CERN: Speed of Light possibly broken
By
all_hell,
Posted on: 2011-09-22 13:07 in Comic and Hero-Villain Culture
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Wasn't necessarily referring to war/economics, thanks. |
Originally Posted by Dark One
And we will always have those problems. Holding ourselves back to "solve" things that haven't been solved in 10,000 years is folly. Not to mention the fact that scientists working on developing FTL drives are probably not conversant with molecular biology, economics, or city planning and development.
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How about ships with a strong structure to handle the speeds, how about something like Star Trek's navigational deflector shield that sweeps space debris away from the ship as it travels to avoid collisions (force = mass times acceleration, etc), life support for the crew, methods to keep the crew from having "cabin fever" on excessively long trips even at FTL speeds.
Remember the old Rock Hudson movie the Martian Chronicles? If my memories are correct, the martians killed the initial explorers, but the bacteria/germs they brought with them on their bodies that is harmless to us was lethal to the Martians and they all died off. So what happens when we set foot on one of the Earth type planets we've been finding of late? Will the mere presence of us being on that planet kill off some or all of it's life due to simple bacteria/germs from us that are harmless to us? or will something from that planet prove to be anthema to us? Only way to find out is to get there, of course
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Except that is typically, along with poverty/homelessness/hunger/etc., what is referred to when people speak of "problems" that we need to solve.|
Originally Posted by Nericus
Wasn't necessarily referring to war/economics, thanks.
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| How about ships with a strong structure to handle the speeds, how about something like Star Trek's navigational deflector shield that sweeps space debris away from the ship as it travels to avoid collisions (force = mass times acceleration, etc), life support for the crew, methods to keep the crew from having "cabin fever" on excessively long trips even at FTL speeds. |
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Remember the old Rock Hudson movie the Martian Chronicles? If my memories are correct, the martians killed the initial explorers, but the bacteria/germs they brought with them on their bodies that is harmless to us was lethal to the Martians and they all died off. So what happens when we set foot on one of the Earth type planets we've been finding of late? Will the mere presence of us being on that planet kill off some or all of it's life due to simple bacteria/germs from us that are harmless to us? or will something from that planet prove to be anthema to us? Only way to find out is to get there, of course
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I can't wait to hear what Stephen Hawkings thinks about all this, considering he doesn't believe you can break the lightspeed barrier, though you can go really close....
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umm they had already done this before with other particles...
And the speed of light barrier isn't really so much a barrier as just a practicality issue.
If you had enough energy to boost a particle to light speed it just takes ever more energy to keep it at light speed because the mass of the particle increases and as mass increases you need more energy thus a bigger fuel tank... hypothetically all you needs is a disconnected fuel source and a way to keep ahead of the curve to move faster than light.
That is if that limit is just because of the practicality issue. I've never heard it brought up as to why the light speed barrier does what it does... I have a hypothesis about that though. Imagine space time a lattice of points in time space... each point can only hold so much energy...or rather that energy stretches the lattice causing the space-time points to be spread further apart thus time move slowly in those area where all that energy is... If there is a maximum to how much that lattice can stretch then the result would be the inverse of Energy and that would be Mass... Basically Mass is the result of energy rebounding off the lattice of time space... Now there may be a limit to how fast it can rebound thus it begs the question of if you apply energy faster than the lattice can handle what happens? Seems the lattice would break to some degree or perhaps there is no limit and applying more energy just results in higher speeds/mass... if the lattice breaks I would think something like a black hole happens.
Well between this and the fact that it's looking less and less likely that the Higgs Boson exists it looks as if our understanding of both the very small and very large is off.
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When I read the thread title I actually thought this was more the CERN guys turining up with their lab goggles in hand, looking all sheepish saying sorry for breaking stuff.
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Originally Posted by VoodooGirl
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It's not quite that simple. As you said, as speed increases so does the mass of the object, however, as you approach c the mass of the object tends towards infinity (well technically it's the Lorentz factor but it's simpler to think of it this way) thus requiring an infinite amount of energy in order to accelerate it further.|
Originally Posted by Durakken
umm they had already done this before with other particles...
And the speed of light barrier isn't really so much a barrier as just a practicality issue. If you had enough energy to boost a particle to light speed it just takes ever more energy to keep it at light speed because the mass of the particle increases and as mass increases you need more energy thus a bigger fuel tank... hypothetically all you needs is a disconnected fuel source and a way to keep ahead of the curve to move faster than light. That is if that limit is just because of the practicality issue. I've never heard it brought up as to why the light speed barrier does what it does... I have a hypothesis about that though. Imagine space time a lattice of points in time space... each point can only hold so much energy...or rather that energy stretches the lattice causing the space-time points to be spread further apart thus time move slowly in those area where all that energy is... If there is a maximum to how much that lattice can stretch then the result would be the inverse of Energy and that would be Mass... Basically Mass is the result of energy rebounding off the lattice of time space... Now there may be a limit to how fast it can rebound thus it begs the question of if you apply energy faster than the lattice can handle what happens? Seems the lattice would break to some degree or perhaps there is no limit and applying more energy just results in higher speeds/mass... if the lattice breaks I would think something like a black hole happens. |
The speed of light very much is a hard limit as far as our current interpretation of physics is concerned and if it emerges that it *isn't* a hard limit then we would have to fundamentally rethink vast sections of our scientific understanding.
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The speed of light isn't just a good idea, it's the law.
Joking aside, the one other thing I know of that moves faster than light is the universe itself as it expands. From my limited understanding the size of the universe would be considerably smaller if it only expanded at lightspeed.
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http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...50#post3879850|
Originally Posted by SuperOz
I can't wait to hear what Stephen Hawkings thinks about all this, considering he doesn't believe you can break the lightspeed barrier, though you can go really close....
S. |
Also, Stephen Hawking is not the only one who doesn't believe you can break the lightspeed barrier.
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Originally Posted by McNum
If there's one rule that's true, it's that NOTHING moves faster than light.
Source: Associated Press via Forbes Except for a neutrino traveling from Geneva to Italy 60 nanoseconds faster than light. In an experiment with a 10 nanosecond margin of error. CERN calls for aid in reproducing the experiment after spending several months confirming that, yes, they did measure what they think they did. If this turns out to be verified, then wow. This is that one barrier that shouldn't be breachable, yet... I hope that this checks out. No clue what practical use it might have, but for now, it's the Lightspeed Barrier that's being challenged and that's awesome enough on its own. |
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As you go faster, you increase mass. The more mass you have, the more power is required to make you go faster.|
Originally Posted by Durakken
And the speed of light barrier isn't really so much a barrier as just a practicality issue.
If you had enough energy to boost a particle to light speed it just takes ever more energy to keep it at light speed because the mass of the particle increases and as mass increases you need more energy thus a bigger fuel tank... hypothetically all you needs is a disconnected fuel source and a way to keep ahead of the curve to move faster than light. That is if that limit is just because of the practicality issue. |
Eventually you reach a point where you need infinite energy to go any faster because your mass is so great.
Light doesn't have any mass, so naturally it can travel faster than anything else since it's not gaining mass by travelling faster.
Neutrinos, which is what CERN used have mass, so in theory it should have taken infinite energy to accelerate one past the speed of light.
So, either physics is wrong (which is very very interesting) or CERN is wrong (which is both disappointing and boring).
Aussie physicist John P. Costella has already put out his review claiming it's an incorrect calculation of the statistical error. It will be interesting to see the CERN teams rebuttal.
ETA:
Costella has since retracted his critique and has shown that the OPERA result is indeed statistically significant.
Fascinating stuff.
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This. According to the latest Big Bang theories there was an "inflationary" period of the Universe where space expanded from around the size of an atom to about the size of a softball in a period of time that would have required it to be going many times the speed of light at that point. I have no idea if the guys at CERN screwed up their measurements or not in this case, but I suspect as time goes on we will eventually stumble across other "discrepancies" that will call into question what we know about the certainty of the speed of light.|
Originally Posted by Magus_Prime
The speed of light isn't just a good idea, it's the law.
Joking aside, the one other thing I know of that moves faster than light is the universe itself as it expands. From my limited understanding the size of the universe would be considerably smaller if it only expanded at lightspeed. |
Heck we can't even figure out Quantum Gravity yet. This silly notion that we think we actually understand how everything in the Universe works at this point is pretty funny all things considered.
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Unless this new particle is named the Vaarsuvius particle, I will be dissapointed.
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The speed of light is only consistent when we say so ^.^ We can't stop light... wonder how they explain that with the whole speed of light and infinite and such.
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Originally Posted by Lothic
This. According to the latest Big Bang theories there was an "inflationary" period of the Universe where space expanded from around the size of an atom to about the size of a softball in a period of time that would have required it to be going many times the speed of light at that point. I have no idea if the guys at CERN screwed up their measurements or not in this case, but I suspect as time goes on we will eventually stumble across other "discrepancies" that will call into question what we know about the certainty of the speed of light.
Heck we can't even figure out Quantum Gravity yet. This silly notion that we think we actually understand how everything in the Universe works at this point is pretty funny all things considered. |
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Actually that is not entirely accurate... We can both slow down light and stop it. Temporarily. They're still working on that.
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Originally Posted by Durakken
The speed of light is only consistent when we say so ^.^ We can't stop light... wonder how they explain that with the whole speed of light and infinite and such.
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typo... lol I meant we can stop light... if I meant can't the post makes no sense.
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There is no new particle, they've just made and "old" one go faster than it should have (possibly). It's called a Neutrino.|
Originally Posted by ChaosAngelGeno
Unless this new particle is named the Vaarsuvius particle, I will be dissapointed.
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Originally Posted by Durakken
The speed of light is only consistent when we say so ^.^ We can't stop light... wonder how they explain that with the whole speed of light and infinite and such.
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Light as we see it on Earth is actually slightly slower than light in a vacuum.
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It still doesn't make sense to be frank.
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Originally Posted by Durakken
typo... lol I meant we can stop light... if I meant can't the post makes no sense.
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If you're Frank, can I be Wade?
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Originally Posted by Zikar
It still doesn't make sense to be frank.
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Push the button Frank.
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Originally Posted by Zikar
It still doesn't make sense to be frank.
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Winchester: Let me be frank...|
Originally Posted by Zikar
It still doesn't make sense to be frank.
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That, and really, this gives a few cautions. (Have to enjoy BA.) Also a link to the paper, apparently.
But we have many problems to deal with before we reach for the stars like that.