Reply With Quote:shock:
Will be truly astounding if this is correct!
...maybe:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15017484
The implications of this, if it is confirmed, are simply stupendous.
Agreed?
So clever my foot fell off.
:shock:
Will be truly astounding if this is correct!
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
The implications are almost as big as the chances of it being a systematic experimental error :P
But it'll sure be incredible if it gets confirmed.
Indeed, it will be quite literally earth shattering if it turns out to be correct. In some ways it's quite sad to think that a scientific fundamental could be proved wrong and outstanding minds of the likes of Einstein, Gell-Mann, Feynman and others potentially worked with a variable constant! Still, that's the beauty of scientic discovery and more power to present day physicists.
Skier
Quite remarkable!
:shock:
R
Ignorance breeds Fear. Fear breeds Hatred. Hatred breeds Ignorance. Break the chain.
Warp drive now possible scoty
Probably not because - "She wont take much more Captain"! :D :wink:Originally Posted by scubasky100
F.T.F.A.
:shock: :shock:
Will be watching how this one turns out!
Dave E
Skating away on the thin ice of a new day
Old news... I read that before I opened it :lol:
Very nice post indeed.. I really love this stuff.
Fixed that for you :wink:Probably not because - "She [s:14sppde7]wont[/s:14sppde7] canay take much more Captain"! :D :wink:
Man can be very clever.
Here's hoping that the Hardon [sic] :shock: Collider doesn't get back up and running.
I'd hate to see all this technology see us sucked into a black hole in a mountain somewhere!!
At least 6 points for that. Frankly a ban should be imposed and a license revoke for such speed
I'm not sure I follow you... The Hadron Collider is fully working now. What are you worried about?
So clever my foot fell off.
I think physicists have known for a long time that relativity was an incomplete theory but given the available evidence at the time it was hard to say what was needed to fix it. If neutrinos are found to travel faster than light then this could be just the catalyst we need to get us to the next step.
Neutrinos do seem to shake up the physics world quite a bit though. They were postulated to account for momentum discrepancies in beta decay experiments and were pretty contentious at the time and thought to be massless since they didn't seem to interact with anything at all. The Standard Model of particle physics grew requiring that neutrinos be massless. Then a few years back, the Super Kamiokande experiment in Japan discovered that neutrinos were in fact massive and could change flavour. The Standard Model took a huge hit from that. If neutrinos do the same to relativity, then they will probably be the most fantastically thought provoking little particles ever to be discovered by science.
I'd love for this to be true as it could be a major piece to the jigsaw but my money is still on some tiny little systematic error somewhere in the experiment. It needs independent confirmation to be sure.
There is something called the "pessimistic (meta-)induction". Folks of every age think that they have got the final truth with regard to physics (meta-physics). Yet history is the graveyard of falsified scientific theories. Given this, don't we have pretty good reason to think that modern physics will eventually be falsified?
I hadn't thought hard about the pessimistic induction until I supervised a thesis on it. For other reasons, over the years I have become much more of an anti-realist about theories (thinking of them more as models), although not at all an anti-realist about the phenomena of which they are models. Considering the pessimistic induction certainly nudged me further along that path.
In any case, I am happy to see that physics is still experimental.
Best wishes,
Bob
I don't think physicists are under any such delusion. It's been known since it was formulated that relativity is incomplete and that there must be some deeper underlying theory which could unite relativity (or some variation thereof) with quantum mechanics (or some variation thereof) and provide a Grand Unified Theory of all the fundamental forces. We just go with the best we've got until someone finds something better.
I have a suspicion that reality may be a fractal geometry and therefore unknowable...The closer you look, the more confusing it gets, step back a bit and you can see pretty patterns.
Flippen eck, some of you dudes sound almost as clever as the boffins doing this stuff!
Had Alan Turning lived - he might have been able to sorted that bit out. :(
Andy
Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be asked not to hit it at all.
Friedrich Nietzsche
A link to the paper reporting the results
Makes for fun light reading!
They certainly seem to have been pretty careful in all aspects of the timing and distance, so it's hard to see any obvious flaws, but I don't know nearly enough about the methodology to conclude much aside from the scientists seem to be acting pretty diligently (even if the media are perhaps overhyping it a little :shock: )
The biggest news in a century - Not if that satellite falls on my house...
Relative indeed.
I always thought my nasal hair was growing faster than the speed of light...
I'm not as think as you drunk I am.
"The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible."
Albert Einstein (reputedly)
Fixed that for you...magirus wrote:
scubasky100 wrote:
Warp drive now possible scoty
Probably not because - [s:19ls41g2]"She wont canay take much more Captain"![/s:19ls41g2] "You Canay change the Laws of Physics"
Fixed that for you
oh, apparently you CAN change the Laws of Physics - I'll get my coat...
Mike 8)
He could have been wrong about that as well...
Pretty interesting stuff, not that I know much about it, so a little wikipedia visit is required!
But I'll bet that Sir Isaac Newton is having a quiet chortle, given that Newtonian physics was taken as the final and absolute truth (or, using the new phrase I learned today, the "pessimistic induction") until Albert and his chums came along.
Standing on the shoulders of the people who stood on the shoulders of giants ...
In theory, the particle arrived before it left :wink:
How 8) is that !
Yes, it's quite true. I actually wrote this tomorrow and posted it back in time using Neutrinomail. See you in 1964 to watch the Beatles at the Cavern.
The Doctor
Implications HERE.
Mike.
I don't see how this will effect much other than allow science to acquire further funding to investigate it, which to be honest I'm not against. Interesting nontheless...
Very good! :D
So clever my foot fell off.
That's pretty good and quite accurate.
A few possibilities, just off the top of my head, could include - instantaneous communication and data transfer, ultra-high speed computing, extreme distance communication across deep space...
And I just had an interesting thought - if this is proved to be true, would it not be likely that advanced civilisations would use it to communicate across the cosmos? In which case we might just have been wasting our time listening out for old fashioned radio signals...
So clever my foot fell off.
Alternatively you can listen to Brian Cox's take here.
I have. Interestingly he also referred to it as potentially the biggest news in a century - and that was after I had made the original post.Alternatively you can listen to Brian Cox's take here.
Clearly I am a physics genius, I just never realised it. :D
So clever my foot fell off.
Can we do any of this at the speed of light now?
I don't think it's as simple as that. The first problem is that neutrinos only interact via the nuclear weak force which means they are very, very difficult to detect. In fact your detector needs to be the size of a football stadium, buried miles underground, filled with ultra pure water and surrounded by photomultiplier tubes. Even then you might only detect one in a trillion neutrinos. Neutrinos also change flavour as they travel which means the neutrino you send off might have turned into some other type of neutrino by the time it gets to where ever you're sending it. This might cause problems in identifying which neutrino has the piece of information you're interested in, that is if you don't miss it as it passes through the earth and your detector without hitting a single thing at all.
Relativity has a big problem with faster than light travel which is what all the fuss is really about. The time dilation effect you get for relativistic particles (which leads to the famous Twins Paradox) means that as the particle travels at close to the speed of light, time appears to slow down for that particle as seen by an outside (stationary) observer, or conversely, from the particles perspective, time outside the particle appears to slow down. If you increase the speed to the speed of light, time appears to stop altogether. So for a photon whizzing across the universe at the speed of light, the universe appears to be stopped in time, unchanging and eternal. The photon however, looks at his watch and sees it ticking away as per normal as everything it passes stands frozen.
That's all well and good but even though light thinks time outside itself is stood still from it's perspective, from our perspective it still takes 1 second for a photon to travel 186,000 miles. Fast but not instantaneous. Going faster still does not mean instantaneous data transfer either, just a bit faster than 186,000 miles per second.
Now this is where relativity falls over. The equations that dictate time dilation (and pretty much everything relativistic) blow up when the particle's velocity is bigger than the speed of light (v>c). What I mean by that is that you get an equation which requires you to solve the square root of minus one. Mathematicians will know that sqrt(-1) = i which is known as an imaginary number, it generally has no real physical meaning (but it does have its uses even so). Relativity just kind of implodes and doesn't know what to do with v>c situations. So if neutrinos can break the light speed limit, then relativity needs some tweeking, or we need a new theory altogether and since most cosmology, particle physics and lots of other theories are based the idea of a cosmic speed limit, this will cause scientists to start rubbing their hands together, pulling up their slacks and scribbling mathematical gibberish on black boards all over the globe.
All this doesn't mean relativity is junked forthwith, after all it's still pretty useful and we haven't got anything better to replace it with, but it does mean nature may have given us a glimpse into something we didn't know existed and who knows where that might lead...
Ain't physics cool?
Nice post, so when can we start with the time machines?I don't think it's as simple as that. The first problem is that neutrinos only interact via the nuclear weak force which means they are very, very difficult to detect. In fact your detector needs to be the size of a football stadium, buried miles underground, filled with ultra pure water and surrounded by photomultiplier tubes. Even then you might only detect one in a trillion neutrinos. Neutrinos also change flavour as they travel which means the neutrino you send off might have turned into some other type of neutrino by the time it gets to where ever you're sending it. This might cause problems in identifying which neutrino has the piece of information you're interested in, that is if you don't miss it as it passes through the earth and your detector without hitting a single thing at all.
Relativity has a big problem with faster than light travel which is what all the fuss is really about. The time dilation effect you get for relativistic particles (which leads to the famous Twins Paradox) means that as the particle travels at close to the speed of light, time appears to slow down for that particle as seen by an outside (stationary) observer, or conversely, from the particles perspective, time outside the particle appears to slow down. If you increase the speed to the speed of light, time appears to stop altogether. So for a photon whizzing across the universe at the speed of light, the universe appears to be stopped in time, unchanging and eternal. The photon however, looks at his watch and sees it ticking away as per normal as everything it passes stands frozen.
That's all well and good but even though light thinks time outside itself is stood still from it's perspective, from our perspective it still takes 1 second for a photon to travel 186,000 miles. Fast but not instantaneous. Going faster still does not mean instantaneous data transfer either, just a bit faster than 186,000 miles per second.
Now this is where relativity falls over. The equations that dictate time dilation (and pretty much everything relativistic) blow up when the particle's velocity is bigger than the speed of light (v>c). What I mean by that is that you get an equation which requires you to solve the square root of minus one. Mathematicians will know that sqrt(-1) = i which is known as an imaginary number, it generally has no real physical meaning (but it does have its uses even so). Relativity just kind of implodes and doesn't know what to do with v>c situations. So if neutrinos can break the light speed limit, then relativity needs some tweeking, or we need a new theory altogether and since most cosmology, particle physics and lots of other theories are based the idea of a cosmic speed limit, this will cause scientists to start rubbing their hands together, pulling up their slacks and scribbling mathematical gibberish on black boards all over the globe.
All this doesn't mean relativity is junked forthwith, after all it's still pretty useful and we haven't got anything better to replace it with, but it does mean nature may have given us a glimpse into something we didn't know existed and who knows where that might lead...
Ain't physics cool?
you can start whenever you like. The real question is: when will they be finished?
You may have convinced Brian, but I think you've still got some work to do with Jim - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programme...ht/9598802.stmI have. Interestingly he also referred to it as potentially the biggest news in a century - and that was after I had made the original post.Alternatively you can listen to Brian Cox's take here.
Clearly I am a physics genius, I just never realised it. :D
Those were clearly nothing more than a temporal shorts cut... :wink:You may have convinced Brian, but I think you've still got some work to do with Jim - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programme...ht/9598802.stmI have. Interestingly he also referred to it as potentially the biggest news in a century - and that was after I had made the original post.Alternatively you can listen to Brian Cox's take here.
Clearly I am a physics genius, I just never realised it. :D
So clever my foot fell off.
Huh? And....I think physicists have known for a long time that relativity was an incomplete theory but given the available evidence at the time it was hard to say what was needed to fix it. If neutrinos are found to travel faster than light then this could be just the catalyst we need to get us to the next step.
Neutrinos do seem to shake up the physics world quite a bit though. They were postulated to account for momentum discrepancies in beta decay experiments and were pretty contentious at the time and thought to be massless since they didn't seem to interact with anything at all. The Standard Model of particle physics grew requiring that neutrinos be massless. Then a few years back, the Super Kamiokande experiment in Japan discovered that neutrinos were in fact massive and could change flavour. The Standard Model took a huge hit from that. If neutrinos do the same to relativity, then they will probably be the most fantastically thought provoking little particles ever to be discovered by science.
I'd love for this to be true as it could be a major piece to the jigsaw but my money is still on some tiny little systematic error somewhere in the experiment. It needs independent confirmation to be sure.
I don't think it's as simple as that. The first problem is that neutrinos only interact via the nuclear weak force which means they are very, very difficult to detect. In fact your detector needs to be the size of a football stadium, buried miles underground, filled with ultra pure water and surrounded by photomultiplier tubes. Even then you might only detect one in a trillion neutrinos. Neutrinos also change flavour as they travel which means the neutrino you send off might have turned into some other type of neutrino by the time it gets to where ever you're sending it. This might cause problems in identifying which neutrino has the piece of information you're interested in, that is if you don't miss it as it passes through the earth and your detector without hitting a single thing at all.
Relativity has a big problem with faster than light travel which is what all the fuss is really about. The time dilation effect you get for relativistic particles (which leads to the famous Twins Paradox) means that as the particle travels at close to the speed of light, time appears to slow down for that particle as seen by an outside (stationary) observer, or conversely, from the particles perspective, time outside the particle appears to slow down. If you increase the speed to the speed of light, time appears to stop altogether. So for a photon whizzing across the universe at the speed of light, the universe appears to be stopped in time, unchanging and eternal. The photon however, looks at his watch and sees it ticking away as per normal as everything it passes stands frozen.
That's all well and good but even though light thinks time outside itself is stood still from it's perspective, from our perspective it still takes 1 second for a photon to travel 186,000 miles. Fast but not instantaneous. Going faster still does not mean instantaneous data transfer either, just a bit faster than 186,000 miles per second.
Now this is where relativity falls over. The equations that dictate time dilation (and pretty much everything relativistic) blow up when the particle's velocity is bigger than the speed of light (v>c). What I mean by that is that you get an equation which requires you to solve the square root of minus one. Mathematicians will know that sqrt(-1) = i which is known as an imaginary number, it generally has no real physical meaning (but it does have its uses even so). Relativity just kind of implodes and doesn't know what to do with v>c situations. So if neutrinos can break the light speed limit, then relativity needs some tweeking, or we need a new theory altogether and since most cosmology, particle physics and lots of other theories are based the idea of a cosmic speed limit, this will cause scientists to start rubbing their hands together, pulling up their slacks and scribbling mathematical gibberish on black boards all over the globe.
All this doesn't mean relativity is junked forthwith, after all it's still pretty useful and we haven't got anything better to replace it with, but it does mean nature may have given us a glimpse into something we didn't know existed and who knows where that might lead...
Ain't physics cool?
Huh?
Fair point. I'm fairly sure it's impossible to write a good popular science book. Or at least it's impossible for me to write a good popular science book.
For a good popular science book on relativity try Why does E=mc^2.
Written by the aforementioned scientist, presenter, and dreamboat Dr. Brian Cox.
I used to read quite a few but gave up on popular science books well before I finished my PhD. Some are better than others but unfortunately the language of physics is mathematics which nearly all pop science books avoid like the plague (for the valid reason that most of the target audience won't understand it, or pay for it). But IMHO pop science books are a bit like trying to discern the finer points of Japanese poetry by watching dubbed cartoons. I know it sounds arrogant and it probably is but if you want to truly understand, you need to speak the language. The only author I've seen come close to breaking that rule is Richard Feynman.
I'm not a scientist, but I quite liked Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe.You should know that I am biased since I am a research physicist. I used to read quite a few but gave up on popular science books well before I finished my PhD. Some are better than others but unfortunately the language of physics is mathematics which nearly all pop science books avoid like the plague (for the valid reason that most of the target audience won't understand it, or pay for it). But IMHO pop science books are a bit like trying to discern the finer points of Japanese poetry by watching dubbed cartoons. I know it sounds arrogant and it probably is but if you want to truly understand, you need to speak the language. The only author I've seen come close to breaking that rule is Richard Feynman. But like I say, I'm biased.
Best wishes,
Bob
I've not read any of Brian Greene's books so I can't comment. If I remember correctly, you're a philosophy professor. I'd be interested to know if you have had any similar thoughts about popular philosophy books and the misconceptions that people seem to get from them?
Maybe I'm too hard on pop science authors. Maybe the cartoon version is a valid way of trying to get the message (?) across. Maybe the cartoon analogy is not even accurate. It just irks me a bit when I hear so many misconceptions, and have to try and undo them during lectures. Or maybe I'm just as arrogant about the whole subject as I fear I am.
I certainly think that there are some really bad popular philosophy books around. But there are some good ones as well. My view is that almost all of of the things I teach or work on (including phil. of science) should be communicable to reasonably well educated people who aren't philosophers. Indeed, I take my ability to explain something to such people (such as students) as a test of my understanding of it.
However, I also agree that it is much more difficult when it comes to the formal stuff, e.g., logic, set theory and various bits of the phil of maths. And what you say about maths being the language of physics is surely correct: most models in physics are mathematical models. But it seems to me a worthwhile goal (politic, if nothing else) to make as much of it as accessible as possible. Most models involve simplification and abstraction, so I've nothing against that. (I take it that the forces, etc., being modeled mathematically are physical and the world is not a mathematical construct.)
Best wishes,
Bob
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