Physics is wrong. Flee to whichever God you wish.

[a500lbgorilla]

Could be the sexiest thing stumbled upon since Scarlett Johansson's pics.

News from The Associated Press

mmm suck on that people who believe that science preserves the truth of the mathematical relationships of observed phenomenon, cuz they just observed some phenomenon that lol at every mathematical relationship derived since 1905.

[a500lbgorilla]

How stupid do you look now, scientists?

[wufwugy]

does this mean god exists?

[baudib]

I call BS.

[wufwugy]

It does need to be verified, but it's been going on at CERN for months I think

[a500lbgorilla]

I call BS.

You think your intuition means anything to Science?!

[a500lbgorilla]

does this mean god exists?

What else could explain the luminous ether?

[baudib]

I'll take Einstein over the plot from Angels & Demons imo.

[a500lbgorilla]

I'll take Einstein over the plot from Angels & Demons imo.

So you're saying that Einstein was 100% right? No possible way he was wrong? PS, it was really Maxwell that developed the equations with the funny term that said the speed of light was constant in all frames. And really that was off of Faraday's data. So you're saying they're 100% right too?

[wufwugy]

Thinking in terms of Einstein right or wrong is missing the point. Everything requires refinement. Everything

[a500lbgorilla]

I was just making the point that there's no reason to 'take' anyone. Einstein can't be right for the same reasons Newton couldn't be right. You just wait to see if these observations are verified and if they are, then the race is on. Obviously every observation that has been made which verifies special/general relativity still holds. Those relationships still hold, it's just that one of the fundamental pillars from which the theories to explain those observations was derived may not to be true in every instance. Could just be an error in measurement though.

[Nekrogovner]

This is brilliant. I can do all kinds of wonderful stuff with this new information. Right now, I'm laughing at a bitch light bulb because it loses speed battle to my new neutrino bulb I will invent. I'm also writing letter to George Lucas to rewrite and reedit the Starwars series because Neutrinosabres fuck up shit much better then puny slow lightsabres.

[a500lbgorilla]

This is brilliant. I can do all kinds of wonderful stuff with this new information. Right now, I'm laughing at a bitch light bulb because it loses speed battle to my new neutrino bulb I will invent. I'm also writing letter to George Lucas to rewrite and reedit the Starwars series because Neutrinosabres fuck up shit much better then puny slow lightsabres.

This thread is for hard science only. Take it somewhere else!

[a500lbgorilla]

Now that I've read the Reuters AND BBC articles on the subject, I'm confident in declaring a new phsyics which holds only two laws. The ultimate speed of the universe is the rate at which panties drop when bigred enters the room. And that said panties will always find the sexiest method of dropping.

[wufwugy]

why does bigred always take his panties off when he enters a room?

[Galapogos]

why does bigred always take his panties off when he enters a room?

Ahhhh crap! I came here a half hour too late to make the exact same damn joke. Saw 'rilla's panties post, chuckled to myself at the brilliant retort I had to it, then FUUUUUUUUUU'd when I scrolled down to your post.

[OngBonga]

This made my head explode, though it has been suggested since 1985 that neutrinos might appear to travel faster than light. Something about a shortcut through another dimension, or some headbending shit.

Quote of the century...

"If we do not have causality, we are buggered."

[wufwugy]

I never studied physics so somebody answer my question please

How much science would have to be reworked if this was true? Or is this a case of people generally dogmatically believe things that haven't been disproven so when they say "nothing can be faster than light", really they're saying "nothing is faster than light so far, but if something is it's not really a problem"?

[OngBonga]

Wuf, it sort of depends if the neutrinos are actually travelling faster than light, or if it just appears so. If it's the former, I guess everything needs reworking! If it's the latter, it could help us to finally unify gravity with the other forces. Fuck knows how that works, I didn't study physics either.

[oskar]

http://i.imgur.com/QjJyM.jpg

unintentional prophecy... or was it o_O

[wufwugy]

Well onto that subject, I predict the unified field theory will never happen. I predict that the writing is already on the wall, that quantum physics demonstrating to us that it's probably inherently irrational, that when theory is broken down into its most fundamental, it will be broken, and thus not a theory. I do not think we're ever going to fully explain the big bang and probably not unify all the forces because I think reality is the ultimate troll and it simply does not and cannot make sense on a level that deep

On that note, I saw something or other a month or so ago about a possible fifth force being possibly discovered. Along the lines of how they haven't been able to find the Higgs

[Nekrogovner]

I never studied physics so somebody answer my question please

How much science would have to be reworked if this was true? Or is this a case of people generally dogmatically believe things that haven't been disproven so when they say "nothing can be faster than light", really they're saying "nothing is faster than light so far, but if something is it's not really a problem"?

E = m * square (c)

You just replace c with whatever new maximum speed is. Reworked.

Not science geek either, but I suppose this will only add a new dimension to science, probably lead to some new headbanging discoveries. But it will take years till we get there. Dozens of years.

[a500lbgorilla]

I never studied physics so somebody answer my question please

How much science would have to be reworked if this was true? Or is this a case of people generally dogmatically believe things that haven't been disproven so when they say "nothing can be faster than light", really they're saying "nothing is faster than light so far, but if something is it's not really a problem"?

Not much. Lorentz-violating neutrino oscillations - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The unconventional energy dependence in the theory leads to other novel effects, including corrections to the dispersion relations that would make neutrinos move at velocities other than the speed of light. By this mechanism neutrinos could become faster-than-light particles.

Like I said before, you're never going to throw away all those mathematical relationships that have been verified by Einstein, just like we didn't toss out Newton when Einstein came around. Shit works, it's just that the "logic" and imagery behind it might not be true to nature. Though it never really is.

A scientific theory is just a framework you translate nature into, use to calculate through space and time, then translate back into nature. When you find a model that works, then it works.

[a500lbgorilla]

Back to the hyperbole.

Physics was pronounced dead today. You can read the obituary here.

http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1109/1109.4897.pdf

[Luco]

Yngwie Malmsteen - Faster Than the Speed of Light - YouTube

enjoy

[Timmyw]

That would be a very cool discovery. I don't understand a few things, though. The author list is huge, so that presents some issues in so far as knowing how they would go about publishing something like this. But I don't like that this is being put up on the arXiv before it goes in a credible, peer-reviewed publication. To me, it is a huge red flag. Nature, Science, etc. would go right after something like this, but not after it goes up on arXiv. arXiv-only stuff usually means it isn't real, because *anybody* can put shit up there. In other words, the authors *want* to make a big claim, so submit their shit to Nature or some other peer-reviewed journal. It goes to the referees, who then say "this should not be published in Nature at all because you are lying about your uncertainties, and it shouldn't be published anywhere else until you are more honest about that. They should be 5 +/ 7 [insert relevant units], which means it is not statistically significant and therefore not particularly interesting..."

Anyways, when you *really* think you have something, you often keep it a secret for as long as possible for embargo-related reasons. But maybe they are like Nature and Science are stupid and we just want to get this out there. But if they do want to get it out there in the best way possible, Nature and Science are usually it.....unless you can score some huge press release, which I guess they sort of did. But still ,it doesn't make sense to me. It is like everyone says in the article *if real* this is absurdly huge. Mentioning Hawking in there was a good move, even if it was to quote him saying "it isn't exciting yet". That is, by the way, also suspicious.

I am wondering if there is a way for the detector or even something underground to be emitting those kinds of neutrinos in reasonable numbers. That would do it - they travel through everything so it is conceivable there is an underground radioactive source emitting them or some shit....maybe. It would have to look like it is coming from the appropriate direction I think. I am not familiar enough with the stats to really say anything here. How often are neutrinos even detected? - i.e. if 100 pass through the detector, how many will it detect?

Basically, they *think* the neutrino traveled faster than it did, meanwhile they detected a completely different neutrino than the one they thought.

[baudib]

CERN used up its one time on this.

[OngBonga]

Well onto that subject, I predict the unified field theory will never happen.

Disagree here. We'll figure it out soon, I reckon. Gravity is not that headbending, I can get my head around it to a certain degree, and I'm just a stoner wannabe poker player who never studied physics. When actual real scientists start smashing particles together in big fuck off tunnels under the Alps at 0.99c, I think we're getting somewhere. I'll be as bold to say we'll have a unified theory within 18 months. Of course, my opinion is worth squat.

[wufwugy]

Disagree here. We'll figure it out soon, I reckon. Gravity is not that headbending, I can get my head around it to a certain degree, and I'm just a stoner wannabe poker player who never studied physics. When actual real scientists start smashing particles together in big fuck off tunnels under the Alps at 0.99c, I think we're getting somewhere. I'll be as bold to say we'll have a unified theory within 18 months. Of course, my opinion is worth squat.

lol ya your opinion is worth squat. They been smashing particles for a long time and have been looking for that unified theory since Einstein. The LHC finally has allowed them to look for the all important Higgs boson to help explain gravity, yet they're coming up with nothing. Even if they found the Higgs, there's still a shitload of work to do

There's a reason that attempts at a unified theory are mostly untestable maths. There is little reason to believe it's even possible to explain the big bang and any unity of the forces

[OngBonga]

You surprise me wuf. The LHC isn't coming up with nothing, did you not read the article that started this thread? And they *might* have found evidence of the Higgs, though they're being ultra-cautious about that too.

The big bang can be explained. It's just physics. Just like radiation can be explained, and magnetism, or the strong nuclear force. There was once a day when these terms would've fried the brains of even our greatest scientists, but humans persevered and kept poking around. The LHC is much more powerful than any particle accelerator we've ever created before. Maybe the LHC won't answer our questions, maybe it will be our next great endeavour, but if we keep asking the questions, eventually we'll get the answers. Everything we have achieved to this day is proof.

Fwiw, everyone's opinion here is squat, unless we have a physicist amongst us.

[Shotglass]

I never studied physics so somebody answer my question please

How much science would have to be reworked if this was true?

Not much, really. From 'rilla's first link:

But even if the results are confirmed, Einstein's theories will need more of a patch than anything else

Theories are just that, theories. They are tested, re-tested, re-shaped and re-re-tested but rarely do serious theories every get completely scrapped.

As far as the unified theory, wuf...are you refering to the TOE? If that's the case then I doubt that we'll see it in our lifetimes.

[wufwugy]

You surprise me wuf. The LHC isn't coming up with nothing, did you not read the article that started this thread? And they *might* have found evidence of the Higgs, though they're being ultra-cautious about that too.

Show me please

The big bang can be explained. It's just physics. Just like radiation can be explained, and magnetism, or the strong nuclear force. There was once a day when these terms would've fried the brains of even our greatest scientists, but humans persevered and kept poking around. The LHC is much more powerful than any particle accelerator we've ever created before. Maybe the LHC won't answer our questions, maybe it will be our next great endeavour, but if we keep asking the questions, eventually we'll get the answers. Everything we have achieved to this day is proof.

The fundamental difference is that the TOE is about the existence fundamentals. It would be about explaining the big and the small in the same theory, and thus explaining the singularity and big bang. But we have reason to believe that's not explainable, as all laws probably are broken in the singularity, and there has never once been an ounce of unifying anything big and small. Quantum mechanics quite literally makes no sense and is largely unknowable. TOE is trying to combine it all into one theory, which we don't really even know is possible, and we certainly haven't made much, if any, headway

[wufwugy]

Not much, really. From 'rilla's first link:

Theories are just that, theories. They are tested, re-tested, re-shaped and re-re-tested but rarely do serious theories every get completely scrapped.

As far as the unified theory, wuf...are you refering to the TOE? If that's the case then I doubt that we'll see it in our lifetimes.

Yeah I guess it's called Theory of Everything. I usually think Theory of Evolution when I see that

[OngBonga]

Can't find the article I read wuf, so can't say when it was published. I took a link at the bottom of an article while drunk and it could've been and old "related article" type link. Can't find anything on internet news in the last week, so consider that bullshit.

As for the singularity, we currently have no idea what goes on inside. But something happens, there must be laws that govern what goes on inside a singularity. Can we ever understand them? I appear to be more optimistic than you, though I don't really appear to be as clued up. I think if humans can find a way to see into all of the other dimensions, then we will be able to explain it all. I'm optimistic because I think one way to peer into other dimensions is to smash particles together and look at the mess.

We'll get there. We got this far.

[boost]

I like your can-do attitude.

[d0zer]

I never studied physics

Well onto that subject, I predict ...

lol ya your opinion is worth squat.

[wufwugy]

It's called quote mining. What I said isn't actually wrong

[a500lbgorilla]

It's called quote mining. What I said isn't actually wrong

k, I'll find something.

Quantum mechanics quite literally makes no sense and is largely unknowable.

Right here. I know you're treading on that dead-alive cat and the Feynman quote that anyone who says they get it don't get it but that cat is only dead-alive because it builds off of the fact that we don't have any way of measuring what's going on without obfuscated other bits of information.

But this shit right here Quantum electrodynamics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia is known, understood, and insanely accurate.

[wufwugy]

Well, you're right, and I probably didn't word it correctly. I would be an idiot if I didn't think much within quantum mechanics is known, but I was referring to the much more fundamental stuff, as that's what TOE ultimately has to deal with

[a500lbgorilla]

Also, I would always take money against a TOE popping up under any time-frame. Only because the process to verify such a theory would take an infinite amount of time and effort. Even if we consider a TOE to be a model which accounts for all observed data and therefore seems to be robustly predictive, I would still take the against. Cuz I've got gamble.

[kiwiMark]

Flee back to your atheism and deductive reasoning.

Remember those faster-than-light neutrinos? Great, now forget 'em -- Engadget

[Hoopy]

If anyone's interested in reading the paper that seems to have accounted for the 60ns discrepancy.

Faster-than-Light Neutrino Puzzle Claimed Solved by Special Relativity - Technology Review

[a500lbgorilla]

Initially, I thought it was good that they released the results because even if they're invalidated, there's still a lot of media fanfare and talk about the state and value of particle science around the world. But then I read an article by L Krauss who said it's really going to suck when they have to say they made an error and people are left to see science as prone to being wrong.

[Hawk]

At least they are willing to admit they are wrong instead of spending centuries arguing against clear evidence against them.

[d0zer]

But then I read an article by L Krauss who said it's really going to suck when they have to say they made an error and people are left to see science as prone to being wrong.

Can't be as bad as the uproar of the idiots that occurred after Pluto was declared to be not a planet.

[bikes]

apathetic agnosticism holds again

[baudib]

rilla should have used his one time on this.

[a500lbgorilla]

I think I've spent it wisely.

[mrhappy333]

error 404 page {god} does not exist

[Luco]

BBC News - Neutrino experiment repeat at Cern finds same result

[WillburForce]

I don't get all the fuss. Some things are quicker than others.

I can run faster than a tortoise. A Cheetah can go faster than me. Its all relative.

[kingnat]

The difference is if all 3 of you turn on a flashlight at the same time, the light from each one travels at the exact same speed.

[caddie444]

^^^

This is even true if the cheeta is running as fast as he can and you are standing still. Light travels the same speed relative to EVERYONE... weird

[wufwugy]

I run faster than my victims

[WillburForce]

I run faster than my victims

Haven't caught up with me yet you lube waving monster.

[oskar]

^^^

This is even true if the cheeta is running as fast as he can and you are standing still. Light travels the same speed relative to EVERYONE... weird

Burn the witch! imo

[givememyleg]

Not sure if I just don't understand it well enough, but I don't understand why it would be so shocking for something to travel faster than the speed of light. Probably better to say "Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light... yet." I guess detecting a particle like that shows that we're getting better at observation, which is neat but there are probably an infinite amount of things present right now that we can't detect.

[givememyleg]

^^^

This is even true if the cheeta is running as fast as he can and you are standing still. Light travels the same speed relative to EVERYONE... weird

In 1000 years light will be like a tortoise anyway. People with their tripleiPhoneGX7800si5 will be able to text big bangs into existence.

[givememyleg]

Light ain't got nothin' on Apple.

[a500lbgorilla]

Not sure if I just don't understand it well enough, but I don't understand why it would be so shocking for something to travel faster than the speed of light. Probably better to say "Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light... yet." I guess detecting a particle like that shows that we're getting better at observation, which is neat but there are probably an infinite amount of things present right now that we can't detect.

A long time ago, like the 1800s when the west was wild and wars were civil, scientists were interested in a great many things including light, electricity, magnets, and getting laid. They used to think that light traveled through a luminous ether, a field of something that permeated the universe, through which light traveled.

Around this time, my boy Michael Faraday had been playing around with the electricity and magnets for a while and had noticed some pretty cool things about their nature.

He hooks up with the #3 physicist of all time, James C Maxwell who used all this data and dropped a bomb known as "On the Physical Lines of Force" where he debuted the Maxwell's Equations.



With these equations, Maxwell had shown the general and predictive understanding of electromagnetism. This united all the there-to-fore misunderstood observations of light, electricity, and magnetism into one field. He lit up the scientific world. Electricity and magnetism could no longer be thought of as different, but rather intertwined observations of the same underlying phenomenon. Light became a self-propagating wave of electromagnetic fields.

Scientists minds were being blown that Maxwell had developed such amazing equations. Anytime people set out the verify that they were correct through experiment, they turned out to be correct. They proved themselves to be incredibly robust at generalizing and predicting nature.

One of the fun little tid-bits from the Maxwell's equations is this:

An equation which defines the speed of light in terms of the electric and magnetic constants, strangely as one speed.

Then the number #2 physicist of all time, says, "You know what's strange? This awesome equation is without a reference frame. No matter how you design the problem, the term is invariant. Light travels at only one speed... I wonder what that means..."

A reference frame is like saying that you're moving at 0 mph when you're siting still according to an Earth Centered reference frame, but you're flying at who knows how fast in a Sun Centered reference frame. Light travels at the speed of light according to every reference frame.

He says, what if we have a clock which is just two mirrors with a beam of light bouncing between them. 1 bounce back and forth is one unit of time. We're watching this clock and it clicks off units of time at a regular rate. Now let's say that we're inside a train, watching the beam of light go up and down, up and down. No big deal. But what if someone was outside of our moving train, looking at the same clock. Well, now the light isn't traveling up and down, but also forward. It cuts out a larger path through space according to the outsider. He sees your clock as going slower, as the light is traveling a larger distance to bounce back and forth.



Bam, special and general relativity, a new understanding of space-time and gravity. Einstein says, and experiment confirms, that you can't go faster than the speed of light because the universe itself prevents it. Either time will slow down, space will stretch out, your mass will start blowing up, E=mc^2 (plus some other term no one ever talks about).

Nothing goes faster than light because the universe is built to cheat you out of ever breaking that speed. To travel faster than light, means to travel backward in time as light itself doesn't even travel through time.

[Jack Sawyer]

Props Rilla, you impress me. And that is not an easy feat.

[DropTheBanana]

'Rilla for mod!

[Galapogos]

Props Rilla, you impress me. And that is not an easy feat.

qft, though I don't claim to be hard to impress, I love it when smart people share.

[Galapogos]

wtf? I try to give the man his reps and the site says I must spread more around before I can give him any. I haven't used the reps system in ages since I found out the admins cheat it but now it's cheating me! Nooooooooooooooooooooo

[WillburForce]

A long time ago, like the 1800s when the west was wild and wars were civil, scientists were interested in a great many things including light, electricity, magnets, and getting laid. They used to think that light traveled through a luminous ether, a field of something that permeated the universe, through which light traveled.

Around this time, my boy Michael Faraday had been playing around with the electricity and magnets for a while and had noticed some pretty cool things about their nature.

He hooks up with the #3 physicist of all time, James C Maxwell who used all this data and dropped a bomb known as "On the Physical Lines of Force" where he debuted the Maxwell's Equations.



With these equations, Maxwell had shown the general and predictive understanding of electromagnetism. This united all the there-to-fore misunderstood observations of light, electricity, and magnetism into one field. He lit up the scientific world. Electricity and magnetism could no longer be thought of as different, but rather intertwined observations of the same underlying phenomenon. Light became a self-propagating wave of electromagnetic fields.

Scientists minds were being blown that Maxwell had developed such amazing equations. Anytime people set out the verify that they were correct through experiment, they turned out to be correct. They proved themselves to be incredibly robust at generalizing and predicting nature.

One of the fun little tid-bits from the Maxwell's equations is this:

An equation which defines the speed of light in terms of the electric and magnetic constants, strangely as one speed.

Then the number #2 physicist of all time, says, "You know what's strange? This awesome equation is without a reference frame. No matter how you design the problem, the term is invariant. Light travels at only one speed... I wonder what that means..."

A reference frame is like saying that you're moving at 0 mph when you're siting still according to an Earth Centered reference frame, but you're flying at who knows how fast in a Sun Centered reference frame. Light travels at the speed of light according to every reference frame.

He says, what if we have a clock which is just two mirrors with a beam of light bouncing between them. 1 bounce back and forth is one unit of time. We're watching this clock and it clicks off units of time at a regular rate. Now let's say that we're inside a train, watching the beam of light go up and down, up and down. No big deal. But what if someone was outside of our moving train, looking at the same clock. Well, now the light isn't traveling up and down, but also forward. It cuts out a larger path through space according to the outsider. He sees your clock as going slower, as the light is traveling a larger distance to bounce back and forth.



Bam, special and general relativity, a new understanding of space-time and gravity. Einstein says, and experiment confirms, that you can't go faster than the speed of light because the universe itself prevents it. Either time will slow down, space will stretch out, your mass will start blowing up, E=mc^2 (plus some other term no one ever talks about).

Nothing goes faster than light because the universe is built to cheat you out of ever breaking that speed. To travel faster than light, means to travel backward in time as light itself doesn't even travel through time.

This explains why I can't catch the light on my fridge going out. I keep trying. Leaving just a bit open, then slowly closing it with my face right up to the crack. I can never actually catch it though.

I thought it must be god, but you have just explained it. Science FTW!!!

[a500lbgorilla]

The history of all the really powerful equations, I think, is a pretty cool story, bro.

[givememyleg]

tons of rep for the man

[givememyleg]

Study rejects faster than light particle finding | Reuters

OH NO HE DIN'T

[CoccoBill]

POTY imo. nh sir

[wufwugy]

Explain me this

I thought conventional travel broke down at the quantum level. Stuff like particles don't move from one place to another, but appear at one place then another. I'm guessing if that's an accurate idea it's explained by observation inability and that particles simply aren't made to travel faster than light. But what about teleportation? I thought physics claims that a particle can disappear then reappear at a different point in spacetime and be effective faster than light

[a500lbgorilla]

You'd have to speak with someone more qualified than me to answer those questions. I do know that the major breakthrough for developing QM was when Heisenberg used probability to cover the gaps of the things that couldn't be known. Since you can't measure an electron's location/velocity without obfuscating the other, you have to treat them as wave functions - a distribution of all the possible locations/velocities.

You know the alive/dead cat, from the cat's perspective, it's definitely one or the other, but from our perspective, since we can't know we have to treat it as both. People like to then say, "it's like the cat is both dead and alive" or "it's like the electron is in two places at once" which isn't really true. We just can't know any better than to say that for the purposes of moving forward.

The poker equivalent would be like you're on the river vrs a guy whose range is either the nuts or air and someone saying, "it's like he has the nuts and air!"

[CoccoBill]

Maybe we'll find out:

Romero-Isart experiment « Anguished Repose

[philly and the phanatics]

wuf is your sig lela star?

[wufwugy]

I think it might be Lela pre-boob pre-lip and all. Certainly looks like her

[rong]

Wow, didn't realise that was her. She was actually hotter back then.