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Faster than the speed of light. Seriously.


Casper

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"margin of error at just 10 nanosecond" If we are using standard practices, that means with 95% certainty the particle traveled between 2.997986123e8 m/s and 2.998010747e8 m/s (did some math, it only says 60 nano seconds +/-10 and 730 km, so the uncertainty is actually much greater but I am assuming the distance is exact) vs the speed of light which is 2.997924563e8 m/s (in a vacuum). That is substantially faster at 6156-8618 m/s (or about 240mph). I'll believe it when I see something that is reproducible. A lot of things come out as "breakthroughs" but then are never substantiated further, and with CERN's track record of building the damn thing and just getting it to run I wouldn't be too surprised if they needed to recalibrate some of their instruments as well.

Edited by imprez55
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I do remember that light was predicted to travel faster than light under special circumstances. It would be in deep space and after light had traveled great distances. Interaction with other particles of "empty space" would set up and propagate a wave resonance in the light as it moved along. Basically some of the photons would "surf" the wave, and move faster than light. Impossible to observe or measure here on Earth. Or is this a peek at what happens?

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Makes sense. Never understood the thing about if u were traveling the speed of light and walked forward in your craft how the he'll you could not be traveling faster than light.

There is a change in Time as perceived by the external observer, but the person moving at the speed of light doesn't see that since they are changed by that as well. So they see things subjective to what they are. Both Time and Space change, but the person moving would just see a normal event, not realizing that the outside observer would see both the person and the action as being so slow as to appear not moving at all.

Or the old thing about what happens if you shine a flashlight forward. The outside observer would see the light moving incredibly slow, but the person inside would just see a normal flashlight.

The point is, when approaching the speed of light, the movement goes down to zero, even though the person inside sees normal events. At that point Time would be close to zero as well, and Space would be stretched out to near infinity, like what happens when falling into a black hole.

This is still all assumed perceptions, since no one has ever tried it.

edit: that's the best I can do, if it's wrong, don't blame me, I'm not a freakin' physicist.

edit2: freakin' physicists can be wrong too, so there...

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Makes sense. Never understood the thing about if u were traveling the speed of light and walked forward in your craft how the he'll you could not be traveling faster than light.

Stephen Hawking explained that in one of his special's.

His assumption was that it's a scientific impossibility to travel faster than the speed of light, thus if you were to do what you described, time would slow down explicitly to prevent you from moving faster than the speed of light, relative to the outside surroundings.

Thus the craft you're traveling in would be moving through time, as well as space.

that's the dumbed-down version, but it kind of makes sense. Of course you have to base the whole theory on the assumption that the speed of light is THE limit of speed in the universe.

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Very interesting stuff. Now someone build a flux capacitor on my old Honda so I can go back to the 70's and get cheap parts...and also buy up as much gold as I can find at $200/ounce, bring it back and sell it for $1400/oz and buy a fleet of superbikes and some 100 yr old scotch...

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Very interesting stuff. Now someone build a flux capacitor on my old Honda so I can go back to the 70's and get cheap parts...and also buy up as much gold as I can find at $200/ounce, bring it back and sell it for $1400/oz and buy a fleet of superbikes and some 100 yr old scotch...

you have a lot of free time don't you? :lol:

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