Science: Particles seen moving at FTL speeds (CERN)

[Kraven Kor]

http://io9.com/5842947/

 

Way above my scientific literacy, but this is one of the things CERN was built for. They even state "this doesn't break relativity" and note that what they have proof of is just a measurement they can't explain; the neutrinos got to the destination 60 nanoseconds quicker than light over a distance of 730km.

[Zeropoint]

Re: Science: Particles seen moving at FTL speeds (CERN)

 

I know I shouldn't get my hopes up, but I can't help having a little sliver of hope that this could lead to an FTL drive someday.

 

It's PROBABLY nothing--a fluke, a bad reading, or something.

 

But . . . it MIGHT not be?

[NuSoardGraphite]

Re: Science: Particles seen moving at FTL speeds (CERN)

 

NICE!

 

If verified, this could be the biggest scientific breakthrough since....well...ever.

[Sociotard]

Re: Science: Particles seen moving at FTL speeds (CERN)

 

Were physics base out of a casino (where God throws dice) I would tell my bookie to put $100 on "error". I buried my tiny dreams of FTL a long time ago.

[Christopher]

Re: Science: Particles seen moving at FTL speeds (CERN)

 

Were physics base out of a casino (where God throws dice) I would tell my bookie to put $100 on "error". I buried my tiny dreams of FTL a long time ago.

I doubt I see it in my lifetime, but to quote Sir Isaac Newton: "What we know is a single drop of water. What we do not know is all the water of the oceans."

[Doc Quantum]

Re: Science: Particles seen moving at FTL speeds (CERN)

 

Clarke's Law:Technology sufficiently advanced becomes indistinguishable from magic.

 

Everybody from theologians to quantum physicists agrees that humans have an imperfect perception and understanding of time and space. If we improved enough, we might discover that a lot what is currently science fiction plot devices and setting flavor is actually easier than we ever imagined.

[Old Man]

Re: Science: Particles seen moving at FTL speeds (CERN)

 

Were physics base out of a casino (where God throws dice) I would tell my bookie to put $100 on "error". I buried my tiny dreams of FTL a long time ago.

 

And I've been watering and fertilizing them while you weren't looking.

[Starcloud]

Re: Science: Particles seen moving at FTL speeds (CERN)

 

At 15,000 measurements, with thorough cross-checking of possible instrument reasons for the discrepancy, it seems like a pretty solid finding.

 

They don't say "this breaks relativity", they say "This is what we observed. We make no conclusions about what it means, whether it breaks the general relativity theory or not. We're leaving that to others."

[RexMundi]

Re: Science: Particles seen moving at FTL speeds (CERN)

 

So, when it's repeated, then peer reviewed, and confirmed again, then we can get all antsy. Otherwise, error is still a big possibility. You don't need much error when dealing with things this small moving that fast. Still though cool news. Now back to rooting around for Black Hole info.......

 

~Rex

[Christopher]

Re: Science: Particles seen moving at FTL speeds (CERN)

 

Here you go.

 

Not really:

Forbidden

 

You don't have permission to access /wp-content/uploads/2010/08/black-hole-movie.jpg on this server.

Apache/2.2.3 (CentOS) Server at http://www.sliceofscifi.com Port 80

[Old Man]

Re: Science: Particles seen moving at FTL speeds (CERN)

 

That's odd, it worked fine for me. Oh well.

[tkdguy]

Re: Science: Particles seen moving at FTL speeds (CERN)

 

Another article and some pics:

 

Naughty Neutrinos

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Science: Particles seen moving at FTL speeds (CERN)

 

Another article and some pics:

 

Naughty Neutrinos

 

This cracked me up....

[ATTACH=CONFIG]40000[/ATTACH]

[novi]

Re: Science: Particles seen moving at FTL speeds (CERN)

 

I do so enjoy when everyone gets their physics wrong. In particular, nothing in general or special relativity prohibits particles from traveling faster than the speed of light, or even things from traveling at the speed of light. What it does prohibit is particles with a non-zero mass from traveling at the speed of light, due to needing an infinite amount of energy to go that fast. Photons, aka light, have zero mass, which is why they can travel at the speed of light. Now, while it is impossible to accelerate a particle from sub-light to faster-than-light speeds, due to being unable to reach the speed of light, relativity does have a loophole concerning a particle that would always move faster than the speed of light. Such a particle is perfectly fine, just so long as the particle can have an imaginary rest mass (which, since the particle is always moving, and never at rest, will always invoke a mass-squared term and become a real number when the math is done). And that's rather iffy. There's no evidence that it is allowed, but at the same time, there is also no evidence that it is prohibited.

 

Oddly, this isn't the first time that neutrinos have teased us about being tachyons. 20 years ago, other experiments made the suggestion, though further research suggested mostly ruled it out. I'll let an actual physicist explain better: http://www.npl.washington.edu/AV/altvw54.html

 

But neutrinos are just plain weird, in general.

[McCoy]

Re: Science: Particles seen moving at FTL speeds (CERN)

 

I do so enjoy when everyone gets their physics wrong. In particular' date=' nothing in general or special relativity prohibits particles from traveling faster than the speed of light, [/quote']

You mean, "other than the mass becoming a multiple of the square root of negative one?"

 

FTL breaks casuality, so when and if it is proven General Relativity will have been demonstrated -- incomplete.

[Ravor]

Re: Science: Particles seen moving at FTL speeds (CERN)

 

I've decided a long time ago to simply shake my head at the idea humanity has anything even remotely considering an accurate picture of physics when terms like Dark Matter / Energy have to be thrown around to make our theories of physics actually result in the universe looking the way it does.

[Christopher]

Re: Science: Particles seen moving at FTL speeds (CERN)

 

I've decided a long time ago to simply shake my head at the idea humanity has anything even remotely considering an accurate picture of physics when terms like Dark Matter / Energy have to be thrown around to make our theories of physics actually result in the universe looking the way it does.

Then you are indirectly mocking Newton and Einstein. They had to make similary "far fetched" asumption at their time. Right now we can't even proof half the stuff or physics is based on. We can only throw out a theory and hope the it fit's the reality.

Relativity itself isn't prooven. We just found that the reality fit's the theory.

[NuSoardGraphite]

Re: Science: Particles seen moving at FTL speeds (CERN)

 

Then you are indirectly mocking Newton and Einstein. They had to make similary "far fetched" asumption at their time. Right now we can't even proof half the stuff or physics is based on. We can only throw out a theory and hope the it fit's the reality.

Relativity itself isn't prooven. We just found that the reality fit's the theory.

 

I agree with Ravor. There are many out there who say that what we know and what we can perceive is how reality functions. Certainly we can only go by what we observe, but considering that we can only observe a small fraction of whats going on in the universe (on all levels) how can anyone say that with any sense of certainty, unless they are doing so from a position of ignorance or arrogance?

[Gnaskar]

Re: Science: Particles seen moving at FTL speeds (CERN)

 

Relativity itself isn't proven.

 

Technically, it have been. Time dilation effects have been observed, light bending around black holes has been observed (that's actually the most common way of finding black holes), length dilation has been observed.

 

Einstein's Relativity and Newton's mechanics have both been proven experimentally (in fact, most high schoolers do experiments that prove parts of Newtonian Physics). The problem is when we can apply them. Newton's laws fail when relativistic effects are involved. Relativity may fall apart at the quantum scale. We don't know (Einstein spent most of his life trying to find out).

 

String theory and quantum mechanics isn't actually a theory in the same way as Newton's laws and Relativity are. Newton's laws and Relativity describe why things act as they do in addition to what they'll do in a given situation. Quantum sciences have only managed to explain what particles do, without looking at why. String theory is an attempt at explaining why, but thus far is untestable, and hence useless as a scientific theory.

[Ravor]

Re: Science: Particles seen moving at FTL speeds (CERN)

 

No, what I'm actually mocking is the idea that any theory should be considered to be "the one true way" and whenever anything is observed that doesn't fit within the framework of said theories then instead of taking even the briefest of looks at our base assumptions we instead simply make up imaginary new factors.

 

Hell, look at the angst that the "Black Hole Wars" caused over the most basic principle of physics, "Information can not be destroyed." When a world famous theorist actually had the moxie to claim that black holes were proof of the multi-verse theory because the information contained in the universes without a black hole at that spot was preserved my faith in humanity ticked down a notch. Of course, the "winner" of said war says that information is preserved because Hawking Radiation (Has that ever actually been proven or is it just another make-believe factor?) serves to transmit the information from the black hole to the rest of the universe.

 

I mean, even when we supposedly have evidence of particles interacting with each other at apparent FTL speeds at the quantum level we're told that it doesn't really matter because we currently have no way of predicting the reaction and thus can't transmit information through it. All the while ignoring the most basic factor which is the fact that an FTL reaction is indeed possible, at least at the quantum level.

[McCoy]

Re: Science: Particles seen moving at FTL speeds (CERN)

 

Hell' date=' look at the angst that the "Black Hole Wars" caused over the most basic principle of physics, "Information can not be destroyed." [/quote']

Um, when did that become the most basic principle? I didn't get the memo. (I though it was conservation of mass/energy.)

 

Hawking Radiation (Has that ever actually been proven or is it just another make-believe factor?)

Cancer could answer this better, but as far as I am aware we hve not yet directly observed a black hole, much less gotten a probe close enough to an event horizon to check for unpaired virtual particles.

[Cancer]

Re: Science: Particles seen moving at FTL speeds (CERN)

 

So' date=' when it's repeated, then peer reviewed, and confirmed again, then we can get all antsy. Otherwise, error is still a big possibility. You don't need much error when dealing with things this small moving that fast. Still though cool news. Now back to rooting around for Black Hole info.......[/quote']

 

I think what you want is either here, or on the "Orbit of S2" page linked in the sidebar there.

 

I think the video with the original ESO press release is here, but it's really slow to load and not as good as the one in that first link above.

[Ravor]

Re: Science: Particles seen moving at FTL speeds (CERN)

 

*shrugs* Perhaps I should have said "one of the most basic principles" but it seems to me that once you give up the idea that information can indeed be destroyed then most of theoretical physics becomes fairly moot anyways. Still you're right, guilty as charged. *hangs head*

 

 

As for the bit about Hawking Radiation, that is my entire point, I find it rather annoying that the same people who simply make things up in order to fit observed reality into their theories have the gall to rule certain things as simply impossible. Especially when we supposedly have observed things that amount to FTL reactions.

 

Now with that said, don't get wrong, I'm not a Sci-Fi dreamer, reactions at the quantum level doesn't make actual FTL likely or even remotely possible, but it does show that what we don't understand is far greater than that we do.

[Cancer]

Re: Science: Particles seen moving at FTL speeds (CERN)

 

Cancer could answer this better' date=' but as far as I am aware we hve not yet directly observed a black hole, much less gotten a probe close enough to an event horizon to check for unpaired virtual particles.[/quote']

 

To my knowledge, we don't have anything like a compelling candidate for a Hawking radiation burst from an evaporating micro-black hole at this time. The problem is that the observations we have are by their nature very sketchy. We have observed a few gamma ray bursters that ARE clearly in distant galaxies at cosmological distances, and for now that is what all of the GRB's are presumed to be. I am not a high energy astrophysics guy so I am not privy to the latest stuff, but right now I think that is current thinking.

 

The 15,000 events in the CERN/Gran Sasso paper are enough for statistical purposes, but what most people (including me) suspect is that there's a systematic problem they haven't handled right. At c, the time of flight of the neutrinos from CERN to Gran Sasso is about 2.433 milliseconds. The difference they are claiming for the neutrinos from actual travel at c is 60.7 nanoseconds, in the sense that the neutrinos are taking about 61 ns less than photons would if there was an evacuated pathway.

 

I can think of metric buttloads of things that can give you systematic 61 nanosecond errors, so I am among the wait-and-see people. I do remember the excitement when the first planet orbiting a pulsar was announced, and I was in the audience at the talk where Lyne retracted the result. He got an ovation, and it was perhaps the greatest act of scientific statemanship I have ever witnessed.

[sinanju]

Re: Science: Particles seen moving at FTL speeds (CERN)

 

I agree with Ravor. There are many out there who say that what we know and what we can perceive is how reality functions. Certainly we can only go by what we observe' date=' but considering that we can only observe a small fraction of whats going on in the universe (on all levels) how can anyone say that with any sense of certainty, unless they are doing so from a position of ignorance or arrogance?[/quote']

 

Easy. They say it with the confidence of the best scientific observation/experimentation available. Could they be wrong? Possibly. But every bit of experimental evidence we've gathered to date fits with Relativity. Even if we find a case somewhere that doesn't fit Relativity, it won't completely overturn Relativity. Too much experimental evidence shows that Relativity explains phenomena we couldn't explain prior to Einstein's work (the precession of Mercury's orbit, for one) and predicts experimental results we can test in the world around us. And the results have universally confirmed Relativity.

 

In short, we know Relativity is true (that it describes existing phenomena and predicts others we have/can test) as absolutely as we know anything. You can call that arrogance or ignorance if you like, but it's the end result of nearly a century of experimental investigation which has so far failed to find a case that doesn't support the theory. (There have been previous experiments which seemed to violate Relativity. Upon further investigation, none of them held up.)