It’s Official: Neutrinos Can’t Beat Speed of Light

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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Scientists working at CERN have been replicating the experiment of previous testing that indicated the presence of faster than light acceleration of neutrinos. The official word is finally in after months of testing and Einstein was apparently right: there is a universal cosmic speed limit.

“Although this result isn’t as exciting as some would have liked,” said Bertolucci, “it is what we all expected deep down.”
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That's utter nonsense! They have obviously not seen how people in my family drive on their way to work in the morning after waking up late.
 
SkribbelKat said:
That's utter nonsense! They have obviously not seen how people in my family drive on their way to work in the morning after waking up late.
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They were driving faster then 186,282.397 miles per second? That must be one amazing sports car.
 
Out of curiosity, how would you measure this? If all measurement tools operate at the speed of light (or less), how could you measure anything beyond the capabilities of your measurement tools? There could be things (not particles, of course, due to Einsteins theory) that are traveling beyond the speed of light, but we could not find them due to us and our tools being confined to the speed of light.

I have no idea, and no I really don't know much of what I'm talking about. Could be a simple answer, I just don't know. Hence, the question.
 
THRESHIN said:
no way. warp drive is still possible. just not traveling faster than the speed of light :p
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That and the distance will appear to lessen from the fast flier's viewpoint where they could, if going that fast (ignoring the technical impossibility of it all) such that they can go places nearly instantaneously, but once they got there, it would be days (for tiny distances) to billions of years (for huge distances) later.

Of course, if you're going the speed of light, all distances would appear to collapse to 0, so it would be pretty hard to stop in the correct spot (not to mention not hit anything!). Effectively, it could be considered teleportation of sorts to the traveller, but he would arrive at his location from a stationary frame of reference at a point in time in the future precisely the time it would take light to travel that distance, but to him would seem instant.
 
Ur_Mom said:
Out of curiosity, how would you measure this? ....
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Good question!

My understanding is the following: they know when the neutrinos are produced, and where. They also know where the detector is, to some degree of precision.

When the neutrinos arrive at the detector, they know how far they have traveled and, by taking the difference in their time of production and subsequent detection, they can calculate their average velocity.

As far as I know, the neutrinos arrived 6 nanoseconds too early - this difference was caused by a loose cable on a computer, basically.
 
MASSIVE surprise...

Let me sum this up. Surprisingly (DUH) you can't use Special Relativity to disprove Special Relativity.

Using GPS technology which relies heavily (as does the Universe) on Special Relativity to prove the existence of faster than light neutrino's never made sense to begin with.

Glad we can put this behind us.
 
And for those confused , Warp technology is very possible.

Once we harness lots of negative mass particles and figure out how to surround a shit in a warp bubble we could easily travel faster than light WITHOUT breaking the actual speed of light.

Space is the only thing we know of that can move faster than the speed of light. But nothing INSIDE space can move faster than light.
 
Godmachine said:
MASSIVE surprise...

Let me sum this up. Surprisingly (DUH) you can't use Special Relativity to disprove Special Relativity.

Using GPS technology which relies heavily (as does the Universe) on Special Relativity to prove the existence of faster than light neutrino's never made sense to begin with.

Glad we can put this behind us.
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Lol I'm glad someone though about this as well. When I first read the article in reference to neutrinos traveling faster than light I couldn't make logical sense of it as the machines that calculate such things are calibrated using Special Relativity, it was quite the paradox!
 
Doppleganger144 said:
Lol I'm glad someone though about this as well. When I first read the article in reference to neutrinos traveling faster than light I couldn't make logical sense of it as the machines that calculate such things are calibrated using Special Relativity, it was quite the paradox!
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I didn't think so. All I thought they were doing was basically measuring the time it took to travel a certain distance. So if for instance they went 200,000 miles in 1 second then they were travelling beyond the speed of light. So they couldn't "calibrate" their measurements based on the STR because they were basically using observation.

Let me state that I am am extreme amateur and layman with this stuff and all my astrophysics is from what I've learned watching The Discovery Channel.
 
Godmachine said:
And for those confused , Warp technology is very possible.

Once we harness lots of negative mass particles and figure out how to surround a shit in a warp bubble we could easily travel faster than light WITHOUT breaking the actual speed of light.
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Read this again, and catch the LOL. :D
 
Godmachine said:
And for those confused , Warp technology is very possible.
Once we harness lots of negative mass particles and figure out how to surround a shit in a warp bubble we could easily travel faster than light WITHOUT breaking the actual speed of light.
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Sorry, had to.;)
 
ferzerp said:
That and the distance will appear to lessen from the fast flier's viewpoint where they could, if going that fast (ignoring the technical impossibility of it all) such that they can go places nearly instantaneously, but once they got there, it would be days (for tiny distances) to billions of years (for huge distances) later.

Of course, if you're going the speed of light, all distances would appear to collapse to 0, so it would be pretty hard to stop in the correct spot (not to mention not hit anything!). Effectively, it could be considered teleportation of sorts to the traveller, but he would arrive at his location from a stationary frame of reference at a point in time in the future precisely the time it would take light to travel that distance, but to him would seem instant.
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Relativity is cool, but it just won't cut it for the purpose of warp drive (or mass effect fields, etc.). We can't have true interstellar trade and civilization unless we can make nearly instantaneous round trips and arrive back without any time having passed at our point of origin. I mean, sure, it would be cool to get to the Andromeda galaxy in your own lifetime by relying on conventional relativity (and nigh-impossible amounts of fuel for acceleration), but by the time you got back to report your discovery, your loved ones will have already been harvested by Reapers millions of years ago. Obviously, we'll need something faster. :p
 
No chit, Sherlock. This was DOA. When the article broke, it said they were measuring the speed with instruments incapable of the accuracy they were trying to claim.
 
See the problem is they were doing it all WRONG...


ludicrous-speed.jpg
 
ferzerp said:
That and the distance will appear to lessen from the fast flier's viewpoint where they could, if going that fast (ignoring the technical impossibility of it all) such that they can go places nearly instantaneously, but once they got there, it would be days (for tiny distances) to billions of years (for huge distances) later.

Of course, if you're going the speed of light, all distances would appear to collapse to 0, so it would be pretty hard to stop in the correct spot (not to mention not hit anything!). Effectively, it could be considered teleportation of sorts to the traveller, but he would arrive at his location from a stationary frame of reference at a point in time in the future precisely the time it would take light to travel that distance, but to him would seem instant.
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Light is still very slow considering the vastness of the universe, especially if its really part of a multiverse as suspected.

Regardless of orbit, Saturn is over an hour away at lightspeed, so that should give you time to "press the brake" as it were. :D
 
MacLeod said:
I didn't think so. All I thought they were doing was basically measuring the time it took to travel a certain distance. So if for instance they went 200,000 miles in 1 second then they were travelling beyond the speed of light. So they couldn't "calibrate" their measurements based on the STR because they were basically using observation.

Let me state that I am am extreme amateur and layman with this stuff and all my astrophysics is from what I've learned watching The Discovery Channel.
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There are only specific instances were we know something can travel faster than light. Space can , and quantum particles can BUT only when they are not being observed or "measured". Once the act of observation proceeds than everything we measure adhere's to the speed of light.

I'm still really baffled as to why these Italian scientists didn't immediately and strongly question there results before publishing there findings. Its pretty shoddy to such well educated people announce a result that should have been heavily vetted before publicly stating the supposed result. For instance the LHC has detected a particle that is almost exactly like the Higgs but its atomic weight is larger than what they were searching for. But at least they didn't publish a report going "WE FOUND IT YAY!" without doing years of more testing to confirm it.
 
Godmachine said:
I'm still really baffled as to why these Italian scientists didn't immediately and strongly question there results before publishing there findings.
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Maybe this?

...smashed the universal speed limit by 60 nanoseconds — a result that was constant, even after 15,000 repetitions...
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Things start to seem normal after the first 14,000 or so tries...
 
Godmachine said:
There are only specific instances were we know something can travel faster than light. Space can , and quantum particles can BUT only when they are not being observed or "measured". Once the act of observation proceeds than everything we measure adhere's to the speed of light.
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Sorry for the double post but you cant edit in this forum so......

I thought space and time were the same thing - SpaceTime. How can space move faster than the speed of light.

As for the quantum particles, is that the Uncertainty Principle?
 
MacLeod said:
Sorry for the double post but you cant edit in this forum so......

I thought space and time were the same thing - SpaceTime. How can space move faster than the speed of light.
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1 - Yes Space and Time are "the same thing
2 - The expansion of space is moving faster that light, we observe this with the red shift of many distant galaxies, however theoretically a localized area could also move faster, however that's a lot harder to show as true. Have your space move faster than light (aka star trek) does bring about some interesting causality problems... but then again the way to make that happen is so exotic that either a) it'll happen, or b) all that time interlinked with space is nonsense... I vote for the later ;)

As for the quantum particles, is that the Uncertainty Principle?
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Quantum entanglement of particles and all that rot... you can not communicate faster than light this way. Quantum tunneling effects are said to occur faster than light as well.

The honest truth is that a lot of weird ass looking math proofs are often used to prove while communication can't occur faster than light and I don't like it. Mathematicians have no place in the reality of the universe ;)
 
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