Did CERN just break physics?

skippi90 said:
"We don't allow faster than light neutrinos in here" said the bartender. A neutrino walks into a bar.
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You just made me do one of these:


and then I realised what had happened. I bite my thumb in your general direction! :mad::D

As for the OP, while nobody should jump to conclusions I have to say that three years of checking the results seems pretty thorough to me. Let's hope it leads to bigger things. We might know a bit these days but it's only the tip of the iceberg really. Fun times!
 
Bloomfield said:
He was saying that light might travel faster than the speed of light, I have no idea how you reached the conclusion you did.
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He [ProjectVRD] went on about light travelling at different speeds in different materials in a tone which implied he thought it was relevant, hence reaching the conclusion I did.

He was saying it might travel faster but he was saying it in a very odd way, as if the experimenters themselves hadn't considered the possibility of what he was saying.

Energize said:
No, the neutrinos are passing through the Earth, they aren't in vacuum.
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You make it sound as though they are passing through dirt and rock... I have not read up on the experiment but I would find it very strange if this was the case.
 
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Elixir said:
You make it sound as though they are passing through dirt and rock... I have not read up on the experiment but I would find it very strange if this was the case.
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They are, they don't interact with matter, there isn't a 500mile tunnel between the labs!
 
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Docaroo said:
New Scientist mention it in an article...



That is something totally different... one important point is that the particles are NOT sending information to each other... they can't, because of the above.

Entanglement is obviously not explained, but we can rule out the particles sending information to each other because it occurrs much much faster than light speed
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Quantum Entanglement has been explained. It is very much an expected result of quantum mechanics, albeit a rather counter intuitive one classically.
 
How the hell can they get such accurate measurements? So they send photons 700 miles or whatever it is then detect then at the other end, the equipment it self would add time to detect it, the electronics would add time to communicate data back and forth. It boggles the mind how they can possibly get such accurate measurements.
 
Docaroo said:
Further, if you could have mass travelling faster than light speed then under Special Relativity causality is broken. You would be able to send a signal back in time in that case....
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if you were to travel faster than light how does that allow you to send yourself a signal? I can imagine a situation you are able to see yourself as you were, but that's just the light the physical you is not there any more, in the same way to see the sun as it was 8? Mins ago

Does quantum physics not allow for causality to be broken?
 
edscdk said:
if you were to travel faster than light how does that allow you to send yourself a signal? I can imagine a situation you are able to see yourself as you were, but that's just the light the physical you is not there any more, in the same way to see the sun as it was 8? Mins ago

Does quantum physics not allow for causality to be broken?
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It has very little to do with photons. A better way to imagine it is c is the fastest speed that information can travel at, and because photons are massless they travel at that speed. Any massless particle would also travel with a speed of c, photons are by no means special.

It's very easy to show with a bit of first year maths and SR, but equally I think this website explains quite well the problem of causality without maths:

http://www.theculture.org/rich/sharpblue/archives/000089.html

Quantum mechanics does not allow causality violations, as far as I'm aware. At least in my undergrad course thus far we haven't come across any :p.
 
Pq0f4.jpg


he knew it all along!
 
Mik3 said:
How the hell can they get such accurate measurements? So they send photons 700 miles or whatever it is then detect then at the other end, the equipment it self would add time to detect it, the electronics would add time to communicate data back and forth. It boggles the mind how they can possibly get such accurate measurements.
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Atomic clocks measure down to femtoseconds at least, this is a matter of 60 nanoseconds with a margin of error of 10 nanoseconds. The time difference is immense which makes me think this can't possibly be a measurement error.
 
bitslice said:
Atomic clocks measure down to femtoseconds at least, this is a matter of 60 nanoseconds with a margin of error of 10 nanoseconds. The time difference is immense which makes me think this can't possibly be a measurement error.
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People are not questioning the random errors involved, as shown by the 10 ns variation, the question is over systematic errors. Systematic errors cannot be quantified meaningfully, and if present ruin the result of an experiment.

Say you want to measure the current through a device in an experiment. One could use an analogue ammeter, or improve the precision of the result using a digital ammeter. This would reduce the random error. However, say our ammeter hadn't been correctly calibrated and it was reading 0.1A when nothing was attached (say). This is a source of systematic error which can totally screw over your result without it appearing in the error analysis.

Clearly we're talking about much smaller systematic errors in such experiments, but when we're dealing with such high precision systems one requires a negligible systematic error.
 
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