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Is Relativity Correct? Faster-Than-Light Speed Detected: Discussion


Guest_Jim_*

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Extremely interesting, this wold turn science, physics in particular upside down. But that's the way it goes, every new generation of thought builds off of the last and comes up with something revolutionary. Eg. Galileo Copernicus, Newton, Einstein. :biggrin:

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When planes go supersonic, there's that sonic-boom. In the future, when space crafts will go superlight, there's going to be a light-flash. The world around us is still the same, the only constant is that our undestanding of it evolves over time. E=~mc2, big deal...

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This thread reminds me of a question me and friends were talking about.

 

If an airplane traveling at 600mph turns on a light in front of it (the light is mounted on the nose parallel to the ground) would the light be going light speed+600mph? :dunno:

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What's next, something colder than absolute zero? :P

Ah... How to create temperatures below absolute zero. No, not next.

 

Extremely interesting, this wold turn science, physics in particular upside down. But that's the way it goes, every new generation of thought builds off of the last and comes up with something revolutionary. Eg. Galileo Copernicus, Newton, Einstein. :biggrin:

Of course, this has to be verified before science can be turned. Still, one interesting comment was from the Science article. This guy has been working out how particle physics can violate Special Relativity (second to last paragraph):

"If you had told me that there was a claim of faster-than-light electrons, I would be a lot more skeptical," he says. The possibilities for neutrinos are less constrained by previous measurements, he says.

Personally, I think this will be interesting even if they find there was an error somewhere, because of what the error would be. This is CERN and these are very educated and experienced physicists and mathematicians. They would not have published a result like this without a LOT of checking and thinking, so if there is a source of error they didn't think of, that, on its own, may be worthy of great consideration.

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When planes go supersonic, there's that sonic-boom. In the future, when space crafts will go superlight, there's going to be a light-flash. The world around us is still the same, the only constant is that our undestanding of it evolves over time. E=~mc2, big deal...

Cherenkov radiation and it's been confirmed. The thing with this though is everything is still below the speed of light. Not sure if this would apply to this situation, especially as neutrinos essentially travel without a medium.

By the way, E=mc^2 is a very small part of Special Relativity, and this result, most likely, will have no effect on it. It will be the independence of observation results of relativity that may be effected, as this, I'm pretty sure, is what enforces the speed limit.

 

This thread reminds me of a question me and friends were talking about.

 

If an airplane traveling at 600mph turns on a light in front of it (the light is mounted on the nose parallel to the ground) would the light be going light speed+600mph? :dunno:

Nope. Special Relativity explains this, and hopefully I can too. The way spacetime is affected as you obtain faster speeds causes your measurement of c to always be the same, no matter the position of the observer. If you are on the plane, it is c and if you are stationary on the ground, it is c. Length and time both dilate at speeds, to account for this. So how you, on the plane, observe a meter and a second will change to keep the ratio at c.

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Nope. Special Relativity explains this, and hopefully I can too. The way spacetime is affected as you obtain faster speeds causes your measurement of c to always be the same, no matter the position of the observer. If you are on the plane, it is c and if you are stationary on the ground, it is c. Length and time both dilate at speeds, to account for this. So how you, on the plane, observe a meter and a second will change to keep the ratio at c.

But speed is relative.

Say you point too torches at each other. The streams of photons are traveling at 2x light speed relative to each other.

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"If something travels faster than the cosmic speed limit, then it becomes possible to send information into the past - in other words, time travel into the past would become possible. That does not mean we'll be building time-machines anytime soon though - there is quite a gulf between a time-travelling neutrino to a time-travelling human."

 

Read more

 

That's an interesting side effect!

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OP: Wouldn't this be more pertinent to "Special Relativity" rather than "Relativity"?

 

My 2cents is that if proven true this is quite an interesting find. I know this discovery will be huge for time-travel theorists, however keep in mind that if you have to get past the speed of light to travel in time you must also stop at faster than the speed of light. For some reason I don't think stepping in front of a greyhound doing 100mph does this illustration justice. lol

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