The speed of light may have been broken.
- Thread starter Pincho Paxton
- Start date
No. You need a lot more than that.
While time travel is a popular subject of science fiction and even on occasion physicists (the later most often associated with some form of popular media and money), there is no basis for time travel in experience or scientific experiment and observation, beyond the potential to look back in time as we gaze at the night sky.
Where time travel is supported by mathematical theory it is an example, at present, of nothing more than an exploration of the logic involved in the relationship between numbers and the assumptions the models are based on.
Time travel in any real sense is not and will not be a part of our real world experience. Not within this lifetime anyway.
Motor Daddy
Valued Senior Member
At the rate of 1 second per second?
Funny, though, you didn't mention your velocity. Do you travel through time at different rates at different velocities?
No you just experience, the experience differently.
Motor Daddy
Valued Senior Member
We are 10 feet apart. We have sync'd clocks that tick as one. How fast do you have to travel to be at my location at 12:00 if you start traveling at 12:00??
From where I sit your past and future were both the present.
I'm back.
To put this thread back on track, a recent blog summarizes the Cohen/Glashow article here:
http://profmattstrassler.com/2011/10/06/is-the-opera-speedy-neutrino-experiment-self-contradictory/
In his blog, he gives a very good summary of the approach used by Cohen/Glashow in their article.
I find of particular interest the comment of TSK (October 7) referencing a question regarding the accuracy of the distance measurement as a probable source of error. I haven't followed it to its logical conclusion, though apparently it is being looked at.
http://profmattstrassler.com/2011/10/06/is-the-opera-speedy-neutrino-experiment-self-contradictory/
In his blog, he gives a very good summary of the approach used by Cohen/Glashow in their article.
I find of particular interest the comment of TSK (October 7) referencing a question regarding the accuracy of the distance measurement as a probable source of error. I haven't followed it to its logical conclusion, though apparently it is being looked at.
According to whose clock?
If you could accelerate to the speed of light (which isn't possible) then you could, from _your_ perspective, reach any location within an infinitesimally small time - so if you were moving at the speed of light you could indeed cover ten feet in zero time. From an outside perspective you would have reached only the speed of light, and would thus take approximately 10 nanoseconds to cover those 10 feet.
What does the following mean:
"First, neutrinos from supernova 1987a (as I explained here) arrived so close in time to the light from the supernova that their speed cannot have exceeded that of light by more than a few parts per billion."
So does that mean that neutrino was faster than light by few parts per billion, whatever that means?
Are you sure that neutrino was faster than light in these experiments?
brightpurple
Registered Senior Member
universe speed limit
Hi, I don't post often as you can see but I read fairly frequently.
From what I understand of special relativity the c in its literal term represents the speed limit of the universe. This has been assumed to be the speed of light because this has assumed to have no mass, but this is not necessary for SR to hold true.
If these nutrino's did indeed seem to go faster than the speed of light wouldn't the repercussions only be that the speed of light is very close to c but not exactly c any more. SR and gr would still hold true
I don't know if the impact of this variation would make significant differences on GPS calculations for instance. Has anyone worked out what "c" would be if the new observations hold true and the % difference in value.
Hi, I don't post often as you can see but I read fairly frequently.
From what I understand of special relativity the c in its literal term represents the speed limit of the universe. This has been assumed to be the speed of light because this has assumed to have no mass, but this is not necessary for SR to hold true.
If these nutrino's did indeed seem to go faster than the speed of light wouldn't the repercussions only be that the speed of light is very close to c but not exactly c any more. SR and gr would still hold true
I don't know if the impact of this variation would make significant differences on GPS calculations for instance. Has anyone worked out what "c" would be if the new observations hold true and the % difference in value.
No, the speed of light in a vacuum is c.
If a change in the value of c in the mathematics that involve c were incorporated it would change the real application results of many computations. When using GR to calculate orbits and trajectories.., not often done as it requires a fair amount of time on a supercomputer and Newton's formulas are close enough in practice.., real values have to be used in the formulas. A change in the value of c would then result in a difference.
However, even should the >c neutrino velocity be confirmed it would not change the measured velocity of light or the many applications of it's current velocity in physics, which have proven to be accurate so far.
It would create a new area of physics to explore and some significant shuffling of current theory to accommodate an exception to the speed of light limitation where high energy neutrinos are concerned.
Agreed. IF it turns out that a neutrino does exceed c it would certainly present an exciting opportunity to further our fundemantal understanding of the universe. I am not holding my breath that it will turn out that a neutrino actually can exceed c, but what an opportunity if it does.
The SN1987A neutrinos arrived about 3 hours before the photons. This is usually interpreted to mean that they departed about 3 hours before the photons, and travelled at very close to c. If they travelled faster than c, it could not be by more than a few parts per billions (3 hours/168,000 years). However, it has always been interpreted to mean the neutrinos had a head-start, as they were released deep in the collapsed core and not impeded in their flight, whereas the core-explosion took 3 hours to reach the stellar surface (a million miles of dense H/He/Fe etc. as an overlying blanket). If that assumption is wrong, then neutrinos would travel faster than light, but by no more than a few parts/billion.
Big thanks for the explanation, but are you saying this is still a hypothesis, I thought they already precisely measured the speed of neutrino, I didn't know this is so hard to measure.