Was Einstein wrong?

[Photonic]

Not sure if you completely understand the ramifications but this could potentially be the most important discovery in human history.

Yes I understand the ramifications.

No you don't.

Beer that will not go flat.

Shit yea.

 

[midcan5]

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed." Albert Einstein

 

[Iridescence]

Quantum experiments are subject to variable interpretations.

Unfortunately, people do not live in a quantum world.

Um, what?

Quantum meaning: The smallest amount of a physical quantity that can exist independently, especially a discrete quantity of electromagnetic radiation. It seems that we do live in a quantum world on and within many levels. Some of us are more aware of it than others.

quantum - definition of quantum by the Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia.

How is this not exactly the world we dwell within?

 

[strollingbones]

i have no clue what yall are talking about....simple as that....i wont pretend to understand all this

 

[editec]

Was Einstein wrong?

Yes.

And there are times when he recognized that, and admitted it, too.

And, just to add to the mix of weirdness, some of the the things he decided early in his career that he though he'd been wrong about and recanted, seem to be turning out to the be right, too.

I, of course, am not ina position to posit what is right or wrong in these advances physics questions. But I am a big fan of watching these folks who CAN understand this field, waxing and waning, coming up with new theories, and then shooting those down to arrive at still more new even weirder theories.

AT that level of hard science, there are right answers (I guess) but science is still humble enough to think they probably still don't have them.

Particals moving faster than the speed of light?

Yeah that's impressive.

But how about the instantaeous change of spin in electrons that have also been discovered?

Instantaneous exceeds all speed even light speed!

Instantaneous suggests that EVERYTHING is connected to EVERYTHING else.

Instantaneous suggests that everything we think we know about matter and energy might be completely and totally WRONG.

Instantaneous means that the entire universe might be a holgram.

Shades of the BUDDHA.

 

[Photonic]

Was Einstein wrong?

Yes.

And there are times when he recognized that, and admitted it, too.

And, just to add to the mix of weirdness, some of the the things he decided early in his career that he though he'd been wrong about and recanted, seem to be turning out to the be right, too.

I, of course, am not ina position to posit what is right or wrong in these advances physics questions. But I am a big fan of watching these folks who CAN understand this field, waxing and waning, coming up with new theories, and then shooting those down to arrive at still more new even weirder theories.

AT that level of hard science, there are right answers (I guess) but science is still humble enough to think they probably still don't have them.

Particals moving faster than the speed of light?

Yeah that's impressive.

But how about the instantaeous change of spin in electrons that have also been discovered?

Instantaneous exceeds all speed even light speed!

Instantaneous suggests that EVERYTHING is connected to EVERYTHING else.

Instantaneous suggests that everything we think we know about matter and energy might be completely and totally WRONG.

Instantaneous means that the entire universe might be a holgram.

Shades of the BUDDHA.

Instant change in angular momentum doesn't break any laws.

 

[konradv]

Would "scientists" fudge data by a millionth of a second to keep those grants rolling in or to get their names in journals? They did it with global warming.

"Scientists" would, i.e. those that are skeptical about AGW despite the fact that we know the heat-trapping properties of GHGs and that they've been going up for about ~200 years. Scientists, however, do exactly what theses guys did, put out a call for their results to be replicated. They, unlike the denier/skeptic side of the AGW debate, realize that politics doesn't play a part in real science and doesn't depend on polls to determine its veracity.

 

[Chris]

Einstein's theory is incomplete.

Maybe this will allow us to learn more.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

So according to Einstein nutrinos time travel?
And must have infinite energy.

The formulas show they have negative mass if they go faster than light.

Imaginary rest mass. Its square would be negative.

Given the tininess of the effect and the unlikelihood of the result, I'll reserve judgment.

I am talking about Einstein's formulas. They say that any object with mass will have a negative mass if the exceed the speed of light. No one has ever shown what the mass of a neutrino is. The standard model assumes they are massless, but that would violate observed phenomena in that they change flavor. The rest is in the realm of speculation.

 

[waltky]

possum got his lil' Star Wars w/ light saber outfit on...

Speed-of-light results under scrutiny at Cern
23 September 2011 : Enormous underground detectors are needed to catch neutrinos, that are so elusive as to be dubbed "ghost particles"

A meeting at Cern, the world's largest physics lab, has addressed results that suggest subatomic particles have gone faster than the speed of light. The team presented its work so other scientists can determine if the approach contains any mistakes. If it does not, one of the pillars of modern science will come tumbling down. Antonio Ereditato added "words of caution" to his Cern presentation because of the "potentially great impact on physics" of the result. The speed of light is widely held to be the Universe's ultimate speed limit, and much of modern physics - as laid out in part by Albert Einstein in his theory of special relativity - depends on the idea that nothing can exceed it. Thousands of experiments have been undertaken to measure it ever more precisely, and no result has ever spotted a particle breaking the limit.

"We tried to find all possible explanations for this," the report's author Antonio Ereditato of the Opera collaboration told BBC News on Thursday evening. "We wanted to find a mistake - trivial mistakes, more complicated mistakes, or nasty effects - and we didn't. "When you don't find anything, then you say 'well, now I'm forced to go out and ask the community to scrutinise this'." Friday's meeting was designed to begin this process, with hopes that other scientists will find inconsistencies in the measurements and, hopefully, repeat the experiment elsewhere. "Despite the large [statistical] significance of this measurement that you have seen and the stability of the analysis, since it has a potentially great impact on physics, this motivates the continuation of our studies in order to find still-unknown systematic effects," Dr Ereditato told the meeting. "We look forward to independent measurement from other experiments."

Neutrinos come in a number of types, and have recently been seen to switch spontaneously from one type to another. The Cern team prepares a beam of just one type, muon neutrinos, and sends them through the Earth to an underground laboratory at Gran Sasso in Italy to see how many show up as a different type, tau neutrinos. In the course of doing the experiments, the researchers noticed that the particles showed up 60 billionths of a second earlier than they would have done if they had travelled at the speed of light. This is a tiny fractional change - just 20 parts in a million - but one that occurs consistently.

The team measured the travel times of neutrino bunches some 16,000 times, and have reached a level of statistical significance that in scientific circles would count as a formal discovery. But the group understands that what are known as "systematic errors" could easily make an erroneous result look like a breaking of the ultimate speed limit. That has motivated them to publish their measurements. "My dream would be that another, independent experiment finds the same thing - then I would be relieved," Dr Ereditato told BBC News. But for now, he explained, "we are not claiming things, we want just to be helped by the community in understanding our crazy result - because it is crazy".

BBC News - Speed-of-light results under scrutiny at Cern

 

[uscitizen]

Quantum experiments are subject to variable interpretations.

Unfortunately, people do not live in a quantum world.

Um, what?

Quantum meaning: The smallest amount of a physical quantity that can exist independently, especially a discrete quantity of electromagnetic radiation. It seems that we do live in a quantum world on and within many levels. Some of us are more aware of it than others.

quantum - definition of quantum by the Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia.

How is this not exactly the world we dwell within?

I have a lawnmower somewhere around here that has a Quantum engine on it.

 

[ol perfessor]

So according to Einstein nutrinos time travel?
And must have infinite energy.

The formulas show they have negative mass if they go faster than light.

What is negative mass?
What about a form of Bell's as the little things travel in pairs, (for protection perhaps).

 

[Middleoftheroad]

So according to Einstein nutrinos time travel?
And must have infinite energy.

The formulas show they have negative mass if they go faster than light.

What is negative mass?
What about a form of Bell's as the little things travel in pairs, (for protection perhaps).

They wont have negative mass, first off Cern posted their information because they are trying to get people to tell them what they did wrong, they don't even believe their own information, mainly because every other experiment that has been done has shown that neuntrinos move slower then light. If Cern's current calculations were correct, then the neutrinos from sn 1987a would have arrived 4 years earlier then the photons (light particle) instead of 2 hours after, especially since photons interact more with matter then neutrinos do, meaning they should have slowed down more.
Second, even if this experiment was to be confirmed, it doesn't mean neutrinos would have negative mass. It would mean that 'c' in Einstien's famous e=mc2, would need to be redefined. What physicists understand is that 'c' is first and foremost meant to be the ultimate speed limit of the universe, and almost coincidentally the speed of light (as it has been assumed that photons had no mass). 'c' would still be the ultimate speed limit, but the number would be changed and it would stop being referred to as the speed of light. It would end up being a race to test the mass of a photon.

 

[freedombecki]

This is the most exciting thing I have ever read.

An international team of scientists has recorded neutrino particles travelling faster than the speed of light, a spokesman for the researchers said on Thursday -- in what could be a challenge to one of the fundamental rules of physics. Antonio Ereditato, who works at the CERN particle physics centre on the Franco-Swiss border, told Reuters that measurements over three years showed the neutrinos moving 60 nanoseconds quicker than light over a distance of 730 km between Geneva and Gran Sasso, Italy.
"We have high confidence in our results. But we need other colleagues to do their tests and confirm them," he said.

Particles recorded moving faster than light - CERN | Reuters

I read that last week (at SCIAM?) and wondered if someone had an equipment anomaly. How would one know? The particles are super tiny, and they were gauging a truly long distances in only a short distance of 730 kms. So I just wondered if they had equipment issues, how could they be certain? Maybe there's something to their findings but I just don't know for sure. At least they seemed to have been getting a consistent answer if they think they have something new.

 

[bobcollum]

I think this will end up being some type of anomaly, but you never know. It's also worth noting that physical laws that we know exist today weren't applicable immediately following the big bang.

 

[Photonic]

Here's a fairly encompassing publication on the experiment, I've been going over it a few times.

http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1109/1109.4897.pdf

 

[freedombecki]

Here's a fairly encompassing publication on the experiment, I've been going over it a few times.

http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1109/1109.4897.pdf

Has there been a confirming experiment or experiments at other locations to prove the original experiment(s)' results as correct and factual?

 

[Quantum Windbag]

The formulas show they have negative mass if they go faster than light.

What is negative mass?
What about a form of Bell's as the little things travel in pairs, (for protection perhaps).

They wont have negative mass, first off Cern posted their information because they are trying to get people to tell them what they did wrong, they don't even believe their own information, mainly because every other experiment that has been done has shown that neuntrinos move slower then light. If Cern's current calculations were correct, then the neutrinos from sn 1987a would have arrived 4 years earlier then the photons (light particle) instead of 2 hours after, especially since photons interact more with matter then neutrinos do, meaning they should have slowed down more.
Second, even if this experiment was to be confirmed, it doesn't mean neutrinos would have negative mass. It would mean that 'c' in Einstien's famous e=mc2, would need to be redefined. What physicists understand is that 'c' is first and foremost meant to be the ultimate speed limit of the universe, and almost coincidentally the speed of light (as it has been assumed that photons had no mass). 'c' would still be the ultimate speed limit, but the number would be changed and it would stop being referred to as the speed of light. It would end up being a race to test the mass of a photon.

What other experiments? The last time I looked all the experiments showed that muon neutrinos travel at a speed that was, until now, immeasurably slower than the speed of light. This was the first experiment that was accurate enough to actually measure their speed, and it came up with an answer that they want to be sure about. They eliminated everything they could possibly think of to explain what they did wrong, and want to see if someone else can see something they missed.

By the way, the neutrinos that come from that supernova that did not show up 4 years ago are electron neutrinos, not muon neutrinos, which is what CERN used in their experiment. Since we are talking about different particles it is entirely possible they have different masses, and thus different speeds.

C would not have to redefined if this experiment turns out to be true. C is the speed of light in a vacuum, not the ultimate speed limit in the universe. It is considered to be the ultimate speed because Einstein's special theory of relativity works that way, and no evidence has, to date, been found to dispute that theory.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

This is the most exciting thing I have ever read.

An international team of scientists has recorded neutrino particles travelling faster than the speed of light, a spokesman for the researchers said on Thursday -- in what could be a challenge to one of the fundamental rules of physics. Antonio Ereditato, who works at the CERN particle physics centre on the Franco-Swiss border, told Reuters that measurements over three years showed the neutrinos moving 60 nanoseconds quicker than light over a distance of 730 km between Geneva and Gran Sasso, Italy.
"We have high confidence in our results. But we need other colleagues to do their tests and confirm them," he said.

Particles recorded moving faster than light - CERN | Reuters

I read that last week (at SCIAM?) and wondered if someone had an equipment anomaly. How would one know? The particles are super tiny, and they were gauging a truly long distances in only a short distance of 730 kms. So I just wondered if they had equipment issues, how could they be certain? Maybe there's something to their findings but I just don't know for sure. At least they seemed to have been getting a consistent answer if they think they have something new.

The experiment has been going on for 6 years, and they pretty much eliminated equipment issues. The most likely problem is that the theory that tells them when a muon neutrino is formed is off.

One reason they put the results out there is that they cannot figure out what they did wrong, and want to get as many people working on it as possible. I do not know of any scientist who does not think they missed something, and that those neutrinos are actually slower than light, but everyone of them is hoping they are actually faster.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Here's a fairly encompassing publication on the experiment, I've been going over it a few times.

http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1109/1109.4897.pdf

Has there been a confirming experiment or experiments at other locations to prove the original experiment(s)' results as correct and factual?

Not yet, but you can bet they are going to find a way to build another one and do it ASAP.