So about that speed of light stuff.

[Ghambit]

So has this mystery been solved yet? Have we achieved warp speed or what?

I traveled to the future and got the answer, but I'm not telling.  Oh, I also won the powerball... again. 

And this particular timeline you are now on is not the same one you came from.  Soooo, your answer and your pball numbers may or may not be valid. 
Anyways, anything besides MINOS re-starting their experiment with better metrology is just speculation.  And there's no news yet whether they intend to do this or not, at least where I've looked.

[UnSub]

The most likely explanation when someone finishes a race faster than you think possible is that they cheated.  It's not as far as they thought or there's another measurement error somewhere, I'm surprised people are taking this so seriously.

The team that made the discovery is behaving correctly in opening up their data for wider interpretation.

Stuff like this should be taken seriously because there's a chance it is correct.

[Furiously]

This just in.... http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/nov/18/neutrinos-still-faster-than-light?CMP=twt_fd

They still look like they might be faster.

[bhodi]

Phil Plait and others still remain skeptical; they say the timing issue is in the detector, which wouldn't be affected.

[tazelbain]

If the wavefunction turns out to be real, the differences of anti-matter to matter are significant, and this is true; we may actually see some real progress in physics after what seems like decades of wheel spinning.

[Mosesandstick]

I think the experiment is mainly to confirm the result is not an anomaly, doesn't solve any of the other possible errors.

[Murgos]

If the wavefunction turns out to be real, the differences of anti-matter to matter are significant, and this is true; we may actually see some real progress in physics after what seems like decades of wheel spinning.

LOL.

[Draegan]

Unless this involves me finally getting a flying car, I don't care.

[Furiously]

You got in one yesterday.

[Amarr HM]

I wonder will that guy put his time machine project on hold.

[Morat20]

If the wavefunction turns out to be real, the differences of anti-matter to matter are significant, and this is true; we may actually see some real progress in physics after what seems like decades of wheel spinning.

Yeah, the problem in physics has been two-fold -- for starters, the Standard Model is just damn good. There biggest "WTF?" stuff out there is questions over the Higgs and trying to resolve QM properly.

There's been a dearth of weird-ass phenomenon to kick-start odd questions. Like "What the fuck's up with Mercury's orbit" did.

Secondly, the real esoteric stuff -- the nuts and bolts of the universe stuff beyond the Standard Model that has the potential for cracking open some big new doors? Nobody can test that shit. We lack the engineering, energy, and money. We've just now -- two decades or so late -- finally got around to having a particle accelerator that can give us some info on the Higgs.

Trying to monkey around past that is just off the charts.

[Selby]

Secondly, the real esoteric stuff -- the nuts and bolts of the universe stuff beyond the Standard Model that has the potential for cracking open some big new doors? Nobody can test that shit. We lack the engineering, energy, and money. We've just now -- two decades or so late -- finally got around to having a particle accelerator that can give us some info on the Higgs.

The big problem is no one wants to fund any advanced HEP of the scale necessary needed to do even more truly interesting research.  CERN is a great start, but so much of it is so far from being done and ready to give us any usable data to analyze (we're talking 10+ years out assuming all the funding falls into place).  Tons of work is being done and investigated, but these things take lots of time to fully analyze (there's multi-TB data sets from 10 years ago that are still being processed).  Since the general public's perception is we aren't doing "real" science with concrete results, politicians are very unwilling to fund billions of dollars on something that will not produce any obvious benefits by the next election cycle.  I mean, the space program can put people on the moon and trying to hit Mars is actually a tangible benefit that can be sold to the public, and the politicians can't even get behind THAT and fund it. 

[Ghambit]

How do you fund a foray in what many physicists now believe is a holographic universe?  You pump money into quantum computing, that's how.  Best way to understand the matrix is to build one ourselves.

[Amarr HM]

Science fiction, the last refuge of the daydreamer.

[TripleDES]

So c is going to be the speed of neutrinos instead of speed of light?

[Ironwood]

Science fiction, the last refuge of the daydreamer.

Turns out my desk at the office is, in fact, the only refuge of the daydreamer.

[Ghambit]

"Massbit" theory is lookin sexay. Wherein even information has a minimal mass, even though it can travel "instantaneously" across our 'brane; more like transpose/port really.  This is a proposed accounting for what dark matter/energy is.  Pretty much the universe expanding more and more rapidly due to the simple fact it cant chunk and iterate that much information w/o the frame expanding... similar to you or I adding RAM to a computer.

[UnSub]

Science fiction, the last refuge of the daydreamer theoretical physicist.

... only then they try to prove it with maths.

[Morat20]

So c is going to be the speed of neutrinos instead of speed of light?

Nah, light speed is just a bitch. Neutrinos may just have an out.

I still think it's unlikely. I bet it boils down to the same thing as last time this came up -- you can technically get some stuff moving faster than light, but it doesn't matter because it lacks any information. It, in fact, by definition has no information and is thus totally useless in any possible sense.

Quantum entanglement, though, and spooky action at a distance -- that's another kettle of fish. Possibly.

[MahrinSkel]

I keep running this theory over in my head that centers on extradimensionality.  That "entropy" is the universe trying to approach flat 4-D space, by pulling the extra dimensions out of the remaining clusters (known as mass/energy).  But I lack the math to explain it properly.

Anyway, in this context neutrinos aren't able to exist in higher-dimensional pockets like an atomic nucleus, they skip right through them (where a photon is absorbed into them and has to be re-emitted).

--Dave

EDIT: Another chink in the Standard Model: Anti-matter particles that do not mirror their standard matter versions.

[Ghambit]

So c is going to be the speed of neutrinos instead of speed of light?

Nah, light speed is just a bitch. Neutrinos may just have an out.

I still think it's unlikely. I bet it boils down to the same thing as last time this came up -- you can technically get some stuff moving faster than light, but it doesn't matter because it lacks any information. It, in fact, by definition has no information and is thus totally useless in any possible sense.

Quantum entanglement, though, and spooky action at a distance -- that's another kettle of fish. Possibly.

It by virtue of its existence is inherently informative.  A switch only needs to be on/off to be useful, you dont need context.  Pile a googleplex of these switches together and you have Creationism.   

[Arthur_Parker]

Scientists did not break speed of light - it was a faulty wire

 

[Jade Falcon]

Scientists did not break speed of light - it was a faulty wire

 

So Howard proved Sheldon wrong in the end?

[tazelbain]

Yeah! Science works again.

[Ghambit]

Didn't they say the 1st thing they checked and ruled-out after the experiment was faulty wiring in the GPS timing?  Now it's found that it was faulty wiring in the GPS timing.  Something's not right here.  I smell conspiracy!

[pxib]

Assumptions about the speed of particular fiber optics. Plus a potential problem with their GPS timing oscillator that would have skewed results in the other direction (making the neutrinos seem slower than they are). Plenty of potential consistant error to explain 60 nanoseconds.

"Just as it would have been unwise to jump to the conclusion that the initial results were the result of an anomaly, it would be unwise to make any assumptions now," said David Wark, a particle physics professor.

They're setting up additional tests to be sure.

[Ghambit]

One is an electronic component that marked the exact times for GPS measurements. (The experiment requires such precise measurements of time and distance that even continental drift is taken into account.) The component was “clearly out of its specifications,” said Dario Autiero, a physicist who is the spokesman for the experiment.

However, that error would have sped up the neutrinos even more.

The second potential error is in the fiber-optic cabling that carried the GPS data five miles to the underground detector. The investigation discovered that for dimmer light pulses, the circuit receiving the data introduced delay — up to 60 billionths of a second — that could bring the neutrinos’ speed back under the speed of light. The circuit has now been fixed.

The journal Science reported the potential fraying of the experiment’s conclusions — which many physicists had found hard to believe in the first place — on its Web site on Wednesday.

But Dr. Autiero said the issues it identified did not conclusively prove or disprove the findings. “We are not sure of the state of this connection in the past,” he said.

A new round of neutrino firings will begin in late March, and if the cable issue is at fault, the answer will be resolved shortly afterward.

[Fabricated]

I have a feeling that they're going to be re-running that experiment over and over and over every time it comes up with faster-than-light particles. The scientific community is pretty fucking defensive of the standard model, and not necessarily in the right way where stuff needs be confirmed/peer-reviewed.

[ajax34i]

They just need to differentiate between fast neutrinos and regular neutrinos when they publish results, 's'all.

[JWIV]

Seriously, did someone put 4chan in charge of CERN or something?   


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ew5YVkJIuq0