Attached Link: BBC News feature

I wouldn't want to pay that speeding ticket...

very interesting  to say the  least

"Boys, we're back in business"

Have a look at this blog, especially this entry, before jumping up and down.

Considering that the 1987 supernova was so far away, it is quite possible that the neutrino wave they detected then was simply the -last- wave before the visible light arrived. No one has on site measurements, so no one can say if there was or wasn't multiple neutrino shockwaves. The big wave could have gotten here 20 years before then and the technology wouldn't have noticed it.....and such a hypothetical wave would have -had- to be FTL.

Be interesting to see if this is a measurement error, an unknown effect,  or if Einstein's relativity theory's have loopholes after all.......

Quote - Have a look at this blog, especially this entry, before jumping up and down.

ah c'mon. have a heart and give us a day or two to think there maybe a way off this rock before all hope is dashed again.

Gee and I thought somebody was posting a benchmark of how fast Firefly is in P9-PP2010 :rolleyes:

There are a number of issues to check before anyone priduces a FTL drive system ;)

clock synchronisation for one.

markschum based on some of the scripts I have seen you create, we expect you to post a freebee python script that does this by morning so Mr. Bach's quote from Scotty "Boys were back in business" becomes reality!

The speed of light was never the "Maximum Speed limit" for the universe anyway.

Cheers

In a quantum universe there are no rules or defined behaviors anyway.:blink:

Huh.  Huge, important discovery, or "systematic errors" and something to be filed away with the periodic announcements of successful cold fusion?  Interesting.  Thank you for the link.

I have been working for a while on the 'irrelevancy drive " , you just ignore the world until it goes away , and you are somewhere else. ;)  Its not working cause I stop to have a drink.

" I think "systemic errors" will win. 

I've been working on the Off Topic Drive, myself, but I seem to be having trouble maintaining focus on the project.  :lol:

I'm betting that the limitations of the speed of light will win out, too.  IIRC, they were challenged by other results a year or two ago, but that went away.

And why the speed of light must be the speed limit ? It is an imposed condition by the only reason that if something travel faster than light, Eistein's theory is wrong and, you know, Einstein cannot be wrong.

Is not different from the dark ages when Aristotle never could be wrong.

Einstein's theory is conceptually flawed. His theory is based on the observed behaviour of light with the postulate that light are particles (photons), the Newton's theory of light. But Einstein ignored Huygens theory of light, where light is a wave.

Until today nobody was abale to decide is light is a wave or particles and Einstein's theory ignores the wave nature of light and every temptative of Einstein trying to include electromagnetism in his Theory of Relativity ended in fracass.

If the speed of light ceases to be a limit, does that enable a unified theory?  I don't recall any of the layman's books on relativity I've read ever speculating upon the point.

Unification of theory has nothing to do with if exist speed limit or not. Unification of theories is possible if each theory can be derived from a bigger theory. If the theories deals with elements that are independent and has nothing to do one with each other, unification never will be possible.

The Einstein's Theory of Relativity is very funny. Einstein took Lorentz Electromagnetic theory, a wave theory. Took from Thomson electron's theory the famous E = mc2, waves and electromagnetism again and then put gravity that was not existent in any theory and then ignored all waves, electromagntism, and electrons remaining only gravity and the imposed speed light limit, limit that doesn't exist in any of these theories.

Which shows, kawecki, that your knowledge of physics is quite flawed.

Hi I am not going to even engage in a "physics  debate"
But I am amazed at the arrogance of any human being who makes an Eternal universal Declaration about anything.

For a human being with a Limited Life span to Set a limit on something that has existed Billions of year before him and like billions more after him ( the universe)
is Just plain silly

remember there was a time when
The "Limit " of human strength for the overhead press was 500 pounds
 or human speed was  the four minute mile etc etc.

Cheers

Quote - Which shows, kawecki, that your knowledge of physics is quite flawed.

Do you think ? Academic scientific knowledge is something very strange, probably beyond my capabilities of comprehension.

Faraday's homopolar generator violates Einstein't Theory of Relativity, so such abomination cannot exist. If you apply the famous electromagnetism Maxwell's equations as are taught today, such thing cannot work. But if you take a school book any electrical technician can prove that the homopolar generator do work with only basic arithmetic operations and so, we have soldering machines and even Reagan's star war lasers.

Einstein is a myth, his Theory of Relativity is so advanced that only few initiates can understabd. Well, his second theory, the General Theory of Relativity, yes indeed it is, but it is very rarely mentioned. On the other side, his first theory and the most famous and comented one, the Special Theory of Relativity, contrary to all believe and myths, is very simple. You need not to be a genius, everyone with basic knowledge in mathematics and physics can underatnd it without any problem. It can be taught in schools, but if is done, what will happen to the myth ?

Just for reference, I have nothing against an healthy discussion, but please don't make it personal. If this is getting ugly I will lock the thread.

Meanwhile, conservation of momentum, the law of thermodynamics, relativity, quantum mechanics (just to mention the most known stuff) sit indifferent and keep telling everybody:

You can't do that. You will never be able to do that. And we could not care less if you like it or not.

P.S.: in the end, those years spent getting an M.Sc. in Physics were worth something.

Guys you are way off base. The USS Enterprise (NCC 1701) was capable of crusing at a Warp Speed of 8. Plus on a good day Scotty could squeeze a Warp Speed of 9 from the USS Enterprise if the Captain needed it in an emergency; whch seemed to almost be a weekly requirement. Shoot I remember wtaching the NCC 1701 going from one side if the universve  to the other in less then an hour. That has to be way faster then the speed of light...right?

Einstein's was some back yard hack compared to Gene Roddenberry who helped design the USS Enterprise (NCC 1701) back in 1965 but it wasn't launched until 2245. Roddenberry even assigned The USS Enterprise with the numbers of 1701 after the address of house across te street of where he grew up. Which has to blow a hole in the Theory of why did the chicken cross the road don't you think?

Quote - And why the speed of light must be the speed limit ? It is an imposed condition by the only reason that if something travel faster than light, Eistein's theory is wrong and, you know, Einstein cannot be wrong.

That's a key point, kawecki; the limit is there simply to make the math work.  If this result is verified, we'll need to work on some new mathematics...

Quote - Meanwhile, conservation of momentum, the law of thermodynamics, relativity, quantum mechanics (just to mention the most known stuff) sit indifferent and keep telling everybody:

You can't do that. You will never be able to do that. And we could not care less if you like it or not.

P.S.: in the end, those years spent getting an M.Sc. in Physics were worth something.

I'll see your M Sc (youngest brother) and raise you a PhD (middle brother).

Both of 'em believe it's possible.  The actions described in the experiment aren't going to change the way the world works but could, if proven, open up a new branch of physics, in the same way Einstein's theories replaced Newton's in some cases.

Nobody with any sense is talking about a wholesale rewrite of the laws of physics; there may be cases when the speed of light can be taken to be inviolate but for certain exotic particles, an honourable exception could be made.

plus it should be noted, the guys publishing this are saying "wtf, this can't be right, can someone check our work? we must be wrong!"

But, if I have to get converted to neutrinos to travel faster than light will I still be able to enjoy a pint down at the local?

Ian Porter (MMRS)

Quote - > Quote - Which shows, kawecki, that your knowledge of physics is quite flawed.

Do you think ? Academic scientific knowledge is something very strange, probably beyond my capabilities of comprehension.

Faraday's homopolar generator violates Einstein't Theory of Relativity, so such abomination cannot exist. If you apply the famous electromagnetism Maxwell's equations as are taught today, such thing cannot work. But if you take a school book any electrical technician can prove that the homopolar generator do work with only basic arithmetic operations and so, we have soldering machines and even Reagan's star war lasers.

Einstein is a myth, his Theory of Relativity is so advanced that only few initiates can understabd. Well, his second theory, the General Theory of Relativity, yes indeed it is, but it is very rarely mentioned. On the other side, his first theory and the most famous and comented one, the Special Theory of Relativity, contrary to all believe and myths, is very simple. You need not to be a genius, everyone with basic knowledge in mathematics and physics can underatnd it without any problem. It can be taught in schools, but if is done, what will happen to the myth ?

Are you familiar with the Michelson-Morley experiment and the Lorentz transformations? That's where the speed limit of the Theory of Relativity comes.

Besides, there is something else that you should consider before you start ranting against the so called stablishment. The physics are well aware that the theory of Relativity is not the theory to end all theories. It works well in macro scale, but starts to breaks off as we reach atomic size of smaller, and there is no way that both relativity and quantum theory are both correct. And  the predictions extracted from both theories had been checked several times.

So what will happen if this is a real violation of the theory, and not an instrumental error, or something else? Eventually somebody will develop a new theory to encompass that data, with Einstein Theory of Relativity as an special case, such as Newtonian gravitation and mechanics is now considered an special case of Relativity. The predictions that we we'll get from taht new theory will be checked, and maybe, maybe in the future, we'll get FTL drives, but probably they're not gonna look like anything that we have seen in sci-fi.

Quote - plus it should be noted, the guys publishing this are saying "wtf, this can't be right, can someone check our work? we must be wrong!"

Yup.

After some 15,000 retests of their dimensions, distance, and other data. Personally, I hope it does stand up. Every branch of science needs to get kneecapped on a regular basis, to clean out the institutionalized arrogance. And finding faster than light phenomena detectable by current science (and thereby being a measurable, actual event of the universe) should keep the particle boys agitated for a good long time. And who knows what practical applications may come out of trying to patch over the oooops.....

If they are right does that mean the news posers are out of date and we'll have to upgrade again? Will even more nodes that I'll never get my head around be added to the mat. room to allow for how FLT particles are affecting the way things look? Will it mean yet another render pass?

Poser can't handle retro reflective, fluorescent or metamaterials yet so I wouldn't worry too much.

The good news is that your downloads will finish before you start them, and you will get a free suntan from your cable modem if you sit real close to it. ;-) 

Quote - Are you familiar with the Michelson-Morley experiment and the Lorentz transformations? That's where the speed limit of the Theory of Relativity comes.

Yep, that's what apparently some people don't know: Einstein came up with Special Relativity as a consequence of the speed limit. He didn't come up with that out of nowhere. His initial thought experiments were wondering what would happen when you started approaching the speed of light, and everything else falls from that.

Incidentally, that Einstein was right is proven every time you use anything that has a GPS.

Wow.  And that latest hast how much? 

we understand that, like aristotle and newton, einstein was  fallible, hence  einsteinian physics will eventually become obsolete.  however, this latest news seems more along the lines of the rumours earlier this year of a few thousand data points alleging to show evidence of the higgs boson.  this tendency towards sensational news leaks may occur every time their budget comes up for review.  given the current euro-american debt crisis, one would suggest that Sarko and Merkel divert funds from CERN toward rehabilitating the PIGS and send the rumour mongers to re-education camp ASAP.

Quote - I've been working on the Off Topic Drive, myself, but I seem to be having trouble maintaining focus on the project.

@Cage, what you want is a really hot cup of tea.  

Quote - we understand that, like aristotle and newton, einstein was  fallible, hence  einsteinian physics will eventually become obsolete.

@Miss Nancy, Newtonian physics isn't obsolete (still perfectly good enough to for many situations), but was refined to become Einsteinian physics, just as if this leads to something new, there'll be a further refinement that takes account of whatever is going on with this experiment.

Oh Fishsticks and Custard!

Quote - Are you familiar with the Michelson-Morley experiment and the Lorentz transformations? That's where the speed limit of the Theory of Relativity comes.

Yes, I know. The purpose of the Michelson-Morley experiment was to measure the absolute speed of Earth. The idea was as the Earth is moving, measuring the speed of light in the direction of the movement and the speed of light in the opposite direct with the difference of speeds we can know the absolute speed of Earth. Michelson-Morley planed carefuly the experiment and did it in 1887. The result was a failure, they were unable to see any difference in any direction of the measured speeds of light. The experiment was revisted, repeated many times and always failed.

This was the fundamental stone of Einstein's Theory of Relativity. As the Michelson-Morley experiment failed to give any differences in light speeds, Eistein postulate that the speed of light is always the same in any direction and independent of any movement. From this postulate Einstein created his theory.

This story is very well known, everybody knows and is repeated thousands of times, but there is more story that nobody knows and nobody tells you:

Do you think that Michelson-Morley were comformed with the failure of their experiment and were happy with Einstein's explanation and then dedicated to the garden of their houses ?  Of course not ! They continued their work, revised their failled experiment, created new experiments and in 1926 they had success and were able to measure the absolute speed of Earth. Everybody knows about their failed experiment, but nobody knows about their successful experiment.

Michelson-Morley were not only the ones, other scientists created other experiments and among them was a guy named Georges Sagnac that in 1913 had also success in measuring the absolute speed of Earth.

As the successful experiments shows that the speed of light is not the same in any direction and this contradicts Einstein's basic postulate on which all his theory was built. In consequence the successful experiments were burried, ignored and send to dusty cold files where almost nobody knew that ever existed.

These experiments remained forgoten and nobody knew about their existence until the 70's. Sagnac experiment was resurrected by other reasons nothing to do with Relativity. Replacing the light sources of the Sagnac experiment by lasers it was posible to create a small, very cheap solid state without moving parts device that was able to measure the absolute speed of something with excellent precission. Something very useful for planes and missiles. It contradicst Eintein's theory ?, who cares, it works, is useful and so, everybody use it today.

Quote - Incidentally, that Einstein was right is proven every time you use anything that has a GPS.

Is not in this way. GPS doesn't use Relativity, it gives wrong results and in case where Relativity is used the values must be corrected by the Sagnac effect (speed of light is not always the same)

Quote -
Do you think that Michelson-Morley were comformed with the failure of their experiment and were happy with Einstein's explanation and then dedicated to the garden of their houses ?  Of course not ! They continued their work, revised their failled experiment, created new experiments and in 1926 they had success and were able to measure the absolute speed of Earth. Everybody knows about their failed experiment, but nobody knows about their successful experiment.

Michelson-Morley were not only the ones, other scientists created other experiments and among them was a guy named Georges Sagnac that in 1913 had also success in measuring the absolute speed of Earth.

As the successful experiments shows that the speed of light is not the same in any direction and this contradicts Einstein's basic postulate on which all his theory was built. In consequence the successful experiments were burried, ignored and send to dusty cold files where almost nobody knew that ever existed.

These experiments remained forgoten and nobody knew about their existence until the 70's. Sagnac experiment was resurrected by other reasons nothing to do with Relativity. Replacing the light sources of the Sagnac experiment by lasers it was posible to create a small, very cheap solid state without moving parts device that was able to measure the absolute speed of something with excellent precission. Something very useful for planes and missiles. It contradicst Eintein's theory ?, who cares, it works, is useful and so, everybody use it today.

Really? Are you aware that the Sagnac effect was predicted using special relativity in 1911, by Max von Laue? Absolute speed needs an absolute frame of reference, are you proposing returning to the 19th century theory of ether? By the way, how do you know those measures were the "absolute speed" of Earth? Where did you got that notion?

By the way, the 70's experiment that your refers seem to be the one performed by notorious crackpot Stefan Marinov. Have somebody else, using a similar machine, obtained the same results?

A simple question, is the speed of light the same in any direction measured on the surface of the Earth ? If yes then Sagnac effect does not exist, if no then Relativity doesn't exist.

Anyway the Theory of Relativity has very little importance because has a very small use and in electronics has no use at all. You don't need Realtivity for television, cell phones, computers, comunications, robots, etc, etc, etc

Quote - A simple question, is the speed of light the same in any direction measured on the surface of the Earth ? If yes then Sagnac effect does not exist, if no then Relativity doesn't exist.

Wrong! As I said earlier (and you ignored) a positive result using special relativity was predicted in 1911, two years before Sagnac made his experiment. So the Sagnac effect don't really contradict relativity, even if Sagnac himself thought so.

Quote - Anyway the Theory of Relativity has very little importance because has a very small use and in electronics has no use at all. You don't need Realtivity for television, cell phones, computers, comunications, robots, etc, etc, etc

GPS. And relativity is important in communications using satellites due to the fact that satellites are travelling at a significant fraction of the speed of light.

The design of cathodic tubes for TV must take in account relativistic mass increase due to the electrons travelling at a very considerable speed. The same is true for the design of free-electron lasers.There are probably many others that I don't know just now.

And there is something that you should know about electronics. You have to take in account quantum mechanics to design computer circuits, right? Then, you should know that the Dirac equation, one of the fundamental equations of quantum mechanics, incorporates relativity.

oh not again..

A_C_C nothing you say will make any difference...

Yes, I know. I have deal with his ilk before. Until his last posts I didn't realize that I was dealing with a relativity denier, and not with a misinformed person.

Haven't atomic clocks been used to verify relativistic effects in different rates of the passages of time at different altitudes on Earth, as well?  Could there be some other explanation for this kind of thing, if one type of particle exceeding the speed limit fells relativity altogether?  Or would that be true?  Would one deviant particle type invalidate relativity?  (And whatever happened with the idea that tachyons move backwards in time?  Invalid, still open?  Would that break the current theory?)

I'm still a bit puzzled by all of this, I guess.  The topic mainly seems to have spawned debates about the philosophy of science, where I've seen discussion.  :unsure:  But I'm also a bit of an ignoramus.  :lol:  An interested ignoramus, mind you, but still running up against the limits of his understanding.

Cage, in all likelihood, Relativity will stand up to a point.  After that a new set of laws may apply, in much the same way as Newtonian physics work up to a point, then Relativity takes over.

So relativity is just an approximation based on limited information, much like Newtonian physics?  Hmm.

Quote - Haven't atomic clocks been used to verify relativistic effects in different rates of the passages of time at different altitudes on Earth, as well?  Could there be some other explanation for this kind of thing, if one type of particle exceeding the speed limit fells relativity altogether?  Or would that be true?  Would one deviant particle type invalidate relativity?  (And whatever happened with the idea that tachyons move backwards in time?  Invalid, still open?  Would that break the current theory?)

Atomic clocks have been flown on satellites and aircraft to demonstrate relativistic time dilation. Another experimental proof that people might not have heard of involves cosmic rays. When they hit the atmosphere, they produce the same sort of effect humans create in particle colliders, that is, a shower of particles resulting from the collision. Some of the these particles are extremely short-lived, so short that they shouldn't be detectable from the Earth's surface, but they are...because their velocity,  causes time dilation, slowing their decay rate enough that detectors on the ground can see them before they decay away.

The same thing is seen in particle colliders. The Large Hadron Collider accelerates particles to slightly less than the speed of light in a vacuum, causing a dilation factor of around 7500: that is, a particle which at relatively slow speeds should decay in 1 nanosecond would take about 7500 nanoseconds to decay at that velocity. Again, experimentally confirmed.

As for the neutrinos being discussed, the current betting right now is that there's some kind of experimental error that will be shown to have occurred.

Quote - So relativity is just an approximation based on limited information, much like Newtonian physics?  Hmm.

Pretty much. Physicists know where relativity starts to fail, basically where things got to the point where quantum effects start to get important.

Quote - So relativity is just an approximation based on limited information, much like Newtonian physics?  Hmm.

Yes, but the confirmation that the approximation it is accurate has been confirmed to a fractionally minute level. There's not a whole lot of room left for something new to be discovered

Let's put it another way: suppose relativistic time dilation had not been theorized. When people started placing hyperaccurate clocks on satellites (and fast aircraft), they would have seen that something was wrong because those moving clocks would have slowed down when they were moving (relative to the ground), but functioned perfectly when "stationary". The faster the clock moved, the more pronounced the effect.

So normal ideas, such as that time was an unchanging constant (which is an assumption of Newtonian physics), would have shown problems when we had the capability to move fast enough, at, say kilometers per second and highter. So there was a lot of room (from kilometers per second to about 300,000 kilometers per second) where we could see there was a problem with the idea of a constant, unchanging, flow of time wherever you looked.

With relativity, we've vastly increased the range of sizes and speeds in which things can be tested, either directly or through observation of what nature does in comparison to current theories. We've directly measured time dilation effects on particles that have been accelerated to within fractions of a percentage of light speed, and they line up perfectly with the theory, so there's not much room left for something unanticipated to happen (taking into account quantum effects which take over in certain situations, as mentioned above).