Faster Than Light?
ElectricAye
Posts: 4,561
It will be interesting to see what comes of this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/science/24speed.html?_r=1&hp
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/science/24speed.html?_r=1&hp
Comments
My guess is that it is an experimental error. However, I've read that due to quantum effects particles can exceed the speed of like over very short distances at very low probabilities. This effect along with virtual particle pairs is used to predict the existence of Hawking radiation leaking out of a black hole.
So given that possibility, who knows?
I think journals and scientists in general should be wary of miraculous claims. Otherwise we get a bunch of cold fusion and tree shaped solar panel stories in our news.
Duane
-Phil
You don't think Pons and Fleischmann's fraud was a bigger sin than being a chemist?
I might be biased about this subject. Steven Jones was one of my physics professors at BYU.
I attended a special lecture about cold fusion several years before all this cold fusion stuff became news. In the lecture he made clear he didn't think cold fusion was a practical source of energy (it required more energy than it produced). Several years later Pons and Fleischmann were accusing Jones of stealing there work since he was one of the reviewers of their article. Jones had a cold fusion article published in the same issue of Nature where P&F's work was published (Jones was asked to wait to publish so the two related articles could come out together).
In my opinion P&F were scammers and crooks.
Duane (a chemist)
-Phil
I disagree (about P&F) but I don't want to spend time debating you (at least not about this). (As I said I'm biased about this subject. (One can still be right even if they're biased right?)) I'd rather spend my time getting one of Rayman's 4.3" touchscreens working with my GPS logger (it's coming along nicely so far).
Duane
Regarding neutrinos and FTL . . .
I wonder if the idea that neutrinos are mass-less particles might be a key factor in this discovery, if it is confirmed? To my way of (mathematically) thinking, that would not violate E = mc**2. HOWEVER, neutrinos must carry SOME energy or they couldn't be detected. (I am so far over my head on this that you don't even have to feel smug about slapping me down!
--Bill
I'm guessing they time the electronic path by making the detection signals travel on a round trip and they take into account the signal delays of the detectors, amps, repeaters, etc. After that, perhaps they are measuring a phase shift phenomenon of some sort - but I'm just guessing.
Pons and Fleischmann's claims were no doubt premature, but I think it's a stretch to say they were crooks trying to scam somebody. The US Navy, for example, has been studying this phenomenon for decades and publishing some interesting results. Google SPAWAR and LENR. They have been "hiding in plain sight" as their director put it a couple years ago. What's going on is still a mystery, but from what I understand, most of the major discoveries in solid state physics have been a result of experimentation - with theory following far behind. Bottom line is we know so little about how the universe is put together, so, though I understand the need for skepticism and reproducible results, I also see the need for keeping an open mind and not pillorying everyone who pushes toward the limits of what's known. Dark Energy, Dark Matter, how proteins find the right way to fold out of 10143 possible combinations before the sun winks out.... I can't feel smug about anything I know.
-Tor
This I found impressive and reassuring. In the reports I read, the researchers were very cautious, and were very clear that they thought there was a very strong chance that someone would find a flaw in their work. They were quoted as saying that they'd published in order to expose their work to critique in order that any errors would be found. I was also impressed that the media reports I saw were responsible enough to emphasize that caution (yes, despite the gaudy attention-attracting headlines).
I'd bet against them as well, but unless I'm terribly confused, Einstein simply said that nothing can be accelerated from below the speed of light to above the speed of light, because the mass increases to infinity as the object approaches the speed of light. That doesn't preclude FTL travel of objects already exceeding the speed of light, and there may be other loopholes as well.
But then, I'm not a physicist, so I could be completely full of it. But did Einstein REALLY show that nothing can travel faster than light? Or simply that you can't get there by just pressing harder on the gas pedal? That's two entirely different things.
Although for some of them it might take a considerably longer 'time' to reach their destination :-)
John: agreed and very well said. It's all about the path taken and sometimes one must jump from one path to another.
The Road Not Taken (poem) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
... with a sigh / Somewhere ages and ages hence: / Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— / I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken_(poem by Robert Frost)
It's like taking Newtonian Physics and complaining that you cannot time travel. Newton's equations are correct, but only for speeds a tenth the speed of light or less. Now Einstein enters the picture with his equation. Einstein's equations are correct and define time travel but only to light speed and not faster. Now enter a new equation (i) where the jump is beyond light speed. Mathematically it exists, we only need a way to verify. (Thank you Stephen Hawking) So Newton is correct, Einstein is correct, and faster than light travel is correct.
travel 'faster than light': Thoughts, feelings, dreams, wishes, poetry rhymes, prayers... john_s
In the written pages of exceptionally good sf, the connection of thought is indeed connected to space and time - we find most things predicted by sf eventually come true.
Humanoido,
I think I disagree with this statement. I think a more accurate statement would be. . . We find things that are predicted by sf and come true stand out in our minds much more than the things predicted by sf and don't come true.
Duane
Duane, that's certainly true - here's what I was trying to say:
Many of the things predicted by sf eventually come true.
I think we're still waiting for the Monolith to be discovered on the Moon. That's why we're going back there, right?
You are correct about acceleration, but causality* is the other reason FTL is problematic. For example barrier tunneling allows particles to move between two points faster than light. But they don't accelerate as they instantly move point to point. To work around the causality problems they aren't supposed to be able to carry information.
I say supposed to because there's some disagreement about that. Gunter Nimtz did an experiment back in 1992 where he transmitted music using the process.
* The causality problems are too complicated to discuss here. Brian Green gives a good overview of the problems in "The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality"
Maybe he transmitted rap instead, in which case no physics would've been violated.
I wondered the same thing. Maybe they synchronized their swatches, then one flew to Italy 450miles away??
I "THINK" they use two ridiculous accurate atomic time clocks separated by 450 miles, so their time count is amplified by their distance apart. The neutrino left at T=0 and arrived at T=0.000000123, 450 miles away. a.k.a. "Synchronized their atomic swatches"
.... I always understood Einstein's theory to read; Nothing can travel AT the speed of light....... which does not mean things cannot travel faster than the speed of light..... which of course leads to the question; How do you pass this speed limit, without passing the speed limit?
So either:
#1 Neutrinos do not travel faster than light
#2 Einstein is wrong
#3 There is a way to jump from below the SOL to faster than SOL without ever traveling AT the SOL.
#4 There's a problem of definition here, e.g. Wormholes and the like.
Or we could blame it on dark matter and dark energy like scientists do for everything else unexplained.
#3
Timing the flight of neutrinos from Cern to the Gran Sasso lab, a distance of 730km, is equivalent to racing a neutrino against a photon. In this case finding that the neutrino gets there first which should be impossible as nothing should travel faster than light.
My proposal is not that the neutrino is traveling faster than light but that the neutrino is taking a shorter path.
How can that be?
Well we know that light does not travel in straight lines. Rather it's path can be bent by gravity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_lens
So we might speculate that the path of photons between these two labs is not exactly straight and that the time taken is somewhat more than if it were.
So the proposal is that perhaps neutrinos are not subject to this bending by gravity effect and do actually take the straight path hence getting there sooner.
I'm available to pick up my Nobel prize at any time.
That's actually a testable theory.. you can calculate the gravitational curvature between the two locations and, combined with the distance, calculate the time difference (which can vary depending on the actual speed, but the assumption would be that the neutrino speed will be below C. Maybe near, but still below.)
And it's not that far to go to Stocholm for you either ..
(Another, totally different and maybe irrelevant idea is one I find interesting: That time is two-dimensional, not one-dimensional. I've got this feeling that maybe that would nicely explain how we can all walk around with our own private time. According to special relativity the time you experience is personal, in the sense that anyone else not moving in step with you will not experience the same time as you do. E.g. the twin paradox: If one twin monitors the clocks aboard the spaceship of his twin brother, currently on his way to elsewhere at speed, he will observe that the spaceship clocks go slower than the earthly clocks. Likewise, if the brother aboard the spaceship monitors the clocks on earth he'll observe the same: Those remote clocks are moving slower than the clocks aboard the spaceship.
NB: If you thought the twin paradox was about one being younger than the older when he got back home again, that isn't the paradox, because it's no paradox.)
-Tor
I'm guessing they have taken this sort of thing into account. I've heard that they have taken into account, for example, the tiny distortions in the earth's crust caused by the positions of the moon and sun (geodesic tidal effects).
Yea, that's kind of a bizarre concept if you think about it. My inexperienced, uneducated, means absolutely nothing opinion will be #3 by definition D=R*T only, and is actually a result of #4
As memory serves: Aren't neutrinos mass-less which would remove the possibility they are subject to the pull of gravity?
EDIT: Neutrinos are not mass-less http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino
but neither are protons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton
Which leads to; Which weighs more? Thus being less affected by gravity?
Proton: 1.672621777(74)