Posted on 02/22/2012 2:21:19 PM PST by Lonesome in Massachussets
It appears that the faster-than-light neutrino results, announced last September by the OPERA collaboration in Italy, was due to a mistake after all. A bad connection between a GPS unit and a computer may be to blame.
Physicists had detected neutrinos travelling from the CERN laboratory in Geneva to the Gran Sasso laboratory near L'Aquila that appeared to make the trip in about 60 nanoseconds less than light speed. Many other physicists suspected that the result was due to some kind of error, given that it seems at odds with Einstein's special theory of relativity, which says nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. That theory has been vindicated by many experiments over the decades.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.sciencemag.org ...
Graffiti:
186,000 miles per second, it’s not just a good idea, it’s the law
“I travel at the speed of light / or at a relativistic speed, I come back, I haven’t aged, yet Earth has. This is what I don’t understand.”
I too, have problems with that. Much because the speeds are relative. Me in a space craft is traveling at light speed relative to what? Apparently relative to the earth. So, from my point of view, I can think of myself as fixed in space, and the earth is moving away from me at relativistic speed. So observers both on the earth and on my space craft can think of themselves as stationary while the other is moving relative to their fixed position. When I land on earth, who is to say I am not the old man, and the earthlings are the young ones?
“Please, refrain from making comparisons to Global Warming. This is good science, open minded honest evaluation.”
Perhaps there is no legitimate comparison, however, it does illustrate how science and scientists have become increasingly willing to go off half cocked with some major “discovery” absent appropriate skepticism and diligent adherence to the scientific method which requires repeatability of result.
“HEY! We don’t serve faster-than-light neutrinos here!” said the bartender. A neutrino goes into a bar.
Many a Sci-Fi story is written around the premise that the future is so bad that the time traveler goes back in time to change the history - at any cost, including his own existence. Terminator movies are just one example.
This, however, creates a paradox: if the time cop gets destroyed in the process of changing the past then who changed that past in the first place? One answer to that paradox is the concept of the fractal Multiverse where Universes copy themselves whenever a tiniest event takes place. One obvious question about that theory is that you can't copy a Universe without having an equivalent amount of energy or mass at hand.
There is a solution to this, but you have to be willing to think really hard when this video is playing.
Just like losing plasma flow to the warp coil. Bad day all around.
A faster-than-light neutrino walks into a bar.
I think the release was tempered with the appropriate amount of caution. I really didn’t think it was over hyped.
And it’s good that they followed the facts, instead of trying hide the observations that failed to match their theory. Initially and later.
The way we solve this conundrum is by using Time Cops from different dimensions to police our own home dimension. Therefore, if I accidentally shoot my Super-star martial arts actor counterpart, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal.
What amazed me was the simplicity he used to describe his concepts.
I did not know about David Hilbert. Thanks for that insight.
I spent 14 years in NM. When I lived there most of my friends worked at the labs. (I’m a Ham Op) I knew several “scientists” some of them were “rocket scientists”. I knew some physicists and some others who were techs but did not talk about their work. Other friends worked for the Military bases in the area.
Before I moved from NM in December 1985, I had learned that some of science is not about science but about funding. Had friends connected with the VLA site (deep space radio telescope) in Datil. Heard then a bit about National Science Foundation and the funding impact of the actual research.
It is much worse today. Many frauds in the business.
In a earlier time some of the people I knew accomplished great things with little funding. “Science”
Las Cruces & White Sands was famous for Robert Goddard and later Wernher Von Braun and his team. I lived in Las Cruces, but moved in less than 1 year to Silver City. Traveled (salesman) for a living while there.
Admired the work that Kelly Johnson did at the “skunk works”. He was brilliant about what he created.
A return to honesty and morality in our culture is the only way out of this mess.
Certainly not the Communist path that DC has us on.
It doesn't actually "blow up," it "sucks up."
“Want a good time with a hot Italian? Call 6.022E23.”
A printer walks into a bar and orders a Bodoni Bold.
The bartender says, “we don’t serve your type here.”
An intoxicated neutrino walks into a Mexican bar and says “Una cerveza, por favor!”
The bartender replies, "No mas!”
Has Einstein or anybody else ever explained WHY, of all the known particles, photons happen to be the fastest?
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