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Did you hear? Apparently, some particles might move faster than light. This would kind of throw off everything Einstein and the rest of the world believes, so let’s just hope that Time Travel occurs and we can all rest safely tonight, knowing that someday, somewhere, dinosaurs are going to exist in our bedrooms.
Science? 100% Science, in fact.
Scumbag Neutrino
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Google Cherencov Effect, and first.
you should google it yourself first
Refraction enables Neutrinos to retain their velocity whilst light slows down, meaning neutrinos travel faster than light through the medium
THROUGH the medium, the medium slows down the speed of light, it is through a void that light speed is unreachable
actually the speed of light is easily reachable. by light.
a-light-iens!
So what? That’s not the problem here. It’s that the neutrinos were dectected moving faster than c; i.e. the speed of light in a vacuum.
It’s probably a measurement error, but it’s worth investigating.
i think it’s a measurement error, too, and i’m just 16!
I’m 12 and what is this
The difference is like 16*10^-9 seconds faster with an error of 10*10^-9 seconds so even at the lowest value it’s still above the speed of light. That’s why this is being sent out for peer review instead of just being discarded.
The way I understand it, in a Cherenkov radiation, even though the particles move faster than photons in the same medium, they still move slower than c (speed of light in vacuum).
The recent experiment showed us that those neutrinos traveled faster than c, or specifically: 1.000025*c
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I thought the “Google Cherencov effect” was when some one posts a science meme and people google it to understand what its saying.
I swear I saw a thread on 4chan about this theory like 2 weeks ago….. People thought he was trolling……
First.
First to fail
Neutrinos? Nope, Chuck Testa
They don’t and won’t go faster, but CAN. They are just mass-less and very penetrating (har har).
Things like this are thought up to give wannabe Einstein derps a name somewhere. Neutrinos have been researched since before my parents were born.
Not massless, they have f**k!n little mass….
Neutrinos aren’t mass-less, they just have the smallest known mass of any particle.
Neutrinos are massless, which is why they say it doesn’t violate Relativity because Relativity defines Mass.
+1 Mr. booooooobs
^this! nice
But it *does* violate relativity because they *do* have mass. Even if they didn’t, they shouldn’t be able to go faster than light in a vacuum. Neutrinos have a mass that is so small that they go very, very close to the speed of light, so close, in fact, that scientists just say they go at it.
Physics debate in a memebase comment thread… Anyone know how to properly cite this in my thesis?
maybe:
[PiMaster 2011, personal communication]
This is heavy, doc!
this one should be included!
http://cheezburger.com/View/5233728768
to be fair, it wouldn’t “throw off everything Einstein and the rest of the world believes”, we’d just need new physics to explain phenomena not explained by relativity. Just like we use Relativity to explain things not covered by Newtonian physics. I’m sure a real physicist could explain it better than me, but while this IS a big deal, by no means does it invalidate relativity, just as relativity did not entirely invalidate Newtonian physics.
We’ll need new physics, and with any luck it will lead to lots of exciting scientific advancements, but i think a lot of media outlets have been kind of irresponsible with their coverage. good coverage here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/22/cern_spots_ftl_neutrinos/
Actually I’m pretty sure Einstein said that matter couldn’t accelerate beyond the speed of light. Particles going faster than light already are fine and anything without mass is fine. So either way, not throwing anything off.
Study more physics. You don’t know what you’re talking about.
Matter is anything with mass. Particles that have mass are matter. Neutrinos have a very small, but nonzero mass. Therefore they should not accelerate past c.
For that matter, even were they massless they should not propagate faster than c. It doesn’t “throw anything off” for the reasons Abe discusses, not by your naive thinking.
doesn´t a particle need negative mass to go faster then light?
negative mass particles actually do exist..As explained by Stephen Hawking, even in empty space pairs of particles with positive & negative mass pop out of nothing..the problem is that in 99.9% of cases they recombine (giving 0). But even if mass is negative, it’s not mathematically possible according to Einstein (for more details look at my reply to Abe if it makes it through moderation). For this you would need it to have imaginary mass i.e a mass whose square is a negative no. (For more details, google complex nos.)
Assumption:
Existence of imaginary mass matter may not be possible to investigate if it doesn’t interact with real mass matter at all (including all fields and any direct or indirect measuring methods and equipment). In such case it exists in imaginary space and we “have no access”. Time is also imaginary “there” and as such incomparable, which makes speed (and any other vectors or scalars) incomparable too.
At least for now.
Note: by definition “measuring” is “comparing observed values with known ones”.
actually i agree with your point entirely, & am also aware of the fact.. i was just trying to explain that rather than negative mass, imaginary mass is the correct MATHEMATICAL answer in accordance with relativistic mechanics. In no way have i said that it is measurable or comparable…but thnx for pointing out
Imaginary numbers are mathematical artifacts. While they may help you solve equations relating to the real world by popping up along the way in a derivation, if they occur in your final result then something is wrong.
No, it needs an imaginary mass to go faster than light. Particles like that would behave just the other way round than normal ones, they couldn’t go slower than light. Though this is just hypothetical, as far as i know there is no eyperimental evidence for something like this up to now.
while i agree with you, the “new physics” that you speak of already exists..& it’s called quantum mechanics.. Google “Bell’s Theorem” & you should learn ( if your source is reliable) that this theorem clearly demonstrates that Einstein’s understanding of reality ( & therefore Special Relativity) had a slight flaw.. he believed that the principle of locality (you’ll have to google that too) held in our universe, & based all his theories & arguments against QM based on this. The Bell’s Theorem clearly demonstrates that this view was flawed, & is violated in the real world, in experiments that were conducted in the 1970′s & 80′s
Bell’s theorem has to do with quantum entanglement. That would be applicable here only if entanglement involved the exchange of force-carrying particles, but it doesn’t actually seem to. Nor was the Einsteinian critique of QM that focused on entanglement directly related to his work on relativity, which is very well-tested in the domain where it applies.
Probably, no one was more surprised than Einstein when entanglement was demonstrated experimentally. He meant to show it as a paradox, and therefore a flaw in the theory.
science has no place for holy caws, Einstein’s theories achieved that.
we are still in a very infantile state when it comes to scientific knowledge, so being reluctant in scratching a theory is very contra productive, this doesn’t undermine the theory of relativity, but it should open peoples minds to the possibility that Einstein might be wrong in more things.
And please, don’t compare applied physics to theoretical, applied physics are the building blocks of our society, theoretical are just explanations for physical phenomenon.
Just to point out if Relativity didn’t work neither would your GPS. Jus’ sayin’. That’s like sayin’.
Well my GPS is often off by tens of meters… must be the neutrinos!
Nope, just chuck testa
Nope, Aliens.
Nope, can’t explain that.
They used a GPS to measure, if by those measurements the theroy of realativity is “destroyed” the GPS is working thanks to a theory that has been “destroyed”.
Aliens. Or God.
aliens
god was a space alien
I thought he was an astronaut.
was? or IS?
So many years passed, everyone needs to change their business sometimes
Alien God?
Albert Einstein looks like the ALIENS guy in that pic, and the text kinda fits
I have absolutely no idea what’s going on and I’m proud of it.
I have a thory!
God is trolling us!
umed?
Dude, I got this at school today. But it was so long and it was too early.
F*cking neutrinos, How Do They Work?
There is a speed faster than light.
Ludicrous speed
I believe you mean Plaid.
OK so, having actually read the story from Wired (which contained some scientific errors it self), it’s an anomaly. Now they’re presenting this anomaly to other experts to see what caused it.
Also, it’s funny that Ehh and tiberius both mentioned GPS in their posts, because it seems that the researchers actually used GPS to help time the neutrinos.
The mathematics of quantum neutrino fields?
The mathematics of wonton burrito meals.
Hotdog dorito wheels?
TEAM ROCKET?!
I don’t get why the V has scumbag steve hat.
That’s the symbol for neutrinos, and neutrinos are being scumbags because they’re supposedly going faster than light and confusing the hell out of scientists.
Don’t tachyons already go faster than light?
Tachyons have a imaginary complex mass, they therefor can travel faster than light without breaking a lot of rules of nature.
They’re also theoretical.
Darn, I was going to say tachyons… Beaten to it by other sci-fi peeps.
Well you could try the Quantum Entanglement phenomenon, but i’ve already beaten you to it
neutrino? Aren’t faster than light particles are tachyons?
You are not allowed to talk about physics until you can write a sentence with correct grammar. Aren’t are you aware of that?
Anything can go faster than the speed of light given enough energy, but the amount of energy you would need is way to much for our current technology. The only thing we can make go faster than the speed of light right now is an electron and only just barely faster. If YOU wanted to go faster than light you would need to not simply move fast but just cover a very large distance in a short amount of time like moving space with gravity. Ex. A black hole/worm hole.
False. NOTHING is supposed to go faster than light – that’s why it’s often called the “universal speed limit.” According to accepted physics, it would take an infinite amount of energy to move matter at the speed of light. I made a post below explaining why that is.
well just to be a jerk… though you presumably already know this with someone else already saying this plus the fact you at least seem to know a lot about physics any way.. but i’m bored.. nothing can travel faster than c (light through a vacuum) things can travel faster than light if you slow it down first you know refraction and all that.. (in conventional physics anyway).. sorry i’m just hugely bored and i felt you statment needed clarifying..
> but i’m bored.. sorry i’m just hugely bored…
Aren’t we all?
False. Our understanding of physics is always changing. Before we broke the sound barrier, physicists didn’t think a human could possibly go that fast and survive. If physics was always only looking at what we know we’d be finding out about gravity through apples falling.
That’s dumb. People not being able to survive going faster than the speed of sound firstly isn’t a problem for a physicist and secondly isn’t a question which has as fundamental consequences as a particle being able to go faster than the speed of light- it’s not like people thought it was theoretically impossible for things to travel past the speed of sound.
If this turns out to be true, it will have massive consequences and we’ll have to totally rethink our physics. The current way that we understand time and space, which has been so accurate at describing the universe and has allowed some amazing technology, would be wrong- we would otherwise have to accept the possibility of sending information backwards in time which would contradict causality.
Physicists aren’t dogmatic people who cling to ideas such as “c must be the fastest speed” for no reason- we all know science continues to move forward. But this would imply a massive flaw in our understanding, which is why so many people think there must be an error. So I wish people would stop dismissing this as “well, physicists are always just so reluctant to give up old ideas”- it’s not like that at all, they are some of the most forward thinking people around.
Constant rethinking is the only way for any science to progress.
The most serious negative consequences could be loss of positions that some PEOPLE (and institutions) established in scientific (and economic) world.
Current understanding that worked can still be wrong as incomplete.
New, wider understanding can (and will) still work in matters that old worked, and additionally work in cases that old one didn’t.
It happens all the time.
Yes, scientists are some of the most forward thinking people, but people who post on memebase tend to think they know everything, hence my lol @ ur comment.
Nope. Therefore aliens.
exept for the part youre all retarded
Fun Fact: Special Relativity has nothing against things traveling faster than light, it is things that start off slower than light then increase speed to exceed light that are a problem (mostly because it would require a near infinite amount of energy).
*infinite, not near-infinite.
m(v)=m0/sqrt(1-v^2/c^2)
lim(v->c-,m(v))=infinity
W (work, aka energy, in joules) = maΔx – if m=infinity, W must also be infinite.
Just to clearify your equation which you didn’t do for some reason,
the algebraic equation shown above means that as velocity increases so does mass. in fact, as velocity approaches the speed of light, mass approaches infinity and therefore v can not equal c the speed of light.
Earth itself is faster around Sun than bullet here on ground. Sun also moves within our galaxy, and so on..
We are moving through Space and have mass m0.
Increase of speed increases mass.
If we slow down, our mass would decrease?
At speed of absolute zero our mass would be zero?
In that case our perception of delta v as (v – v0), linear is wrong.
If speed affects time than our measurement of speed is incorrect, absolute values of delta v are exponential, and absolute value of c is infinite.
Chemistry already has proof that on higher speeds reactions go faster.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
kekekeke
If you look at the math, you can see that as v approaches 0, m approaches m0 (the rest mass)
2 things.
1- Futurama predicted this, they said that scientists increased the speed of light. I think we should all take Futurama as gospel and start preparing for the year 3000.
2- I love the title to this one. Hopefully because of the massively nerdy principle of if you shine light on a particle, it distorts the image of the particle*. (*Massively condensed and simplified)
And i only know that because of Bill Bailey
Apparently some troll scientists have gotten into CERN.
once again wasnt in a vacuuum,similar to cherenkov, anyone?not that new, huh?
IMPOSSIBRU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
alions with tha ‘oh’
Rocking the Tachyons baby.
there was known faster than light travel (of information) during Einstein’s lifetime.
Quantum Entangled particles, two particles that vibrate at the exact same frequency, will always have the exact opposite value of one another. So if one was rotating clockwise the other would rotate counterclockwise, regardless of their distance, instantaneously. This property would result in faster than light travel of information between these two particles. Einstein himself called these particles “spooky matter” or “spooky material” due to this property
^ THIS. This is why people should read a book or two b4 starting to comment that CERN must have made a mistake. They might have done so, but that doesn’t mean faster than light travel (of information, atleast ) is impossible… It just means that most of the physics that you learnt was incorrect, & had been proven to be incorrect waaay back in 1964 by the legendary John S Bell
Neutrino! Nope, Chuck Testa.
Aliens…
As I understand it as someone interested but not experienced in any field of science… doesn’t Einstein’s theory take into account bodies with no mass? I had a nerd-friend explain to me in depth that one of Einstein’s relativity theories (I can’t remember if it was special or general) applied to bodies with mass and since neutrinos have no mass, they are outside the theory but do not prove or disprove it at all.
Also, every news report I’ve seen used E=mc2 as their example of Einstein’s theory but that was something completely different and irrelevant to the entire article.
Neutrinos do have mass, though it’s very, very little (they have the smallest mass of any known particle).
god works in misterios ways we just have to wait for him to exaplin this to us and then efeything will become clear
You’ve got what it takes to be Texas’ governor. Bwahahaha.
If its not in the bible it didn’t happen, period.
One of my professors and I think it has something to do with gravitational lensing and gravity waves, something that has been searched for for quite some time. It’s not that the particle travels faster than light, it’s that it takes a shorter path between point A and B than a straight line.
According to special relativity, no particle with mass can travel at the speed of light, and thus cannot accelerate beyond it. A particle can travel faster than the speed of light, which results in some seriously warped space-time continuum. It simply can’t accelerate conventionally to get there.
General relativity also provides a means of attaining superluminal velocities without any relativistic effects, but the configuration is not terribly possible.