|
On September 23 2011 10:01 arbitrageur wrote:
The growing consensus on physics forums is that this is not a violation of SR/GR... light may be massive.
If light would be THAT massive it would have been detected decades ago, not to mention light would travel at different speeds for different energies 
The mass limit on photons is very very small: http://pdg.lbl.gov/2008/listings/s000.pdf
And yes I have a physics degree (as I am sure many other people in this thread have), but that doesn't mean that we can judge cutting-edge research in fields not our own in a heartbeat.
Modern physics is heavily specialised, one often needs years of personal research to get to the "frontier" of knowledge in a certain field.
|
On September 23 2011 14:39 Maenander wrote:
And yes I have a physics degree (as I am sure many other people in this thread have), but that doesn't mean that we can judge cutting-edge research in fields not our own in a heartbeat.
This. Just wait until people working at this came up with something coherent. I hear there is a press conference today, this will shed much more light at this.
|
This is potentially really cool. I will await future testing.
|
First I thought that "damn those people at CERN really push themselves to the limit"
After I read the whole thing, they really are doing crazy epic things, I hope this is all true and not a mistake with the numbers.
|
I don't see how this changes anything but elementary physics.
we already know that it's possible to move faster than our speed of light. because light itself moved faster in the past.
|
|
|
To be honest, it does look unbelievable. So I will be skeptical and be one of the doubters.
PS One of the comments on the Science web news article actually explains how it is possible to get a higher speed for neutrino. Sounds reasonable.
|
R U sure that the speed of light is the fastest now??? 
|
I love how most people here just post nonsense and theories on how CERN must have been wrong without even taking a look at the paper.
|
What would be the actual real world implications of this though?
I don't understand that aspect... (never did physics at school).
|
On September 23 2011 15:45 Brett wrote:
What would be the actual real world implications of this though?
I don't understand that aspect... (never did physics at school).
Why does everything must have immediate real world implications? It will push our understanding of the surrounding world further.
|
It's not like there haven't been any theories about particles going faster than light. Up until this (potentially) we haven't seen any indication of this being the case but that doesn't mean it can't happen. Anyone with a scientific mind keeps ones mind open to new discoveries.
|
On September 23 2011 15:47 True_Spike wrote:Show nested quote +On September 23 2011 15:45 Brett wrote:
What would be the actual real world implications of this though?
I don't understand that aspect... (never did physics at school). Why does everything must have immediate real world implications? It will push our understanding of the surrounding world further.
I never said it had to have immediate real world implications. But, as a non-physicist, I'm sort of wondering why I should give a shit?
I'm also just trying to understand the 'hype' of those excited by this possible discovery.. I would have thought the possibility of real world implications would be a nice indicator of the hype....
|
time for some mothafuckan time travel bitches
|
On September 23 2011 15:45 Brett wrote:
What would be the actual real world implications of this though?
I don't understand that aspect... (never did physics at school).
I believe it was said best in the Terminator 2 movie when Miles Dyson explained his research in creating AI (or advanced circuits or whatever he was researching in that lab Arnold wanted to blow up  ).
He told that they had found a piece of the previous Terminator, not knowing where the piece came from, or what it was and that the piece itself didn't work or do anything.
But what it did was that it made them think in new ways, ways they never had considered before and that is what lead the development of AI.
Well, something along those lines, long time since I saw the movie
This could be seen as something similar to that. The real world implication of this particular experiment isn't perhaps groundbreaking at all. But it will/could change the way scientist think and they may come up with things that one day will have big real world implications.
|
they should change the direction and shoot neutrinos along the gravitational pull and see what happens.
as far as science as a whole goes, i go with: "science is always wrong until proven otherwise"
|
On September 23 2011 15:58 xM(Z wrote:
they should change the direction and shoot neutrinos along the gravitational pull and see what happens.
as far as science as a whole goes, i go with: "science is always wrong until proven otherwise"
Proving science right is... science...
|
On September 23 2011 14:56 PrinceXizor wrote:
I don't see how this changes anything but elementary physics.
we already know that it's possible to move faster than our speed of light. because light itself moved faster in the past.
Huh? This is completely wrong. One of the key principles of special relativity is that the speed of light is invariant in all frames of reference. The speed of light can change when going through different media but it is ALWAYS c in a vacuum for ALL frames of reference. Einstein's work is not "elementary physics."
|
On September 23 2011 15:53 Brett wrote:Show nested quote +On September 23 2011 15:47 True_Spike wrote:On September 23 2011 15:45 Brett wrote:
What would be the actual real world implications of this though?
I don't understand that aspect... (never did physics at school). Why does everything must have immediate real world implications? It will push our understanding of the surrounding world further. I never said it had to have immediate real world implications. But, as a non-physicist, I'm sort of wondering why I should give a shit? I'm also just trying to understand the 'hype' of those excited by this possible discovery.. I would have thought the possibility of real world implications would be a nice indicator of the hype....
If it turns out that this data is not the result of experimental error or something similar and that the speed of light is not constant, this would be the single biggest discovery in the past century. Everything in physics the past 100 years has worked under the assumption that light travels at c in a vacuum. Simply put, according to Einstein's theory of relativity, if the speed of light isn't constant and something with mass can move faster than c, then time travel is possible. I'm not a physicist, but time travel seems to me to be a pretty big real world application :p.
|
On September 23 2011 15:47 True_Spike wrote:Show nested quote +On September 23 2011 15:45 Brett wrote:
What would be the actual real world implications of this though?
I don't understand that aspect... (never did physics at school). Why does everything must have immediate real world implications? It will push our understanding of the surrounding world further.
Before you ask that question, please realize that someone asked that same exact question when Einstein published his paper on the photoelectric effect. The application of science comes after the discovery. This hasn't even been published yet.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
