http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44629271/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/astounding-discovery-faster-than-light-particle/

Apparently a recent scientific discovery has clocked a neutrino traveling 60 nanoseconds faster than the speed of light. According to the article in the above link, if this anomaly can be verified it would bring into question everything we have ever know about physics, possibly allowing for previously impossible ideas like time travel to actually exist.

Read the article and post your thoughts. I mean what do you guys think about this? There hasn't been a discovery this huge for physics for decades! If this is true and we have to go back and re-evaluate our understanding of how the universe works, could we be approaching a new paradigm in our sciences?

A little more than a year ago, a satelite detected light from an exploding start, many, many lightyears away. The high energy photons where detected later than the low energy photons, so they must have traveled slower. Quantum loop gravity predicted this, but not the degree in wich they differed. Quantum loop gravity assumes that space is discrete and that because of this, light can be slowed down a bit like it's being slowed down by water when it moves through that medium.

Thrilling.

I can't wait for the confirmation or refutation of this finding. Exiting times ahead!


Kind regards,

The Traveler

Change is in the air

Not that impressed to be honest. Still, pretty cool I admit. Makes sense.

Scientific American:
Particles Found to Travel Faster than Speed of Light


Kind regards,

The Traveler

Hopefully some of you can glean some information from this paper.

Not that impressed? Some of the most fundamental laws of physics may soon have to be rewritten, and you’re not that impressed?

Why not?




In many of my posts related to the unknown, I’ve often said that what is now unexplainable may very well be explainable in natural/scientific terms in the future. So to those who believe that the physical laws as we currently understand them paint an accurate picture of the true nature of reality, I’ll say this (a bit prematurely) – “Told ya so!”

Hehehehe.... and they will say (prognosticating here) "We told you those laws you loved so much were wrong in the first place."

Because light is fucking slow.

Word.

??? Anything real to add or just nonsense?


The Traveler

Are you kidding Traveler? Light IS slow. Only our galaxy is 100,000 light years in diameter.

If "nothing" is faster than the speed of light then we are doomed to never knowing what is outside our galaxy.


Of course something will be faster than light, and probably there is something faster than that also.


Our universe is full of things that we have no clue about.


That is why only freaking idiots mention the word GOD of the universe....

Unless you KNOW the ENTIRE (100%) UNIVERSE, then you don't know shit.




You guys probably travel billions of light years away from earth in 10 terrestrial seconds and you don't even realize it.

[quote=clouds]That is why only freaking idiots mention the word GOD of the universe....

Unless you KNOW the ENTIRE (100%) UNIVERSE, then you don't know shit.


Can you not see the paradox in this statement?

That is why Agnosticism is the only valid and correct philosophical stance.

I think you misunderstand the significance. True, light does seem to be slow, if you consider that the supposed "fastest thing in the universe" takes a hundred thousand years just to cross a single galaxy. However, according to the laws of physics, the speed of light is a universal constant because nothing should theoretically be able to travel faster than light. There is a relationship between time and space, and the laws of physics say that it's impossible for anything to travel through space faster than the speed of light. So while it is easy to imagine something faster than light, something that travels a million miles a second, for example, it is currently theoretically impossible because to travel faster than light.

True, it is depressing to think that if nothing can travel faster than light, we will never travel outside our galaxy. I would even dare to say that if people cannot travel at light speed, and never discover some kind of warp technology, then dare I say we will never even explore outside our solar system. And if light speed travel is impossible, then I think it's likely that no other alien race will travel outside its local cosmic area either, thus destroying the prospect that any alien race will ever encounter any other alien race. That would be depressing, eh?

But, even if light speed is impossible, there may still be other options for exploring the universe. It's just that we may have reached the limits of what can be explored within our current model. Light speed may not be possible, and thus exploration of the universe may not be possible by physically traveling through via point A to point location, and point A to point B in time.

For example, I have found that psychedelics offer a totally different method of exploration. There are limits to I can do in the physical plane, limits to what I can experience, and feel, limits to where I can physically travel. But man, dmt breaks through those limitations. It reveals something else entirely, something impossible to comprehend with any sort of logic.

it's funny... "universal constant" hahaha...

humanity has only gone to the moon and saw light through telescopes and we already have "UNIVERSAL CONSTANTS!"


We don't know crap about the universe. Which by the way, I bet is EVERYTHING but CONSTANT.

Yes, light is the universal constant. According to the theory of relativity, saying that something can travel faster than the speed of light is as impossible as saying that something with a mass of 1kg contains more energy than something that weighs 100kg. This would remain impossible no matter how we travel from earth. Finding evidence to the contrary would be a really astounding breakthrough.

I just find your response odd.....

Claiming agnosticism is the only valid stance seems to fall into a fallacy similar to contrary stances. Also, I feel agnosticism is a theological stance more than a philosophical one.

On the question of the existence of gods or a god, I don't find that agnosticism holds up because it ignores the fact that god does not have any satisfactory definition. In fact, if there was a satisfactory definition of god, it would invalidate many of the conceptions of what god is or might be. In this regard, ignosticism seems a sturdier stance than agnosticism.



Perhaps light isn't so slow, but our lifespans and our stars' lifespans are just very short.