going to fast to hear the noise the Falcon made? Star Trek, Firefly, Battlestar, they all lied to us, and once we get there, our hopes and dreams will be destroyed.
Scientists calculated the margin of error at just 10 nanoseconds
We have not found any instrumental effect that could explain the result of the measurement
I.e., there may be sonething wrong with the calculations, assumptions, or even just some modeling of the experiment.
Not to take away from the possible improtance of such a discovery, it is rarely the case that something this wrong actually turns out to be what it looks like at first. More likely than FTL travel, this tells us something about modeling and calculating neutrino physics.
Going faster than the speed of light from one place to another is not such a big boo boo depending on how you do it. However, in most cases it leads to things being wrong on such a fundamental level that the only popSci equivalent that comes to mind is the perpetual motion machine.
Could it be that the particle just went very close to the speed of light, but teleported or took some other shortcut? They've teleported photons, right?
Could it be that the particle just went very close to the speed of light, but teleported or took some other shortcut? They've teleported photons, right?
Shortcuts, e.g. wormholes, are one way of travelling from a to b faster than light. Teleportation experiments with photons still use other "photons", i.e. electromagnetic fields, to teleport the photon being teleported and the speed of teleportation is never faster than light.
I'm always hoping for physics to get thrown out the window and start over. Makes things fun.
This is a common misunderstanding. (Established) Physics never gets thrown out, Newton's laws are still correct even though they are extended and superceeded by Special and General Relativity in certain circumstances. Special Relativity, likewise, is an incerdibly well established theory and consequently the universal speed limit of c is a very solid fact. If this FTL effect turns out to be real then it will be interesting in pointing out the very, very special circumstances under which Special Relativity needs to be extended.
For example; we know that this FTL effect can not be a general effect since we can observe supernovae and measure the time difference between the neutrinos arriving and the photons arriving to be mere hours. This difference should be years according to the experimantal anomaly that has been observed.
This is a common misunderstanding. (Established) Physics never gets thrown out, Newton's laws are still correct even though they are extended and superceeded by Special and General Relativity in certain circumstances. Special Relativity, likewise, is an incerdibly well established theory and consequently the universal speed limit of c is a very solid fact. If this FTL effect turns out to be real then it will be interesting in pointing out the very, very special circumstances under which Special Relativity needs to be extended.
There's this chart of speeds vs. sizes that we used in one of my physics classes that makes this trivial to understand.
Aah, that pic. This is the 3D version. There are effectively only three distinct physical constants in the Universe, c, h, and G. This cube shows you which theory you need if you do or don't take the effects that those constants bring with them into account.
What
>:-), you have to ask yourself "In what direction?".
I like that graph! I'm guessing the text in red are those theories we don't have just yet, right?
Right. There are good candidates for Quantum gravity and we can do calculations, it's just that none of the "theories" are particularly self consistent or produce practical results.
Comments
Apparently, the particles traveled between two measurement stations about 60 ns faster than they should have at the speed of light. Their margin of error is ~10 ns. They're currently talking to Fermilab and other physicists to figure out what's going on.
Holy shit, guys.
Not to take away from the possible improtance of such a discovery, it is rarely the case that something this wrong actually turns out to be what it looks like at first. More likely than FTL travel, this tells us something about modeling and calculating neutrino physics.
Going faster than the speed of light from one place to another is not such a big boo boo depending on how you do it. However, in most cases it leads to things being wrong on such a fundamental level that the only popSci equivalent that comes to mind is the perpetual motion machine.
My crackpot theory: Everything else in the universe just stopped for 50 nanoseconds while that neutrino was cruising along.
For example; we know that this FTL effect can not be a general effect since we can observe supernovae and measure the time difference between the neutrinos arriving and the photons arriving to be mere hours. This difference should be years according to the experimantal anomaly that has been observed.
Good job, CERN.
Everything travels at the speed of light all the time.
Also:
Also, this is what I was talking about:
Whenever I read Timo talking science I will ALWAYS think of 4Ï€. Fucking 4Ï€.
I have tried several times to copy what he showed us at PAX, but always failed.
I really can't explain it without messing it up, so I won't try.