They broke physics! Good going CERN

[midlifeaspie]

Yeah.. and I find it hard to imagine. Like to see more empirical evidence though.

Indeed.  Could be very interesting.  Maybe the reason that nobody can find the TOE is because they have only been working within the framework of Einstein's TOR.  Remove that boundary and perhaps the answer is waiting just outside.

["couldbecousin"]

This thread makes me wish I knew more about physics.

 This thread makes me wish I could comprehend stuff. 

[Calavera]

Anything new?

[Peter]

Anything new?

Nothing in the way of new data that I'm aware of, but plenty of ongoing analysis from the blogosphere.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20957-dimensionhop-may-allow-neutrinos-to-cheat-light-speed.html
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20961-fasterthanlight-neutrino-claim-bolstered.html

http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=19896
http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=19912

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPERA_experiment#Neutrino_time-of-flight_anomaly

[Calavera]

Thanks for the links.

Wasn't there a live science debate about this that went on recently?

[odeon]

IIRC, the theory of relativity does not address speeds faster than light, but results in the speed of light as a specific speed that cannot be achieved by anything with a mass.

The theory of relativity is a model that seems to explains the sub-light speed world quite nicely, but I very much doubt that Einstein or any other physicist would seriously consider it to be all there is, the absolute truth.

[Peter]

Thanks for the links.

Wasn't there a live science debate about this that went on recently?

There was a live webcast from CERN a couple of days ago, but I don't think it was a debate.

[Scrapheap]

I thought it was already understood that neutrinos and other sub-atomic particles can travel faster than light. 

AFAIK, the speed of light speed limit, only applies to atoms.

That's why, right after the big bang, the universe expanded faster than the speed of light (cosmic inflation), because atoms hadn't formed yet.

The universe is 13.7 B years old, but it is far more than 27.4 B light years across. That means it had to travel at much faster than the speed of light for quite some time.

The theory is that the "fabric" of the universe is expanding at the same time.  So light is travelling along the the "fabric" at the speed of light, but travelling faster as the "fabric" is also expanding.

A photon is a subatomic particle.

I was refering to inflationary theory. Both the fabric of space time AND the physical matter within it, exceded the speed of light, because protons and neutrons didn't exist yet, nor did light.

Photons are actually much bigger than atoms. they just have almost no mass.

[ProfessorFarnsworth]

Question for any physics person to answer, as I'm still not 100% understanding on this but:

With the phenomena of Neutrino Oscillations, when a neutrino charges flavour (say from electron neutrino to tau neutrino), wouldn't it's velocity change in accordance to it's change of mass to conserve momentum? If not, how is the conservation of momentum justified?

That bugs me a lot. It seems it implies neutrinos have variable velocities as they travel, and perhaps there's a fourth oscillation state (or something happens while in a superposition of two flavours) that somehow achieves FTL (Its mass drops to zero for a moment, giving it all to velocity, or something like that), but the speed averages out as only being a tiny bit faster than light under special circumstances. Hmmm.

[midlifeaspie]

Question for any physics person to answer, as I'm still not 100% understanding on this but:

With the phenomena of Neutrino Oscillations, when a neutrino charges flavour (say from electron neutrino to tau neutrino), wouldn't it's velocity change in accordance to it's change of mass to conserve momentum? If not, how is the conservation of momentum justified?

That bugs me a lot. It seems it implies neutrinos have variable velocities as they travel, and perhaps there's a fourth oscillation state (or something happens while in a superposition of two flavours) that somehow achieves FTL (Its mass drops to zero for a moment, giving it all to velocity, or something like that), but the speed averages out as only being a tiny bit faster than light under special circumstances. Hmmm.

42

[odeon]

Question for any physics person to answer, as I'm still not 100% understanding on this but:

With the phenomena of Neutrino Oscillations, when a neutrino charges flavour (say from electron neutrino to tau neutrino), wouldn't it's velocity change in accordance to it's change of mass to conserve momentum? If not, how is the conservation of momentum justified?

That bugs me a lot. It seems it implies neutrinos have variable velocities as they travel, and perhaps there's a fourth oscillation state (or something happens while in a superposition of two flavours) that somehow achieves FTL (Its mass drops to zero for a moment, giving it all to velocity, or something like that), but the speed averages out as only being a tiny bit faster than light under special circumstances. Hmmm.

I don't know a lot about neutrino oscillations, but wouldn't the Heisenberg principle make the simultaneous observations that are required difficult?

Then again, I would imagine that the maths covering (relativistic) conservation of momentum is probably not fully valid for FTL.

[Al Swearegen]

There is more than a little conjecture that they simply miscalculated and that Einstein can not be ruled out just yet. Maybe the E=mc2 theory still holds water?

[odeon]

There is a lot of doubt right now but I'm sure the experiment needs to be repeated anyway. I'll be interested in following what they can come up with.