FASTER than the speed of light.

[no-infernomark]

maybe im to much a logical thinker. i do understand that concept. but is speed not calculated by time and distance? if it didnt technically reach point B then how does the speed of light be calculated, especially if the particle has gone back in time in the first place. beer anyone? no, i will call my own taxi lol

 

[Bolter]

Im probably way out of my depth, but is the speed of light equal to the speed of time? Everyone is saying that if it goes faster than the speed of light, it is going back in time. I ask because the story says that the scientists did this experiment some 15000 times, and each time the tachyon appeared a billionth of a second before the light particles arrived at the same point. Just meaning it travelled faster.

What im bumbling on about is, maybe the speed of light is not the ultimate speed, and things can just travel faster?

 

[3L1TE hax]

Bolter, the speed of light might not be the maximum speed. However if it isn't over 100 years worth of physics is wrong. E = MC^2 is a fundamental equation that displays the conservation of energy. and it relies on the theory that the speed of light is the fastest any object can go ( its actually faster than any object can go as an object implies mass and an object with mass cannot reach the speed of light becasue it would require infinite energy)

 

[WihGlah]

What im bumbling on about is, maybe the speed of light is not the ultimate speed, and things can just travel faster?

That's the point - 'relativity' infers that this is impossible - and most modern understanding of energy / matter / life / the universe & everything is based on this fact.

If it isn't true physicist are going to have to rethink almost everything.

 

[Bolter]

That's the point - 'relativity' infers that this is impossible - and most modern understanding of energy / matter / life / the universe & everything is based on this fact.

If it isn't true physicist are going to have to rethink almost everything.

That was exactly my thoughts. "What happens next?"

 

[stongle]

Pete already knows its possible. We once did Stanstead to Bexleyheath and got there 12 minutes before we had left. We used the M11 as our particle accelerator and "fired up the quattro" for the rest of the trip.

 

[Rebel Tackleberry]

...it relies on the theory that the speed of light is the fastest any object can go...

Special Relativity doesn't actually say this though. It emerges from the equations that 'c' is the speed at which a massive object would require infinite energy to reach.

It simply follows that photons are observed to have no mass and so general consensus is that the Speed of Light is equal to 'c'.

If these results turn out to be true then it implies that this relationsship is not true and that the Speed of Light is less than 'c' as these neutrinos travel faster than light. It doesn't mean they travel faster than 'c'.

It would imply that a neutrino must be lighter than a photon (or at least in this experiment) and so it could elicit a search for the mass of the photon.

None of this affects the legitimacy of SR, but rather our assumptions or measurements of particles that travel at, or very very close, to 'c'.

The experiment observed neutrinos arriving at a detector 60 billionths of a second faster than expected. The margin of error is 10 billionths of a second, making the measurement statistically significant.

Neutrinos interact very weakly with matter; they pass straight through most of it without hindrance. What if it were found that they were also less affected by gravity? Gravity curves space and we know from experiment that light is affected by gravity; it follows a curved path in our three dimensional view of space. What if neutriinos aren't as affected by the curvature of space and can follow a 'straighter' path? An analogy would be a plane following a great circle route (the shortest route on the surface of a sphere) between London and New York. Imagine something else that could go straight through the fabric of the Earth at the same 'speed'. It would arrive before the plane but if we weren't aware of the possibility of travel through the three dimensional sphere then we would conclude that it had travelled to the destination faster than our plane, because it arrived before.

If proven true this could just be the nugget to spur development of further refined theory to predict observations that are repeatable experimentally.

The above is speculation and I still believe some kind of error will be discovered to explain this. If not then it will be quite exciting to see where it takes things.

 

[Robbo]

Pete already knows its possible. We once did Stanstead to Bexleyheath and got there 12 minutes before we had left. We used the M11 as our particle accelerator and "fired up the quattro" for the rest of the trip.

I remember that day like it was yesterday .... there ain't too many things that scare the pants off me but I tend to dislike speeding down the motorway with someone else driving..

I'm not saying we drove past the speed limit but I did happen to notice our car, with me and Glen inside, coming the opposite way heading for Nottingham where we had just come from .... In the end I resorted to begging to try and get him to drive under the speed of light .... I was only begging for a minute but by the time I had stopped begging, we were back in London .....

 

[Robbo]

I'm probably way out of my depth, but is the speed of light equal to the speed of time? Everyone is saying that if it goes faster than the speed of light, it is going back in time. I ask because the story says that the scientists did this experiment some 15000 times, and each time the tachyon appeared a billionth of a second before the light particles arrived at the same point. Just meaning it traveled faster.

What I'm bumbling on about is, maybe the speed of light is not the ultimate speed, and things can just travel faster?

Ad, firstly mate, they were firing neutrinos I believe and not tachyons.
Tachyons are theoretical particles that supposedly travel faster than the speed of light but as of yet, they remain theoretical.

To understand why some people believe anything traveling faster than C then reverses the time arrow we need to look at the function that describes time dilation and it looks like this:-

Don't worry too much by this but take it from me mate, as C increases, the time dilation [slowing down of time in that frame of reference] becomes more and more pronounced so much so that as you approach the speed of light, time is going so slow it suggests time will stop altogether as c is reached.
The notion that time's arrow can be reversed comes from extrapolating the time dilation to a point where it actually reverses time flow; in other words it becomes a negative value.
We do not know for sure if this is the case but what we can say is the nature of time changes once we surpass c .... as to what that exact change is, we can only guess that it's reversed but in reality, all we can say for sure is, the nature of time itself undergoes some form of transformation when the velocity of light exceeds 186000 miles per sec.
I think, for what my not so humble opinion is worth, the reason we cannot prove the true nature of the transformation is because it goes back in time and thus beyond out ability to measure..... I am more than likely wrong but it's a thought I suppose albeit a relatively uninformed [pun intended] .

 

[Buddha 3]

Pete already knows its possible. We once did Stanstead to Bexleyheath and got there 12 minutes before we had left. We used the M11 as our particle accelerator and "fired up the quattro" for the rest of the trip.

Which led to another impossibility: Removing Pete's fingers from the firmly embedded position in Stongle's dashboard and recovering the passenger's seat from the unbelievably clenched buttocks of Pete...

It was also quite the task to remove the grin from Glen's face.

I have been told more than once that driving with Stongle is quite the adventure.