Scientists discover particles which exceed the speed of light! [Archive]

MKR&*42

22-09-2011, 10:09 PM

Wig44.

23-09-2011, 06:57 AM

Richie

23-09-2011, 09:07 AM

I always believe anything is possible. Something being able to travel faster than light is amazing, I didn't read the article but if such things like this are possible so may time travel.

MKR&*42

23-09-2011, 09:58 AM

I'm very skeptical, months of analysis are needed before something as huge as this is declared canon. The speed of light being unsurpassable is a foundation for modern physics.

inb4 quantum entanglement...

In that article it does state: The team measured the travel times of neutrino bunches some 15,000 times and I swear I read in it somewhere, they've been testing it for 3 years, before releasing the results for people to criticize.

And yes, if it has broken the speed of light, modern day physics could be completely wrong :L

Wig44.

23-09-2011, 10:02 AM

In that article it does state: The team measured the travel times of neutrino bunches some 15,000 times and I swear I read in it somewhere, they've been testing it for 3 years, before releasing the results for people to criticize.

And yes, if it has broken the speed of light, modern day physics could be completely wrong :L

People from outside the team are more likely to find errors than the team who completed the tests. It's the same in every field. Even if these neutrinos have travelled faster than light I doubt this will make the standard model obsolete, neutrinos will be part of a new field of study that will try and unify them with the rest of discovered matter (which so far has been found to not excel light speed).

MKR&*42

23-09-2011, 10:11 AM

People from outside the team are more likely to find errors than the team who completed the tests. It's the same in every field. Even if these neutrinos have travelled faster than light I doubt this will make the standard model obsolete, neutrinos will be part of a new field of study that will try and unify them with the rest of discovered matter (which so far has been found to not excel light speed).

I think that's why the team finally released the results, for other scientists to scrutinize over and eventually reach a conclusion. Also, my friend (who's a bit smart xL) pointed out that because they were subatomic particles - they had literally no mass and wouldn't actually count for bypassing the speed of light, so it could actually be debatable whether it would affect modern day physics if the results are found out to be accurate.

DPS

23-09-2011, 10:31 AM

When you travel the speed of light, the world stops ;]

myke

23-09-2011, 10:40 AM

science confuses me. i just go by the idea that buzz lightyear could fly to infinity and beyond.

jkes but it is really confusing...

N!ck

23-09-2011, 11:06 AM

They haven't just discovered particles which exceed the speed of light. Neutrinos were discovered many years ago.

It's just this experiment that appears to show that they may travel faster then light, and in all likelihood when verified by another lab I believe some sort of error will be evident.

MKR&*42

23-09-2011, 11:20 AM

They haven't just discovered particles which exceed the speed of light. Neutrinos were discovered many years ago.

Ok, maybe I phrased my words wrong, I was meant to say they have managed, possibly, to 'get' a particle to go faster than the speed of light. I am aware Neutrinos were discovered several years ago.

HotelUser

23-09-2011, 11:36 AM

Yeah so..

Today, it was announced that scientists have discovered particles which exceeded the speed of light, by a billionth of a second.

Here's a news articles on it: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15017484

A (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15017484)nd there's also a news article for it on Habbox > Real life news..

I'm still in shock, can't believe science has made so much progress, that they've managed to defy their own "laws of physics" (I think the speed of light is in there?). If these results really are 100% accurate, this could possibly change the future of physics :L

And for religious people - it shows science isn't always right ( I'm not starting a debate on that though -.- )

-- Sorry if there's already a thread posted on this.

I completely disagree. Newton was a huge figure in physics and we still abide by his three primary laws today. However Einstein more or less replaced vast segments of Newton's work with his theory of relativity. Our understanding of science and physics to be specific is forever evolving so it's natural for new information to inspire new concepts and theories which amend, or replace old ones.

MKR&*42

23-09-2011, 12:07 PM

I completely disagree. Newton was a huge figure in physics and we still abide by his three primary laws today. However Einstein more or less replaced vast segments of Newton's work with his theory of relativity. Our understanding of science and physics to be specific is forever evolving so it's natural for new information to inspire new concepts and theories which amend, or replace old ones.

I'm actually starting to disagree with what I said about science not always being right (I know..disagreeing with my own statement) - I've been 'convinced' by many people, that science is advancing, with new technology.

However, I don't agree that the knowledge of physics is forever evolving, for example...atoms. The theory of atoms was first put forward by a philosopher called 'Democritus' in 460 B.C, of course people found his theory ridiculous at the time because people mainly believed in 'the God's' rather than philosophy/science. Anyway, he proposed that everything in the world was made up of little building blocks called atoms which were un-divisible. As we can see , over 1000's of years - this theory still exists today. It shows that all beliefs in science aren't evolving - even the most common beliefs today, go back to B.C times.

I don't think that scientific belief's are evolving, I just think that as new technology becomes available - we have new potential to discover even more - a good example, when people discovered the earth wasn't flat xL.

Wig44.

23-09-2011, 02:08 PM

I think that's why the team finally released the results, for other scientists to scrutinize over and eventually reach a conclusion. Also, my friend (who's a bit smart xL) pointed out that because they were subatomic particles - they had literally no mass and wouldn't actually count for bypassing the speed of light, so it could actually be debatable whether it would affect modern day physics if the results are found out to be accurate.

That's ridiculous, whether something has mass is a non-issue. Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light (according to modern physics) regardless of mass or none. For the record, neutrinos do have mass, but it's absolutely tiny.

Considering they measured down to a billionth of a second and it travelled over 720,000 metres I'm guessing the distance wasn't accurately measured - how could you measure the distance that accurately? For the results to have a valid uncertainty, if they measured seconds to 1sec/10^9 they must measure distance to 1metre/10^9 which seems very impractical. Human error no doubt.

N!ck

23-09-2011, 02:23 PM

That's ridiculous, whether something has mass is a non-issue. Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light (according to modern physics) regardless of mass or none. For the record, neutrinos do have mass, but it's absolutely tiny.

Considering they measured down to a billionth of a second and it travelled over 720,000 metres I'm guessing the distance wasn't accurately measured - how could you measure the distance that accurately? For the results to have a valid uncertainty, if they measured seconds to 1sec/10^9 they must measure distance to 1metre/10^9 which seems very impractical. Human error no doubt.

Neutrinos mathematically must have a mass.

We can get down to those accuracies and better for distance and time no problem in the lab.

Wig44.

23-09-2011, 02:25 PM

Neutrinos mathematically must have a mass.

We can get down to those accuracies and better for distance and time no problem in the lab.

I know they have a mass, I said that in my post.

I know time can be measured to that accuracy but for distance I'm not so sure. What I am sure of is human error in this experiment.

N!ck

23-09-2011, 02:32 PM

I know they have a mass, I said that in my post.

I know time can be measured to that accuracy but for distance I'm not so sure. What I am sure of is human error in this experiment.

We measure distance using time and light since we can measure time so well and the speed of light is Lorentz invariant. One metre is defined as the distance that light travels in 1/299,792,458 th of a second.

Ardemax

23-09-2011, 03:18 PM

I'd just like to say that WOW, scientists have discovered that something can go faster than the speed of light, which apparently nothing could go faster than (if that makes sense).

Hopefully more experiments will be carried out and this can either be validated by a lot more people of rejected through errors in measurement.

Accipiter

23-09-2011, 04:48 PM

People who say science isn't always right need to realise

Scientist themselves know science isn't always right, there are multiple theories explaining certain physics, not all of them can be right.

Einstein or newton will never be forgotten for their work, because they revolutionist the way we understand it.

Darwin plagerised though ;]

And something must always go faster than the speed of light, the centre of a black hole must have a speed faster than it, or the event horizon would, to create a mass that can trap light.

Wig44.

23-09-2011, 04:56 PM

We measure distance using time and light since we can measure time so well and the speed of light is Lorentz invariant. One metre is defined as the distance that light travels in 1/299,792,458 th of a second.

I'm sure there were issues with measuring distance with light in this experiment? I read that somewhere, but I don't know better. It is exciting but at the same time I think an error of measurement of 60 feet is more likely here.

Chippiewill

23-09-2011, 05:43 PM

Since time around you speeds up when you're travelling close to the speed of light I wonder if those neutrinos were actually going back in time? (Assuming it's correct).

Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light (according to modern physics) regardless of mass or none.
If we remember back to Newton's law:

"Force = Mass x Acceleration" which can be rearranged to:

"Force/Mass = Acceleration"

Which means that something with no mass, pushed with even a small amount of force:

"1N/0kg = Somewhere between 0 and sideways eight infinity" ms^-2

Either doesn't move or moves very fast indeed, of course nothing can be divided by zero so anything with zero mass simply doesn't exist. (No, stuff divided by 0 doesn't equal infinity)

Also, my friend (who's a bit smart xL) pointed out that because they were subatomic particles - they had literally no mass and wouldn't actually count for bypassing the speed of light
Tell your friend to stop talking out of his arse, subatomic particles do have mass, just really low mass.

MKR&*42

23-09-2011, 07:06 PM

Tell your friend to stop talking out of his arse, subatomic particles do have mass, just really low mass.

LOL, Will do xL - but he did say 'Virtually no mass' - I put 'literally' for some reason. So he was trying to say they have a very, very, very minuscule mass.

My fault for using wrong grammar :L .

Aladdin

23-09-2011, 07:34 PM

ye!1 before eastenders came on there waas the 90 second news or what ever and it said like Einstein might be wrong about light beings the fastest thing i find this very intresting!!

N!ck

23-09-2011, 09:33 PM

I'm sure there were issues with measuring distance with light in this experiment? I read that somewhere, but I don't know better. It is exciting but at the same time I think an error of measurement of 60 feet is more likely here.

I'm not sure about the exact methods used in this experiment so could not comment. You shouldn't be looking at the raw value of 60 ns faster than the speed of light and thinking that's such a small amount over, so it could be an error. The statistical error on the value is 10 ns which means that to be out by purely statistical means it would be six standard deviations away from the measured value. The probability of this being the case is 0.000000001973. What is far more likely is a systematic error of some sort.

Since time around you speeds up when you're travelling close to the speed of light I wonder if those neutrinos were actually going back in time? (Assuming it's correct).

If we remember back to Newton's law:

"Force = Mass x Acceleration" which can be rearranged to:

"Force/Mass = Acceleration"

Which means that something with no mass, pushed with even a small amount of force:

"1N/0kg = Somewhere between 0 and sideways eight infinity" ms^-2

Either doesn't move or moves very fast indeed, of course nothing can be divided by zero so anything with zero mass simply doesn't exist. (No, stuff divided by 0 doesn't equal infinity)

Tell your friend to stop talking out of his arse, subatomic particles do have mass, just really low mass.

You're using Newtonian mechanics for something extremely relativistic which is just plain wrong as far as the actual result is concerned.

Plus, by special relativity as we know it now a massless particle always travels at exactly c.

Chippiewill

24-09-2011, 06:26 AM

Plus, by special relativity as we know it now a massless particle always travels at exactly c.
Wouldn't exist or would be undetectable.

Wig44.

24-09-2011, 07:09 AM

Since time around you speeds up when you're travelling close to the speed of light I wonder if those neutrinos were actually going back in time? (Assuming it's correct).

If we remember back to Newton's law:

"Force = Mass x Acceleration" which can be rearranged to:

"Force/Mass = Acceleration"

Which means that something with no mass, pushed with even a small amount of force:

"1N/0kg = Somewhere between 0 and sideways eight infinity" ms^-2

Either doesn't move or moves very fast indeed, of course nothing can be divided by zero so anything with zero mass simply doesn't exist. (No, stuff divided by 0 doesn't equal infinity)

Tell your friend to stop talking out of his arse, subatomic particles do have mass, just really low mass.

Time dilation isn't the same as time travel, they won't have travelled back in time.

As N!ck said, this isn't the Newtonian world, this is more QFT.

Also, I appreciate Newton's second law and its equation having studied them and understand that mathematically neutrinos must have mass, but it is still argued that the photon may not have mass (pretty sure they have managed to set an upper bound on the mass of a photon as a really tiny number though).

N!ck

24-09-2011, 10:58 AM

Wouldn't exist or would be undetectable.

Err hello. Photons, gluons and gauge bosons. No mass != no erergy.

Mathew

24-09-2011, 11:11 AM

People who say science isn't always right need to realise

Scientist themselves know science isn't always right, there are multiple theories explaining certain physics, not all of them can be right.
Quite right. You can never "prove" something in Science, only collect evidence which gains support (just a little something I learnt in Psychology the other day..! ;))

It's only 60 billionths of a second... I really wouldn't bother! Plus, I suppose it makes the Star Wars' catchphrase "Light-speed to Endor!" rather second-rate now... :P

Wig44.

24-09-2011, 12:15 PM

Quite right. You can never "prove" something in Science, only collect evidence which gains support (just a little something I learnt in Psychology the other day..! ;))

It's only 60 billionths of a second... I really wouldn't bother! Plus, I suppose it makes the Star Wars' catchphrase "Light-speed to Endor!" rather second-rate now... :P

Most ridiculous post in this thread so far. It may be true to an extent in psychology, but in purer sciences you can prove 'something'.

Mathew

24-09-2011, 12:42 PM

Most ridiculous post in this thread so far. It may be true to an extent in psychology, but in purer sciences you can prove 'something'.
Scientists thought they'd proven that "nothing can travel faster than light" when it turns out they can, hence it was never proven in the first place. It was simply a theory which gained support.

Ardemax

24-09-2011, 01:41 PM

Scientists thought they'd proven that "nothing can travel faster than light" when it turns out they can, hence it was never proven in the first place. It was simply a theory which gained support.

Science has proven that iron is a metal element. As far as I can tell, this is true.

Accipiter

24-09-2011, 01:45 PM

Science has proven that iron is a metal element. As far as I can tell, this is true.

But science theorises that everything in existence is actually nothing, so that iron is nothing

Jordy

24-09-2011, 05:09 PM

I'm actually starting to disagree with what I said about science not always being right (I know..disagreeing with my own statement) - I've been 'convinced' by many people, that science is advancing, with new technology.

However, I don't agree that the knowledge of physics is forever evolving, for example...atoms. The theory of atoms was first put forward by a philosopher called 'Democritus' in 460 B.C, of course people found his theory ridiculous at the time because people mainly believed in 'the God's' rather than philosophy/science. Anyway, he proposed that everything in the world was made up of little building blocks called atoms which were un-divisible. As we can see , over 1000's of years - this theory still exists today. It shows that all beliefs in science aren't evolving - even the most common beliefs today, go back to B.C times.

I don't think that scientific belief's are evolving, I just think that as new technology becomes available - we have new potential to discover even more - a good example, when people discovered the earth wasn't flat xL.Can, you, please, stop, using, so, many, commas, they, are, mostly, unnecessary, and, it, is, very, difficult, to, read, your, posts, as, you, string, your, sentences, together, so, badly.

Ardemax

24-09-2011, 05:10 PM

But science theorises that everything in existence is actually nothing, so that iron is nothing

I have no idea what you just said, but I can see iron, I can buy iron, I can touch iron, I can smell iron. I can iron on iron.

If everything is "actually nothing", then what you just said doesn't exist and as far as I am concerned, I am a unicorn galloping on a rainbow in Slovenia drinking apple juice and watching 1997 repeats of Eastenders.

Wig44.

24-09-2011, 05:54 PM

Accipiter

25-09-2011, 10:58 AM

No, scientists never said that at all.

I have a feeling they must have since yano, it's kinda all over the news?

Chippiewill

25-09-2011, 01:36 PM

But science theorises that everything in existence is actually nothing, so that iron is nothing
"I think therefore I am" Basic premise meaning, I am aware of myself therefore I must exist in some form, whether a computer simulation, an imaginary construct etcetera. So the theory that everything in existence is nothing is false.

Most ridiculous post in this thread so far. It may be true to an extent in psychology, but in purer sciences you can prove 'something'.
You clearly don't realise that there's no such thing as scientific fact, only a most plausible theory.

People used to think the earth was flat
People used to think the sun went around the earth
People used to think we were a creation of god rather than evolution (Some still do)

These are called paradigm shifts and we've been through enough of them to realise that Einstein's theories will eventually be disproved, amended or laughed at.

Time dilation isn't the same as time travel, they won't have travelled back in time.
Considering that the closer you get to the speed of light the more it dilates it is conceivable (Although I must confess I haven't looked it up) that at the speed of light the Neutrinos would (From our perspective) not be changing, past the speed of light I'd imagine (Along the same line of thinking) that they'd experience time in reverse. I could be all wrong, it was more of a whimsical thought than anything else.

Accipiter

25-09-2011, 01:43 PM

"I think therefore I am" Basic premise meaning, I am aware of myself therefore I must exist in some form, whether a computer simulation, an imaginary construct etcetera. So the theory that everything in existence is nothing is false.

You clearly don't realise that there's no such thing as scientific fact, only a most plausible theory.

People used to think the earth was flat
People used to think the sun went around the earth
People used to think we were a creation of god rather than evolution (Some still do)

These are called paradigm shifts and we've been through enough of them to realise that Einstein's theories will eventually be disproved, amended or laughed at.

Considering that the closer you get to the speed of light the more it dilates it is conceivable (Although I must confess I haven't looked it up) that at the speed of light the Neutrinos would (From our perspective) not be changing, past the speed of light I'd imagine (Along the same line of thinking) that they'd experience time in reverse. I could be all wrong, it was more of a whimsical thought than anything else.

Under that theory then everything in existence must think? Or, the ones that don't think don't exist?

I was under the impression that was philosophy not science myself, saying they're aware of their own existence and can control their thoughts.

Chippiewill

25-09-2011, 01:56 PM

Under that theory then everything in existence must think? Or, the ones that don't think don't exist?

I was under the impression that was philosophy not science myself, saying they're aware of their own existence and can control their thoughts.

It's not just thinking, it's awareness of your own thinking. And it doesn't rule out everything that isn't self-aware, in fact it only rules yourself in, everything else could be not real, but probably is, but because you know yourself exists you know that the statement "Nothing exists" is false and the statement "Somethings exist" is true.

Wig44.

26-09-2011, 05:41 AM

"I think therefore I am" Basic premise meaning, I am aware of myself therefore I must exist in some form, whether a computer simulation, an imaginary construct etcetera. So the theory that everything in existence is nothing is false.

You clearly don't realise that there's no such thing as scientific fact, only a most plausible theory.

People used to think the earth was flat
People used to think the sun went around the earth
People used to think we were a creation of god rather than evolution (Some still do)

These are called paradigm shifts and we've been through enough of them to realise that Einstein's theories will eventually be disproved, amended or laughed at.

Considering that the closer you get to the speed of light the more it dilates it is conceivable (Although I must confess I haven't looked it up) that at the speed of light the Neutrinos would (From our perspective) not be changing, past the speed of light I'd imagine (Along the same line of thinking) that they'd experience time in reverse. I could be all wrong, it was more of a whimsical thought than anything else.

There is such a thing as scientific fact. All of your examples are ones where people theorised what was happening and never sought proof. Here's a scientific fact for you, if I drop the cup I am drinking from it will accelerate towards the floor at 9.81ms^-2, less if you account for air resistance. It is another fact that gravity is providing the force per unit mass to cause the cup to accelerate. Another would be that the further away from the surface of the earth I get, the less the initial acceleration value will be when I drop the cup. What is only theory is whether gravity is instantaneous, what exactly gravity is etc.