quote: A pillar of physics — that nothing can go faster than the speed of light — appears to be smashed by an oddball subatomic particle that has apparently made a giant end run around Albert Einstein's theories. Scientists at the world's largest physics lab said Thursday they have clocked neutrinos traveling faster than light. That's something that according to Einstein's 1905 special theory of relativity — the famous E (equals) mc2 equation — just doesn't happen.
quote: It sounds like science fiction: While volunteers watched movie clips, a scanner watched their brains. And from their brain activity, a computer made rough reconstructions of what they viewed.
posted
fwiw, at this point the speeding neutrinos are a mystery, and they think they've got an error in their system that makes them THINK they're seeing them faster than they really are.
posted
I suspect Ray's right about the error. The difference is so small.
As the article asked, why don't neutrinos that come from distant galaxies seem to get here sooner than the light does?
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posted
That machine that reconstructs movie scenes based on brain activity, however, rather blows my mind.
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quote: As the article asked, why don't neutrinos that come from distant galaxies seem to get here sooner than the light does?
I didn't find that particular question in the article, so I don't know the context. However, I am curious as to the reasoning behind the thought. What is the reason to believe that a particular neutrino from a solar source left at the same time as the light?
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It appears that the article has been edited. The paragraph I was referring to now just says "Why hasn't this been detected before?"
When supernova 1987A from one of the Magellanic clouds was detected, the neutrinos were detected three hours before the light was. This was attributed to the idea that the explosion took three hours to reach the surface of the star. The neutrinos would have arrived years ahead of the light with the discrepancy that the article discusses.
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Yep, Randy. The Supernova 1987A delay between photons and neutrinos is remarkably close to theoretical calculations of the shock breakout time. On that basis, I think the smart money is that the CERN result is some kind of systematic error rather than new fundamental physics.
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I believe that it is quite possible that just as there are particles that cannot exceed the speed of light, there are also particles that cannot move slower than the speed of light.
And me may yet discover particles that can exist on both sides of the speed of light.
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A particle that moves faster than light is a particle that can violate causality. In other words, it can move backwards in time.
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If we assume that anything traveling faster than the speed of light is going back in time, and we compare that with the fact that God is in all things and through all things, simultaneously, that has some serious repercussions regarding causality/temporality from God's viewpoint.
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