DebateGate
General Category => 3DHS => Topic started by: sirs on October 07, 2011, 03:55:48 PM
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Gone in 60 nanoseconds
By Charles Krauthammer,
Published: October 6, 2011
“We don’t allow faster-than-light neutrinos in here,” says the bartender.
A neutrino walks into a bar.
— Joke circulating on the Internet
The world as we know it is on the brink of disintegration, on the verge of dissolution. No, I’m not talking about the collapse of the euro, of international finance, of the Western economies, of the democratic future, of the unipolar moment, of the American dream, of French banks, of Greece as a going concern, of Europe as an idea, of Pax Americana — the sinews of a postwar world that feels today to be unraveling.
I am talking about something far more important. Which is why it made only the back pages of your newspaper, if it made it at all. Scientists at CERN, the European high-energy physics consortium, have announced the discovery of a particle that can travel faster than light.
Neutrinos fired 454 miles from a supercollider outside Geneva to an underground laboratory in Gran Sasso, Italy, took less time (60 nanoseconds less) than light to get there. Or so the physicists think. Or so they measured. Or so they have concluded after checking for every possible artifact and experimental error.
The implications of such a discovery are so mind-boggling, however, that these same scientists immediately requested that other labs around the world try to replicate the experiment. Something must have been wrong — some faulty measurement, some overlooked contaminant — to account for a result that, if we know anything about the universe, is impossible.
And that’s the problem. It has to be impossible because, if not, if that did happen on this Orient Express hurtling between Switzerland and Italy, then everything we know about the universe is wrong.
The fundamental axiom of Einstein’s theory of relativity is the absolute prohibition on speed faster than light. Einstein’s predictions about how time slows and mass increases as one approaches the speed of light have been verified by a mountain of experimental evidence. As velocity increases, mass approaches infinity and time dilates, making it progressively and, ultimately, infinitely difficult to achieve light speed. Which is why nothing does. And nothing ever has.
Until two weeks ago Thursday.
That’s when the results were announced. To oversimplify grossly: If the Gran Sasso scientists had a plate to record the arrival of the neutrinos and a super-powerful telescope to peer (through the Alps!) directly into the lab in Geneva from which they were being fired, the Gran Sasso guys would have “heard” the neutrinos clanging against the plate before they observed the Geneva guys squeeze the trigger on the neutrino gun.
Sixty nanoseconds before, to be precise. Wrap your mind around that one.
It’s as if someone told you that yesterday at drive time Topeka was released from Earth’s gravity. These things don’t happen. Natural laws don’t just expire between shifts at McDonald’s.
Not that there aren’t already mysteries in physics. Neutrinos themselves are ghostly particles that travel through nearly everything unimpeded. (Thousands are traversing your body as you read this.) But that is simplicity itself compared to quantum mechanics, whose random arbitrariness so offended Einstein that he famously objected that God does not play dice with the universe.
Aphorisms don’t trump reality, however. They are but a frail, poignant protest against a universe that often disdains the most cherished human notions of order and elegance, truth and beauty.
But if quantum mechanics was a challenge to human sensibilities, this pesky Swiss-Italian neutrino is their undoing. It means that Einstein’s relativity — a theory of uncommon beauty upon which all of physics has been built for 100 years — is wrong. Not just inaccurate. Not just flawed. But deeply, fundamentally, indescribably wrong.
It means that the “standard model” of subatomic particles that stands at the center of all modern physics is wrong.
Nor does it stop there. This will not just overthrow physics. Astronomy and cosmology measure time and distance in the universe on the assumption of light speed as the cosmic limit. Their foundations will shake as well.
It cannot be. Yet, this is not a couple of guys in a garage peddling cold fusion. This is no crank wheeling a perpetual motion machine into the patent office. These are the best researchers in the world using the finest measuring instruments, having subjected their data to the highest levels of scrutiny, including six months of cross-checking by 160 scientists from 11 countries.
But there must be some error. Because otherwise everything changes. We shall need a new physics. A new cosmology. New understandings of past and future, of cause and effect. Then shortly and surely, new theologies.
Why? Because we can’t have neutrinos getting kicked out of taverns they have not yet entered. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/gone-in-60-nanoseconds/2011/10/06/gIQAf1RERL_story.html)
Does Charles have a valid hypothesis?
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No one claims that a neutrino can arrive before it has left. Every particle will arrive after it has left. It is just that a neutrino will get there before light can get there. No could see it traveling at the speed of light, either, because of both its speed and its tiny size.
Einstein's Theory of Relativity did not change religion, so it is quite doubtful than faster than light neutrinos could change it, either.
Unless material made of atoms can be turned into neutrinos can beamed across the universe and then reassembled accurately at some specified destination, which seems very unlikely, this will not make space travel or time travel possible.
There may be practical applications, but I will wait until I know what they are before I get as amazed as Krauthammer.
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No one claims that a neutrino can arrive before it has left. Every particle will arrive after it has left. It is just that a neutrino will get there before light can get there.
Particles traveling faster than the speed of light are also traveling backwards in time.
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How can they do that?
They are merely traveling faster than light.
Why should that be any different than traveling faster than sound?
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How can they do that?
They are merely traveling faster than light.
Why should that be any different than traveling faster than sound?
Sound does this too( see doppler effect ) turning sound inside out produces a sonic boom.
Imagine that you have a flashing light attached to an object that will pass by you faster than light.
Flashes of light will be out run by the object, so that the flashes that occur near you will get to you sooner than flashes that occur earlyer on the object. If each flash were illuminateing a clockface on the object (like a strobe) you would actually see the clock run backwards and the object would appear to be leaveing you when it was approaching.
The instant that the ftl object was passing by you is a singular event, if you could take an instantainious photo you would not be able to tell the direction of time at all.
To a person riding the object ,as they passed you ,your direction in time would be in reverse also untill they passed you, they would see your watch running backwards untill they started moving away.
The object leaving you at the speed of light seems again to be moving forwards in time, but their clock seems to be running really slow.
In sound, If you stand at a rail road crossing and listen to the horn of a passing train you can percieve in sound a changing note that the engineer does not hear, a passing f-15 will not give up any sound to you untill it has passed but then the sound it made earlyer becomes percievable seeming to come to you from both directions at once. Light does do the same thing but it is harder to see happening .
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How can they do that?
They are merely traveling faster than light.
Why should that be any different than traveling faster than sound?
As particles approach the speed of light, time slows down for them. At the speed of light, time stops completely. Faster then the speed of light and time goes backwards.
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How can you prove this?
Can you strap teensy watches on the neutrinos tiny wrists, perhaps?
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How can you prove this?
Can you strap teensy watches on the neutrinos tiny wrists, perhaps?
You do realize that it has been tested, right? Also, the effects of gravity on time have been tested as well?
It's enough of a change that the clocks used for GPS devices have to account for Lorentzian time contraction in their calculations (the satellites are moving much faster than us, plus they're further outside of the Earth's gravity well).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation#Velocity_time_dilation_tests (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation#Velocity_time_dilation_tests)
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I can see how time could slow down, but how could it reverse itself for a tiny subatomic particle, and how could they know it reversed itself?
Is there a practical application of this, such as a time machine?
My thought is that if a time machine will ever be invented, we would be getting visitors from the future, traveling back to visit us, and perhaps invest in the market.
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I can see how time could slow down, but how could it reverse itself for a tiny subatomic particle, and how could they know it reversed itself?
The math requires this; if it doesn't happen, then special and general relativity are wrong.
My thought is that if a time machine will ever be invented, we would be getting visitors from the future, traveling back to visit us, and perhaps invest in the market.
Maybe that's why we have unexplained swings...
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I can see how time could slow down, but how could it reverse itself for a tiny subatomic particle, and how could they know it reversed itself?
Is there a practical application of this, such as a time machine?
My thought is that if a time machine will ever be invented, we would be getting visitors from the future, traveling back to visit us, and perhaps invest in the market.
If a time machine were invented I'd forcible place you in it and send you back in time to the Bataan Death March; as an American not a Jap.
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No matter how stupid his previous remarks may have been, we know we can count on Kramer to outdo himself in imbecility.
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No matter how stupid his previous remarks may have been, we know we can count on Kramer to outdo himself in imbecility.
You mean like imbecility like this:
My thought is that if a time machine will ever be invented, we would be getting visitors from the future, traveling back to visit us, and perhaps invest in the market.
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Time travelers would be hard to catch in action, they would know where the action was and where the quiet investment would pay.
I would expect that if the Louvre were burning down you might catch a few time travelers rescuing priceless art, but if they survive getting caught they could go back and shoot you the previous day.
Are Tachyons really moving the wrong way through time , or are they just victims of poor fashion decisions?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyon)
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Tachyons are theoretical, and may not exist at all, other than in episodes of some of the Star Trek series.
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http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/ParticleAndNuclear/tachyons.html (http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/ParticleAndNuclear/tachyons.html)
Theroetical counts!
Our present theroys wrap very poorly arond anything traveling faster than light, but if mass = 0 the rules become blurry and nutrinos are very very small mass.
If a process we expect to produce an ordinary nutrino produces a faster than light particle instead then the theroy involved needs examination, perhaps revamping.
Actually if it requires so much as a new feild of math you could understand the discovery to be wonderfull.