SCIENCE
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A pair of German physicists claim to have broken the speed of light - an achievement that would undermine our entire understanding of space and time.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3303699/We-have-broken-speed-of-light.html
It’s not ‘confirmed’ yet by the greater scientific community, but it’s surely a big thing.
What do you think this means, and what are your opinions on it’s validity?
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Awesome!! It proof that hyperspace existe!! But Space Distortion is way better, no time problems! But if you can go more than 300’000’000 m/s? It could be possible to have no time differences?? Between the object who have light speed and normal objects??
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Freestalker.fr wrote:
Awesome!! It proof that hyperspace existe!! But Space Distortion is way better, no time problems! But if you can go more than 300’000’000 m/s? It could be possible to have no time differences?? Between the object who have light speed and normal objects??The scientist I’ve seen/read say, that if the conclusion turns out to be true (I mean: if it’s not a fault in setup or measurement), it would mean that the neutrinos involved, travelled backwards in time. Whatever that means. o, time dilation is still expected to remain an integral part of physics.
Btw Bad Astronomer Phil Plait warns us to be cautious to get overexcited:
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Jeez… But if you return to the “past” with that? Doesn’t it reverse the slow down effect?? I think yes, but I can’t explain it clearly.
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I’ll take all of this with a pinch of salt about a ton heavy. Two if you’re really excited.
The probability of going faster than the speed of light being possible are close to nil. There are far more chances of a measurement issue than of a fundamental change in the laws of physics.
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this is strange. we are saying, that the speed of light is the highes reachable speed for any sort of energy and only energy in form of light is actually able to reach this speed. we tried making light move faster (like from a moving train etc, you got the idea), it didn’t work, or at least we couldn’t measure if it did. i don’t see the proof of that motion with FTL speed is impossible, and don’t come around with someone said that because of [the point].
someone also said the earth is obviously (!) flat since you can’t see beyond the horizon. this explanation is even logical, still that doesn’t make the fact true.second, there is that paradoxon: on the one hand, we consider velocity as a relative value. velocities can add and subtract each other when combined. a car on the road does move with its speed and additionally with the speed of earth which again moves with its own speed and the speed of the sun, which again moves with the speed of our galaxy and its own, and still it is not cleared, whether our actual whole universe is moving in empty space or not. on the other hand, modern science is claiming, that the speed of light is absoulte, not reachable, not exceedable and not changable with kinetic forces, yet different in different densities of the medium light is crossing, just as the direction is.
however, i agree with FF here, it is more likely a measurement issue, but not because of our primitive ways to actually understand how god’s infinite intelligence designed our complex universe, but just because we have to doubt those german scientists found anything, that would be affectible by force that well, that it wouldn’t need investion of energy in an amount they couldn’t even afford.
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FriendlyFire wrote:
I’ll take all of this with a pinch of salt about a ton heavy. Two if you’re really excited.The probability of going faster than the speed of light being possible are close to nil. There are far more chances of a measurement issue than of a fundamental change in the laws of physics.
Me too. And, more important, so do the scientists. There was a supernova some years ago, and both the photons (the light) and neutrinos reached the earth at the predicted time. So, if neutrinos were faster, that couldn’t have happened.
Btw the scientists did repeat their measurement many times (around 1500 times, I heard) eacht time with the same result. Now, the next thing they gotta cancel out is a setup error, so that’s why other research teams at other locations will be working on it.
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Interesting:
Actually, neutrinos do arrive before photons from a supernova. The reason for this is that neutrinos are created in core collapse, which then escape through the rest of the star because of their incredibly low interaction with matter. It takes some time (hours or days) for the photons to get out of the stellar envelope because they interact with matter.
There’s actually a program called the Supernova Early-Warning System (or SNEWS) that is trying to detect a supernova using neutrinos, then send out alerts so that photon-based telescopes can watch for the supernova.
But still:
http://io9.com/5843112/faster-than-light-neutrinos-not-so-fast
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w0dk4 wrote:
Interesting:Actually, neutrinos do arrive before photons from a supernova. The reason for this is that neutrinos are created in core collapse, which then escape through the rest of the star because of their incredibly low interaction with matter. It takes some time (hours or days) for the photons to get out of the stellar envelope because they interact with matter.
There’s actually a program called the Supernova Early-Warning System (or SNEWS) that is trying to detect a supernova using neutrinos, then send out alerts so that photon-based telescopes can watch for the supernova.
True, but in this case the lag of photons can be explained because they have to struggle their way thru matter, were the neutrinos can just freefly (see the link to Phil Plait’s article). So, this is another phenomenon than what is going on in the recent discovery, with which is incompatible (meaning: the lag between photons and neutrinos in the supernova can be ‘simply’ explained by the known laws of physics).
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Plus, the delay seen here would mean neutrinos would arrive years before the photons on many supernovae. This is evidently not the case.
@Gisteron: If you take the actual laws, you’ll see that adding velocities is in fact incorrect. You need to add velocities through a Lorentz transformation, which behaves almost exactly as if you were adding velocities for small values compared to c, but not at all for large values.
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Another question:
Will light faster than light?
Supposition:
We have a train on a straight track, and two high power flash lamps, One mounted and powered on the head of train, Other one fixed at start line of track and directing the end of track.Then, set the train running and lamps started flashing. and we stand in the end line of the track.
Now, will the light on the train faster than the fixed one to enter our eye? Or keep same speed?
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Light goes at c in a vacuum. The only thing that affects light’s speed is the medium in which it propagates.
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NeXoSE wrote:
Another question:Will light faster than light?
Supposition:
We have a train on a straight track, and two high power flash lamps, One mounted and powered on the head of train, Other one fixed at start line of track and directing the end of track.Then, set the train running and lamps started flashing. and we stand in the end line of the track.
Now, will the light on the train faster than the fixed one to enter our eye? Or keep same speed?
No, the light of both sources will be measured as c, as FF points out (c being shorthand for ‘the speed of light’ which is a constant). But the light from the source that is moving towards you will be blueshifted: it will carry more energy.
When a lightsource moves away from you, the light (which still, as always, travels at c) is redshifted.
This is the so-called Doppler effect, and it also occurs in the sirene of an ambulance or police car or firetruck, that passes you. When the car is getting nearer to you, the sirene is higher and faster, and when it is moving away from you, the sound wave is stretched, making the sirene sound slower and lower.
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This is the so-called Doppler effect, and it also occurs in the sirene of an ambulance or police car or firetruck, that passes you. When the car is getting nearer to you, the sirene is higher and faster, and when it is moving away from you, the sound wave is stretched, making the sirene sound slower and lower.
This so reminded me of this
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Remember that our knowledge of physics only describes 8 percent of the stuff in the galaxy. The other 92% does not obey our current “laws” of physics (dark matter, dark energy).
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The theoretical speed limit is “the speed of light in a vacuum”. It seems unsurprising that neutrinos might travel faster than the speed of light in _the atmosphere.
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Time dilation, and the theory that FTL matter moves backwards in time, assume that time is linear and ever-increasing. What if time is not always like that? We currently have no way to know.
We have very little experimental data about matter moving near the speed of light. It will not surprise me at all if we someday discover that our understanding of space-time and the speed-of-light “limit” are primitive.
Even our understanding of “matter” could change._
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You’re sounding like you don’t know much on the subject, Bullwinkle.
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The hypothesis of dark matter and dark energy is not the sole possibility. There are many ways to explain the phenomena we see, some of which involve new matter types while others involve adapting current laws in specific cases. While we do not know everything, saying it this way is disingenuous because, as far as it matters, “normal matter” is what we care about most.
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The measurement says it’s faster compared to c, not to any slower speed.
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You’ll have to explain what you mean because you’re just combining a lot of science-y sounding words in a sentence here.
We have in fact excellent data about neutrinos in the form of supernovae emissions, which confirmed our previous thought about the speed of neutrinos and light. Again, our understanding is not complete, but I’d be extremely surprised to see a fundamental change to the laws of physics we have defined some time in the future. Refining? Yes. Redefining? No.
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_Bullwinkle wrote:_1) Remember that our knowledge of physics only describes 8 percent of the stuff in the galaxy. The other 92% does not obey our current “laws” of physics (dark matter, dark energy).
Hey BW, nice to see you
OT: dark matter is a fairly well described phenomenon. Dark energy is somewhat more vague. They both obey the current laws of physics. In a way you could say that they are ‘plot devices’ to make the observances and the established laws of physics fit eachother. I’m not super-convinced Dark Energy is really an objectively existing kinda stuff, or rather e.g. ‘just’ a byproduct of gravity which still needs to get tweaked into relativity’s description of gravity…
Bullwinkle wrote:
- The theoretical speed limit is “the speed of light in a vacuum”. It seems unsurprising that neutrinos might travel faster than the speed of light in _the atmosphere.
If the results of that recent test could be explained that simple, I guess someone at CERN would have figured it out by now
Btw the speed of light is a constant, even in a non-vacuum - but in a non-vacuum (say, a glass wall or a body of water), the photons bump onto matter, so they take longer to get thru. But if you look at the speed of the photon in between these bumps, it’s still going at c.
Iirc, it was in fact an experiment involving measuring light in the atmosphere which gave a strong and unexpected clue that the speed of light was a constant (Iirc, the idea was to measure the speed of light of the sunlight at sunrise as compared to the light of the sun at noon - the latter being expected to be faster. But it’s quite some time ago that I read about it, and I might be oversimplifying or incorrect at points)
Bullwinkle wrote:
- Time dilation, and the theory that FTL matter moves backwards in time, assume that time is linear and ever-increasing. What if time is not always like that? We currently have no way to know.
We have very little experimental data about matter moving near the speed of light. It will not surprise me at all if we someday discover that our understanding of space-time and the speed-of-light “limit” are primitive.
Even our understanding of “matter” could change.
I overall agree with you on these statements. But I wanna add that the theoretic framework behind the scientific assumptions you mention, is not just some hypothesis on paper. It is a well-tested theory*, and applied in practice. The GPS systems of our cars work with it (because the satellites are less deep in Earth’s gravity well, they ‘experience’ a slightly faster rate of time, as compared to us surface-dwellers. This time dilation has to be compensated for, in order for your GPS to be acurate - and this is achieved thru Relativity’s formulas.)
*(Please note that the word ‘theory’ in scientific terminology, as opposed to every-day common use of the word, is not a synonym for hypothesis. A scientific theory has to meet a bunch of requirements to be valid; one of the requirements is that it has to be formulated in such a way that it can be proven false - if evidence against it arises - and it is true as long as it isn’t proven false.)_
- The theoretical speed limit is “the speed of light in a vacuum”. It seems unsurprising that neutrinos might travel faster than the speed of light in _the atmosphere.