the Final Word on Superluminal Neutrionos...

[Buckocaster51]

This isn't as splashy as the reports of superluminal (faster than light) neutrinos from a few months ago and will undoubtedly not get the same amount of press coverage.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/co...s-are-so-2011/

It seems that neutrinos behave just like everything else.

[uriah1]

quote: "Those of us in the real world should be ready to accept that the speed of light isn’t just a good idea: it’s the law."

Don't know if I am ready to accept that....

[Nick JD]

I have a feeling as time plods on we'll see more "paradigm shift results" through inaccurate observation than "rewrites" of the laws. Which is sad.

I believed Cold Fusion. Now I'm a research skeptic. When they said neutrinos were going faster than light I thought, "Cold Fusion".

The answer to how entanglement can pass information instantly is much more interesting and no one seems to be trying to answer that one!

[cband7]

"superluminal" still sounds like 'really, really bright'.......


.

[Buckocaster51]

Originally Posted by Nick JD

I have a feeling as time plods on we'll see more "paradigm shift results" through inaccurate observation than "rewrites" of the laws. Which is sad.

I believed Cold Fusion. Now I'm a research skeptic. When they said neutrinos were going faster than light I thought, "Cold Fusion".

The answer to how entanglement can pass information instantly is much more interesting and no one seems to be trying to answer that one!

I have a gut feeling that dark energy and (much of) dark matter will go away as we get better and better at observing.

You won't see me putting any money down on inflationary expansion of the universe either.

Or on universes with more that LxWxHxT dimensions.

I am pretty much a skeptical Luddite. (Interesting that we capitalize Luddite, but not "skeptical." After all, they both are derived from a group of people.)

[soulgeezer]

One word: Phlogiston.

Oh, and the last word in "superluminal neutrinos" is... wait for it... "neutrinos"!

Finally, "Luddite" is derived from a person's name; "skeptic" is not. That's why we capitalize it.

[Nick JD]

Some of those M-Theory guys need to have a shave with Occam's razor.

[Stubee]

"I believed Cold Fusion."

Then things can be tough as that sure sounded nice but was, well, unbelievable from the start.

Nothing wrong with the scientific method, just hard sometimes to reflect upon it.

[Tim Armstrong]

If there's one thing that the history of science shows us, it's that there's never a "final word" as long as humanity keeps pondering stuff....

Tim

[Nick JD]

Originally Posted by Stubee

Then things can be tough as that sure sounded nice but was, well, unbelievable from the start.

U.S. Navy researchers at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (SPAWAR) in San Diego, have been studying cold fusion since 1989.[74][80] In 2002, they released a two-volume report, "Thermal and nuclear aspects of the Pd/D2O system," with a plea for funding.[81] This and other published papers prompted the 2004 DOE review.[74] In 2007, the Naval Research Laboratory published a literature review explaining why most researchers have usually been unable to replicate successful LENR experiments, saying that the loading ratio of gas to metal was the most crucial aspect, which can be affected by metal properties, cell configuration, and the experimental protocols.[82]

[middy]

Information traveling faster than the speed of light introduces insurmountable causality paradoxes. "In short, for any signal sent FTL in one frame of reference, another frame of reference can be found in which that signal actually traveled backwards in time, thus violating causality in that frame." http://www.physicsguy.com/ftl/html/FTL_part4.html

Inter system travel, if we ever get that far, is going to involve the travelers being in a state in which time does not matter to them. Suspended animation, or perhaps artificial bodies or super longevity.

Maybe our memories and personalities, as well as DNA sequences, can be transmitted as data at the speed of light, to be re-bodied in an organic or artificial vessel at the destination (once there is something at the destination to do that). This would seem instantaneous to the traveler.

In any case, the travelers will just have to accept the fact that the journey will take a very long time for the non-relativistic frames of reference at the point of departure and at the destination. Even if everyone had the advantage of super-longevity, there will be no guarantee of language, culture, civilization, or even humanity as we know it still existing after a round trip of hundreds or thousands of years local frame.

[tpaul]

Originally Posted by Tim Armstrong

If there's one thing that the history of science shows us, it's that there's never a "final word" as long as humanity keeps pondering stuff....

Tim

Sure, you say that NOW...

[DeepSouth]

Before special relativity a lot of scientists believed in aether - a colourless invisible substance that permeated the universe. Helped them explain certain anomalies in their theories. These days the scientists have invented dark matter and dark energy. Or should I say Dark Aether...

Ockham's Razor once again suggests [to me] that the theories requiring dark energy and dark matter are flawed somehow.

[KokoTele]

I remember when the report first came out I thought "Really, they don't think 60 nanoseconds is within the realm of measuring error?"

It's a shame, because I really wanted warp drive to become a possibility.

[getbent]

when science is convenient and provides for a belief, I become skeptical dog.

[chrisgblues]

Originally Posted by KokoTele

I remember when the report first came out I thought "Really, they don't think 60 nanoseconds is within the realm of measuring error?"

That was my EXACT same thought. If some new law of physics was going to completely undo Einstein's theory, I would think the difference would be HUGE...as in "instant travel" if that is at all possible. None of this "in-between" nonsense.

JMHO.

[greggorypeccary]

Originally Posted by uriah1

quote: "Those of us in the real world should be ready to accept that the speed of light isn’t just a good idea: it’s the law."

Don't know if I am ready to accept that....

Why not? Once again, a scientific study was not able to falsify it. (not saying that it can't happen, but all the observations suggest otherwise)

Originally Posted by Buckocaster51

I have a gut feeling that dark energy and (much of) dark matter will go away as we get better and better at observing.

You won't see me putting any money down on inflationary expansion of the universe either.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but all observations show that the universe is expanding.

[Buckocaster51]

Originally Posted by greggorypeccary

...
Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but all observations show that the universe is expanding.

You're right...it is expanding...but...some people think there is evidence that at some times and in some places it is expanding faster than it was when I started writing this sentence e.g. "inflating"

"Things are constant, except when they're not."

[Ptrallan01]

E=M*C(squared) then the implication is that C can be squared and there is a possibility of something moving faster than the speed of light. Of course at that point we probably wouldn't experience it.

[tpaul]

Originally Posted by Ptrallan01

E=M*C(squared) then the implication is that C can be squared and there is a possibility of something moving faster than the speed of light. Of course at that point we probably wouldn't experience it.

I must politely disagree. Just because you can use the speed of light squared as a variable in an equation, doesn't mean things can actually go that fast.

I could write a similarly useful equation such as:

Jupiter's diameter = Earth's diameter X 11

which is approximately correct, but that doesn't mean that Earth's diameter could or will ever actually be that big. It's just an expression in an equation.