Speed of light broken

[Flagg]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/bl...?newsfeed=true

Last Thursday, physicists conducting experiments in Italy were firing neutrinos when they noticed that some of them were arriving at their destination, a fraction of a few micro seconds, earlier than scheduled. Neutrinos, as tiny as they are, have mass.

And the laws of Physics state, that nothing with mass can go faster than the speed of light..

This is truly, MASSIVE NEWS. What alarms me, is that this is virtually getting no air time, on the news or even other forums.

Ugh, a scientific breakthrough which we have seen in our life times, and all people want to talk about is reality TV shows or which shitty politician to vote in next.

That said, the implications of this are massive. I was firmly in belief that the speed of light could not be exceeded. Now that it can, all sorts of questions are being asked, such as...is time travel now possible. Are truly great distances far easier to cross to now.

I still think time travel is impossible, we'd have had some sort of proof by now. However, if its possible to reach something like Jupiter, in a matter of minutes as opposed to months, think of possiblilities. Think of the kind of probes we could send out now, mapping the universe.

[Wraith]

Not sure if this belongs in the debate room, but that is awesome news we may be on the brink of discovering life on other planets with this light speed technology.

[NS922]

I thought it was impossible to break the speed of light?

[back,back,back,low punch]

This definitely needs more attention.


I've always been fascinated by things like this and to be alive during a scientific breakthrough that will someday be in the textbooks is somewhat exciting for me.

[battle_scarz13]

The problem with time travel is scientist have stated that even with a time machine you could only travel forward from the machines creation point and back. Explaining the theory as it being like having a car and no road to drive it on. This of course hasn't been proven and its all theoretical. Either way this is an astronomical discovery and at the rate technology is evolving these days I believe we could live to see time travel happen in our lifetime. The real question is could a human being survive speed of light travel. Joe rogan is always talking about physics and all the super hadron collider experiments. Really interesting stuff.

[El Madre]

I agree this is amazing news, but to the layperson its not eyecatching. This discovery certainly allows the time travel discussion to continue. I feel the first truly usable technology to come from this could be teleportation.

[drapture17]

Great to see someone post this. I'm still skeptical by the news as the time difference between the neutrinos and the light beam was 60 nano seconds. Unless they can replicate this effect 100 more times and have a margin of error significantly lower than that, I will not be convinced. Do note that the body of data has not been peer reviewed just yet, hence it is not accepted in the scientific community as of this moment.
Also note that this is sub-particle level and has very little to do with time travel. This basically affects Einstein's Theory of Relativity, which postulates the speed of light as the universal speed limit.
For those of you that are of college or HS age and like physics, this would be a great inspiration for you to pursue the field and make faster than light travel a more feasible idea.

[Dan Cowan]

My question is could a human survive going to jupitur like you said? or would it be so fast it would kill said astronauts?

[oleg.dobrynin]

I just wanna know what breaking it is gonna be called. Twice the speed of sound is Mach 2 and once you break the sound barrier, there's a sonic boom. When you break the speed of light, you see light trailing behind you, getting farther away from you. We need to get someone high and hear them rant about the implications of this discovery to get a clear representation of the magnitude of this study.

[Havok]

speed of light = 299 792 458 m / s

could nano atoms cover that many meters?

[drapture17]

speed of light = 299 792 458 m / s

could nano atoms cover that many meters?

I think you are a bit confused. That is the speed, no matter how far you move, as long as you move, you would have traveled a distance over the time constant.

[Havok]

I think you are a bit confused. That is the speed, no matter how far you move, as long as you move, you would have traveled a distance over the time constant.

iknow its like an intensive property but if you divide that by how much the neutrinos travel then how much is that?

[liukang234]

I heard about this a few days ago. I'm very interested in what we can do with it, as it's only a tiny speck. How long will it take before we find out how we can make bigger clumps of atoms and particles (Space Ships, for example) can travel faster then the speed of light? Noone knows.

[drapture17]

iknow its like an intensive property but if you divide that by how much the neutrinos travel then how much is that?

You can not derive the distance from being given the speed without the time. It's like me telling you, I drove at 60 miles per hour, now tell me how far I traveled?

On the other hand, these experiments are conducted in a vacuum. The distance at which this experiment could've been ran could be as long as 732km which is the distance from CERN to where these results were recorded.
Also note that when light is traveling at almost 300k km/s that the total time of the experiment could've been as little 0.002second. Taking under account the sensitivity of the equipment and how fast it can record and a 60 nano second difference may well be within the margins of error.

[Flagg]

Drapture, have you majored or minored in Physics or something similiar? You seem very well informed on the subject.

While I love Science, have studied science, I cannot profess to be much more versed in physics anymore than the average laymen. I have been reading that they are conducting several tests to establish that what has reportedly happened, has happened. I hope there wasn't an error. I still think of the things possible if this is true.

I would think, the first thing that could be done with this, would be to send signals or probes into space. I imagine this would also make mapping the Universe easier, and we'd be able to "see" more.

[XxslickninjaxX]

Interesting thread. Thanks for sharing the news. But I must admit. I feel like a total moron after reading all this. But I do understand how groundbreaking this news is.

[VictorMefer]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/bl...?newsfeed=true

Last Thursday, physicists conducting experiments in Italy were firing neutrinos when they noticed that some of them were arriving at their destination, a fraction of a few micro seconds, earlier than scheduled. Neutrinos, as tiny as they are, have mass.

And the laws of Physics state, that nothing with mass can go faster than the speed of light..

This is truly, MASSIVE NEWS. What alarms me, is that this is virtually getting no air time, on the news or even other forums.

Ugh, a scientific breakthrough which we have seen in our life times, and all people want to talk about is reality TV shows or which shitty politician to vote in next.

That said, the implications of this are massive. I was firmly in belief that the speed of light could not be exceeded. Now that it can, all sorts of questions are being asked, such as...is time travel now possible. Are truly great distances far easier to cross to now.

I still think time travel is impossible, we'd have had some sort of proof by now. However, if its possible to reach something like Jupiter, in a matter of minutes as opposed to months, think of possiblilities. Think of the kind of probes we could send out now, mapping the universe.

Wow, if this is true, than it's HUGE. Yeah, it should be getting more attention, these are huge news.

But it could be wrong. I have studied only a bit of relativity, but it makes sense. And if it's not wrong (and it was not proven wrong until today), there's really no way the speed of light could be broken. I do hope it's true, though.

This definitely needs more attention.


I've always been fascinated by things like this and to be alive during a scientific breakthrough that will someday be in the textbooks is somewhat exciting for me.

^^ This. I also love science and physics (although I'm not that good at it :P) and this is definitely exciting.

When you break the speed of light, you see light trailing behind you, getting farther away from you.

Actually you would not see anything, because everything you see is light, and if you are travelling faster than it, all you would see is darkness.

[THE JOHNNY ROOK]

Was this done with that one jigga-ma thingy? That Large Hadron Collider that was going to create black holes on earth (by earth I mean in Sweden).

[~ Outworld's Goddess ~]

can someone explain what happened without using big words? :P

[Flagg]

Outworld, last week neutrinos were being fired from one location to the other at the speed of light. This would mean they would always arrive from A to B at a certain time. Only this time they arrived sooner. The only way that could have happened is if they were going faster than the speed of light.