CERN claims faster-than-light particle measured

Source: AP

GENEVA (AP) -- A fundamental pillar of physics - that nothing can go faster than the speed of light - appears to be smashed by an oddball subatomic particle that has apparently made a giant end run around Albert Einstein's theories.

Scientists at the world's largest physics lab said Thursday they have clocked neutrinos traveling faster than light. That's something that according to Einstein's 1905 special theory of relativity - the famous E (equals) mc2 equation - just doesn't happen.

"The feeling that most people have is this can't be right, this can't be real," said James Gillies, a spokesman for the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, outside the Swiss city of Geneva.

Gillies told The Associated Press that the readings have so astounded researchers that they are asking others to independently verify the measurements before claiming an actual discovery.

Read more: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_BREAKING_LIGHT_SPEED?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Of course, I'm still waiting for my Mr. Fusion and my Mattel Hoverboard.

After all, Apple seems to monopolize all the cool toys... :rofl:

If you happen to have a little exotic matter handy, along with enough energy equal to 3 suns.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive

After all, Marty powered the De Lorean with a banana peel, eggshells, and coffee grounds.

and after that first dry run comes "first contact". :)

"Board their ship! Take everything you can!"

If not, how can we trust any space-time/relativity math?

This would change everything we know about space-time around black holes, for instance.

Which would be awesome. Nothing is more delightful to a physicist than being told that everything he/she ever learned about modern physics is wrong, and the rest of her career will be devoted to starting from scratch.

Since our observations confirm most of it. I think maybe our measuring sticks just aren't 100% accurate yet.

There must be more to it than we ever dreamed, which is also awesome.

as the outside, instead of doing the swirl like it's going down the drain, which general relativity says should happen,

so yea, our measuring sticks are a little off. Astronomers use dark matter to account for that difference,

Keep in mind, this is what galaxies actually look like. They are much more than just a spinning disc of stars and dust.

As I remember, at the speed of light the denominator goes to zero, which is undefined, and which is why you can approach the speed of light but not reach the speed of light.

Above the speed of light the formula works again but you may have time going backwards for the particle and the particle having some kind of negative mass - whatever THAT would mean.

We say you can't go FASTER than the speed of light because of the assumption that you have to get TO the speed of light before you can go faster but:

1 - what if it were possible to increase speed in quantum like increments? Perhaps under some condition a particle can go from 99.99999% the speed of light to 100.00001% the speed of light without hitting any speed in between. You'd never be at the impossible 100%.

2 - suppose there is a process that creates particles already going faster than the speed of light. They never existed at any slower speed. The weird thing about that is that the particle could never slow down (Unless #1 was possible)

Wouldn't that necessitate infinite acceleration or deceleration? And isn't that impossible on its face?

Or a real infinity, depending how you look at it.

Mind blowing stuff, a potential revolutionary discovery.

That is what the C stands for in the equation. I guess there is really no such thing if things can go faster...

(Quantum electro dynamics) speed of light is not invariant, but statistical result of propability amplitudes.

It doesn't exist yet, and by the time it does, it's already gone.

I need a day off.

in order to explain their movement through four dimensions.


The other seven dimensions may have something to say about that movement.

...but clearly incomprehensible to those fundamentalists who think we already know everything there is to know about 'space, time and beyond'.

.

:-)

...and now new doors will open.....

Thanks for the thread, Bosonic.:thumbsup:

:shrug:
A thought experiment.


--imm

And they've already left by the time they arrive.

Or something like that.

--imm

There was a young lady named Bright
Whose speed was much faster than light
She set out one day
In a relative way
And arrived on the previous night

If we can't, then it seems to me we couldn't see ourselves already there but I was thinking we might see a fleeting mirror image of where we were as our brains and/or vision adjusts.

The latter is a neurophenomenlogical response to the former.

- Sheen ( Jimmy Neutron's friend)

Maybe they discovered a fourth type of neutrino having the same spin as currently known ones. And sometimes anti-particles of any type can move backwards in time, so maybe this is just an anti-neutrino.

I’ll keep my powered dry on this one but I have always had an issue with the light-speed barrier thing.

If you look at the Lorentz transformation for a particle with mass, the mass becomes positive infinite approaching the barrier from the right. If we postulate a FTL particle approaching from the left, the mass becomes negative infinite but goes to zero in the far right limit. Strange.

In classical mechanics it is impossible for a particle to overcome an energy barrier if its energy does not exceed the energy of the barrier but in quantum mechanics, particles with energy less than the barrier energy have a finite probability of penetrating the barrier and passing through it. This is called quantum tunneling, it’s how tunnel diodes work and they are built by semiconductor manufacturer’s every day.

only appearing stationary at impact - but such a tiny hole in the wall, but where'd it ALL go? - poof! Absorbed into/transported through the wall into another time/universe, a effect of quantum tunnelling. FRINGE is REAL??? Oh my!

LOL.

But I know what you mean. And I love seeing how many physics-ly educated DU posters there are to chime in every time we get some quantum news.

Lots of us never studied but watched lots of SciFi and have learned quite a bit that way.

And from Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson of course
(spaghettification... he taught me that one
and it gives a whole new line of thought to The Flying Spaghetti Monster)
here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNc-JLysk9Y

p.s. - ever see this one with almost every physics scientist on The Discovey Channel?
here:
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/09/08/7674862-the-nerdiest-catchiest-song-of-the-day-so-far

p.p.s. - did that bong kick in?
are we having fun yet? :hi:

Then any two bodies at speeds equal to say 3/4 the speed of light traveling towards each other are in fact exceeding the speed of light relative to each other aren't they?

The only damned thing I understood on this whole thread......

but is an excellent (actually, incredible) approximation at speeds much smaller than the speed of light.
Special relativity provides an alternative formula to 'add' the speeds so the result never exceeds the speed of light.

Edit: spelling

If I'm traveling 3/4 of light towards you, then you're traveling at 3/4 the speed of light towards me. :)

--imm

"...relative to each other aren't they?"

Both bodies are still moving at 3/4 the speed of light.

Old problem, they are exceeding the speed of light only relative to each other, not relative to anything else, they are still only at whatever speed each is traveling...

Time slows down or speeds up relative to each other, so the speeds can't be simply added. At high speeds relative to the speed of light physics isn't intuitive - Newton's physics is replaced with Einstein's physics.

the girl on the train myth. A train traveling at say 185999 miles per second. A girl runs Forward on the train. She SHOULD excede that, but for some reason time slows down to prevent it. At least thats the theory i've heard.

OK i made that up, but how long until someone makes that connection?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyon

The theoretical tachyon cannot go below the speed of light, and its velocity decreases as its energy increases. They're not supposed to be able to interact with normal matter, if they exist at all.

But since the '80s, some have proposed that neutrinos may be tachyonic in nature.

I don't pretend to know physics any better than the words (not the numbers) that describe it, which makes me a pretty damned poor source to consult. But the tachyon is one of those critters of physics I've followed since I was a science-fiction reading kid.

"Who ordered that?"

Are they now saying that e+ is possible? e.1? e.2?
Because you know within a second or two, that means that there is no finite speed!

That blows my mind right there.
But, that's not that hard to do.

I read through the pre-print last night and have many questions. Speed of light 'in a vacuum' was mentioned throughout. We can basically discount the index of refraction and use vacuum values for ~30 GeV muon or tauon neutrinos traveling through the earth's crust, but what about the signal to the satellite? Was the medium accounted for? They did not say the measurement is for group velocity or phase velocity. I'd want to see how the instruments were calibrated, look at their algorithms, and verify that consistent assumptions were used, etc.

The claim they are making is extraordinary, not just because it seems to contradict GR, but it also would mean neutrinos behave remarkably differently at these energies than how they are very precisely known to behave at both higher and lower energies.

these subatomic particles such as neutrinos are traveling at a different time than larger bodies. The distortion of the appearance of time relative to our own time may be what is actually being observed here. It's like speeding up a film. If you fast forward a film of someone walking casually along a shopping center, it's as if they are jumping forward.

I think time is much more flexible than we know.

Anyway it's my theory and I'm sticking to it.

Besides, this paper is not yet peer reviewed.

you are on the same page with this physics blogger: http://matpitka.blogspot.com/2011/09/speed-of-neutrino-larger-than-speed-of.html#comments

http://arxiv.org/abs/1109.4897

Lots of contributing authors, so it's v.unlikely that some obvious mistake was made (or that the data's fake), but they're still cautious that some subtle systematic effect could account for the readings.

:crazy: