And the fine will be . . . astronomical.

Even Einstein is subject to the Laws of Probability.

The results no longer conflict with the theory of relativity.

grates on me whenever I hear someone produce the old canard that Einstein wasn't good in math as a kid. He actually excelled. The whole bad-at-math thing was put forth in an article in "Ripley's believe it or not", which should be called, "Ripley's Believe it or not, I don't care, cause I get paid either way."

He got a lot of help from Grossman and later Levi-Civita, who had contacted Einstein to point out the many errors in his work.

Today's Physics students have much more rigorous math requirements than Einstein did. I learned tensor calculus as an undergrad. That was still cutting edge math in 1900. Einstein was capable, but I do think he had to work very hard to understand certain mathematical concepts, and he admitted as much in his letters.

If it hadn't been for Halley's intervention we probably wouldn't even know who he was today. Of course it would be a bit of a stretch to really consider Newton a scientist as we know them, but that is how he is perceived.

Here's what Dr. W. Goodman said in his theology of nature: suppose you have a three foot pencil; you start writing your name with it, three feet away. How fast is the impulse travelling, from your hand, to the paper?

Theoretically, it could be infinitely fast, or simultaneous; the instant you move your hand, the pencil begins to write. Even with intermolecular "slack," it's still faster than light.

Einstein had an IQ of 135. Let's move on.

...186,000 miles long - would your impulse travel that distance in less than a second, without breaking any laws of physics?

...jus' wundren...

There isn't a magical "thing" that jumps from one end of the pencil to the other. Your muscles move, at slower-than-light speed. They move the pencil, at slower-than-light speed. The marks appear on the paper, at slower-than-light speed. Where's the "impulse"?


If you move one end of a long stick, the other end does NOT move instantaneously. If the stick is a light-year long, it will take AT LEAST a year from when you push one end until when the other end moves.

The instant you touch it, in an ideal situation.

Do you think that you would push one end of a two by four, and then a little while later, the other end would move? But that would require the 2 x 4 to .... contract. While we were waiting for the other end to finally move. This might happen to a minor degree. But the more rigid the pole, the less it happens; the more instantaneous the transmission of movement.

Because the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one the 12 hour rule was violated. On the other hand, maybe the 12 hour rule is never violated because past, present, and future is an illusion.

I'm confused.

Sorry, I need to rethink this.

Not locking.

....through space?....how about through other dimensions?

....how do entangled particles communicate?

they may not communicate with you at all. Which is actually the better possibility.

I say this in sober seriousness!

Einstein could be partially right: objects, particles might not be able to move faster than light - FTL. But? When a theoreticaly, entirely solid object moves, the movement, is transmitted through the entire length of the object, simultaneously; infinitely fast, theoretically.

theory, anything is theoritically possible; Superman is faster than a speeding bullet. Thinking again is always a good idea.

Entirely, absolutely solid objects, are a hypothetical construct. That may or may not be possible in everyday life. But? To the degree that objects approach that theoretical ideal, they will transmit motion, from one end to the other, at speeds approaching infinite; instantaneously. In an average object, motion might be communicated at a speed of say, 1,000 to one million times the speed of light.

So you are disappointed? That, as far as practicality is concerned, we can communicate at say, "only" one hundred thousand times the speed of light? FTL x 100,000?

But I wondered how anyone could measure the movement of a particle moving faster than the speed of light. It seems that we wouldn't be able to detect it before it was "gone," if it ever was "there" in the first place.

But then, I dropped freshman physics, so I'm hardly an authority. I just don't understand how a faster-than-light particle could be detected in our slower-than-light universe.

The speed of light is roughly 300,000 km/sec. So, imagine two detectors for some type of particle separated by 30 km. You record the time when a short pulse of those particles is detected by the first detector, then the time when that pulse is detected by the second detector.

If the difference in times is greater than 1/10000 of a second, the particles were going slower than light.

If the difference in times is equal to 1/10000 of a second, the particles were going at (or damn near) the speed than light.

If the difference in times is less than 1/10000 of a second... either the particles were going faster than light, or, more likely, you screwed up somewhere.

None of this simple procedure requires any physical object or signal going at or faster than the speed of light as part of the measurement apparatus even though it would be capable of detecting faster-than-light phenomena.

In a real-life experiment the devil is in the details if what you're trying to do is catch a very small difference is speed, like something going just slightly over the speed of light. A seemingly small difference is much more likely to be a calibration problem or procedural error that it is to be the discovery of ground-breaking new physics.

The protocol of measuring the speed of something by measuring how much time it takes that thing to pass between two checkpoints is pretty straightforward. What objection/qualification/caveat/agreement are you trying to make?

Regarding verification procedure.

CERN is a worthy international project.