Did CERN just break physics?

Angilion said:
Are there any reliable estimates of when anywhere else will be ready to replicate the initiial experiments? I read that a few places were in the process of upgrading and setting up for it, but no details as to when they were planning on being ready.
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I believe it said in the documentry I watched last night that Japan are going to be replicating these test but its going to take 3 years.

Watch the documentry I watched last night on BBC iplayer, it explains everything and answers all your questions...the first half is a lot of background and explanation but the 2nd half talks most about this experiment: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b016bys2/Faster_Than_the_Speed_of_Light/
 
sorry for the dumb question, but how on earth is this possible:

bbc news article said:
"More than a century ago, Michelson and Morley measured the speed of light in the direction Earth was moving and in the opposite direction. They found the speed was equal in both directions."
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that can only mean light was not going at its maximum speed in at least one direction, because the earth moves through space, so in one of the experiments the light source and light sink were moving in the same direction of the light, meaning it had slightly further to go than the actual distance between the source and the sink

i've no idea if this would account for the faster than light neutrinos found at cern, but its something thats been continually bugging me about this experiment
 
Not quite - it is to do with time dilation/doppler effect

Wikipedia on time dilation
wikipedia on doppler effect

Imagine going down the road at 30mph with a car overtaking you doing 70mph and a car coming towards you at 70mph (speeed [of light] limit). In the cars, the car coming from behind is closing at 40mph, with the car coming from infront closing at 100mph. So far so good?

Well, light doesn't play ball. The closing speed will still be the speed of light all the time, but the wavelengths of the 2 light beams (infront of your motion and behind your motion) will be shifted. the light from behind you will be shifted towards red in the spectrum, and the light from infront of you will be bluer
 
FluffySheep said:
Imagine going down the road at 30mph with a car overtaking you doing 70mph and a car coming towards you at 70mph (speeed [of light] limit). In the cars, the car coming from behind is closing at 40mph, with the car coming from infront closing at 100mph. So far so good?

Well, light doesn't play ball. The closing speed will still be the speed of light all the time, but the wavelengths of the 2 light beams (infront of your motion and behind your motion) will be shifted. the light from behind you will be shifted towards red in the spectrum, and the light from infront of you will be bluer
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i know about red (and blue) shift and how all that works, however you are 100% wrong in your second paragraph if i am understanding what you mean correctly. what you are saying is that if light beam A is travelling in one direction in space (at the speed of light, naturally) and light beam B is travelling towards light beam A at the speed of light then the closing speed (the rate at which the gap between beam A and B is getting smaller) is the speed of light. that is physically impossible because then the light beams would really be going half the speed of light.

anyway, i think the original problem is me not explaining things properly. a diagram of what i'm on about should help:

Code: 
C = cerns position
D = detectors position
[  ] = earth
- = neutrinos position

neutrinos are created, going instantly at light speed:

         [C-                                    D]
time passes, earth moves through space in opposite direction to neutrinos 
(i have no idea how much)
       [C            -                        D]
     [C                          -          D]
   [C                                    -D]
neutrino's have now arrived

physical distance between cern and detector:
         [C                                     D]
distance neutrinos have traveled:
         [C                               D]

neutrinos went at light speed but because the physical distance they travelled 
is smaller than the actual distance between cern and the detector they 
appeared to go faster when doing the time/distance calculations
hopefully you see what im getting at now. the way to check if this is the case is to do the experiment in a lab where the emitter and detector are at opposite ends relative to the ones at cern, but i dont know if something like that exists (and it would be ****ing expensive)
 
Reaper 392 said:
what you are saying is that if light beam A is travelling in one direction in space (at the speed of light, naturally) and light beam B is travelling towards light beam A at the speed of light then the closing speed (the rate at which the gap between beam A and B is getting smaller) is the speed of light. that is physically impossible because then the light beams would really be going half the speed of light.
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Wikipedia (again) explains that 2 objects traveling at each other can do so faster than the speed of light (paragraph on closing speed, 20% of the way down the page. This is allowed as neither is breaking the speed of light.

Reaper 392 said:
:hopefully you see what im getting at now. the way to check if this is the case is to do the experiment in a lab where the emitter and detector are at opposite ends relative to the ones at cern, but i dont know if something like that exists (and it would be ****ing expensive)
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hmm, I see what you mean, however using CERN article on the experiment to get the distance travelled (730km) and the speed of light, the trip for the nutrinos will be about 2.5ms (+ or - a whisker) and in that time the Earth will rotate very little but will move around the sun 75m. That is in the region of 0.01% maximum difference in distance, but when they are breaking the speed of light by a similarly tiny amount, I hope this has been considered

FluffySheep
 
FluffySheep said:
Wikipedia (again) explains that 2 objects traveling at each other can do so faster than the speed of light (paragraph on closing speed, 20% of the way down the page. This is allowed as neither is breaking the speed of light.
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i must have misunderstood what you were saying then


FluffySheep said:
hmm, I see what you mean, however using CERN article on the experiment to get the distance travelled (730km) and the speed of light, the trip for the nutrinos will be about 2.5ms (+ or - a whisker) and in that time the Earth will rotate very little but will move around the sun 75m. That is in the region of 0.01% maximum difference in distance, but when they are breaking the speed of light by a similarly tiny amount, I hope this has been considered

FluffySheep
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hmm, so there could be something in what i'm saying. theres also the fact that the solar system isnt stationary to take into account, and the same is probably true for the entire galaxy (and how we would measure that i really dont know)
 
I hope this has been considered
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It's pretty much self explanatory no? The smartest minds in the World are looking at this and also working on it and the experiments are being prepped to be run at other locations (of which there are very few that are capable to begin with!).
 
mrk said:
It's pretty much self explanatory no? The smartest minds in the World are looking at this and also working on it and the experiments are being prepped to be run at other locations (of which there are very few that are capable to begin with!).
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3 years isn't it, until anyone else can run the experiment.

U till then send the papers out to be peer reviewed and resign the experiment to overcome any concerns.
 
3 years is absolutely nothing when you consider the implications should the results be verified around the World :p
 
Quite happy that so far this hasn't been disproved. I'd like to think that even with our most 'concrete' theories, they can still be broken and improved on.
 
Celestial Nostos said:
Quite happy that so far this hasn't been disproved. I'd like to think that even with our most 'concrete' theories, they can still be broken and improved on.
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Seems odd to say you're happy. It's not really something to be happy or sad about. It's just a change in understanding. Even if proved wrong it will add to our understanding on why the experiment gave wrong results or why it was analysed wrong.
 
That's the whole nature of scientific theories, when new evidence comes to light and it's confirmed by multiple peers, the theory can be updated to reflect the new findings :)
 
Glaucus said:
Seems odd to say you're happy. It's not really something to be happy or sad about. It's just a change in understanding. Even if proved wrong it will add to our understanding on why the experiment gave wrong results or why it was analysed wrong.
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And that in itself makes me happy. I like the new discoveries we make, if they improve our understanding, it makes me happy.

Is that so wrong? :D
 
Yes this is all very interesting but we need ships to travel faster than the speed of light. Not these neutrino thingies.

Baring in mind I have never studied physics, have a very rudimentary understanding of maths and probably not that bright.

Can someone explain to me why the speed of "light" is so important or does that just happened to be the metre stick against which we measure things?

In absolute darkness, in a perfect vacuum why cant something go faster than the speed of light?
 
Not saying its wrong, just saying it seems odd.

It's meant to be a constant that a hole shed load of physics is based on. If something can go faster than speed of light, the leap rays going to have to those out most physics books and well have to reanalyse so many areas of physics.
Relativity, says things can't go faster than speed of light. Things gain mass the faster they go and time does odd things.
 
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