Scientists discover particles which exceed the speed of light!

[MKR&*42]

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]

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]

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]

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.]

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]

Wouldn't exist or would be undetectable.

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

[Mathew]

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...

[Wig44.]

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...

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]

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]

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.