So about that speed of light stuff.

[Arthur_Parker]

Speed-of-light experiments yield baffling result at LHC

Puzzling results from Cern, home of the LHC, have confounded physicists - because it appears subatomic particles have exceeded the speed of light.

Neutrinos sent through the ground from Cern toward the Gran Sasso laboratory 732km away seemed to show up a few billionths of a second early.

The results will soon be online to draw closer scrutiny to a result that, if true, would upend a century of physics.

The lab's research director called it "an apparently unbelievable result".
..
But because the result is so unexpected and would wreak such havoc with our understanding of the Universe, the group is being particularly cautious. They have opted to put a report of their measurements online to subject them to wider scrutiny, and will hold a seminar at Cern on Friday to discuss the result.

[Paelos]

[Sand]

Did they happen to mention if one of the scientific team members was named Zefram Cochrane?

[Hawkbit]

I knew timecube was right all along.

[Ingmar]

Curses, beaten to the timecube reference.

[01101010]

Sweet Jesus my dreams of owning a TARDIS just got a booster shot! 

[Ironwood]

This is how it starts people.

[ghost]

I'm pretty sure there's a rounding error there somewhere. 

[tazelbain]

That's a pretty rude way to describe the big bang.

[Ghambit]

I'm pretty sure there's a rounding error there somewhere.  

CERN does not make rounding errors.

More likely, they either:
a) detected the advanced wave function of the particle (which would disprove Feynmann and still be a "wtf" moment)
b) the spatial density of the measurement region was less than the surrounding space (which is still "wtf" and would actually bolster the argument of a particularly ingenius 11 yr. old on youtube)

I'm inclined to believe it was the latter, which to me isnt a hard conclusion to come to if you subscribe to hyperspace.  I mean, we're talking energies approaching those necessary to produce micro-black holes.  Spatial fabric is not "vanilla" at this point as it isnt when the Higgs pops up either.

The math changes are what interest me most.  The philosophies are kinda the latest fad though... assuming I'm right.

edit:
this is involving the OPERA experiment, which actually shoots the neutrino beam from a station over 700km away.    Likely the result is a combination of the distance and the energy involved.  Gods I love science.

edit2:
Heh, their network is full of people right now.  Cool.

[Lucas]

So, should we now be looking for a guy from the future coming back to this day trying to destroy the evidence? How does this stuff works exactly?

[Ghambit]

We dont really KNOW how it works, that's the point!
a hypothesis:  picture our bubble of space, wherein light travels at "c" distance/time.  Then picture a bigger bubble around our bubble that contains the same space spread out over a larger manifold...  wherein light still travels at "c" distance/time but relativistically to our "inner" 'verse it's faster because our version of space is compressed compared to the outer bubble.  feel me?

Spatial density determines distance.  Kinda like you can take 10 points on a straight line 10 miles long, or 10 points on a straight line 1 mile long.  There's still 10 points of space on the line.  A particle will travel those 10 points at the same speed, but in one space it's shorter/denser therefore the particle travels slower through it.

In regards to the OPERA experiment, they may have "stretched" those 10 points of space, making the region less dense slightly, allowing the neutrino to travel quicker relative to "normal space."  Or perhaps the space between the gun and the detector was innately different regardless of the energies involved, which is a popular realm of thinking these days.

Hmm, could be there is a casimir effect going on within the earth also... making regions of space between close matter less dense due to reduced vacuum fluctuations, allowing the neutrino to travel quicker.

OR, maybe the beam disguised the neutrino to the higgs field making it completely massless for an instant.  Giving it more of a spooky action.

/headhurts

[Xuri]

Maybe they used a faulty ruler when they measured those 732 kilometers.

[SnakeCharmer]

Maybe they used a faulty ruler when they measured those 732 kilometers.

Well.  Along those lines, even though I know you were joking, could all the earthquakes of late possibly have shifted it ever ever so slightly?

[MahrinSkel]

Hmm, could be there is a casimir effect going on within the earth also... making regions of space between close matter less dense due to reduced vacuum fluctuations, allowing the neutrino to travel quicker.

/headhurts

Which would fit with the "There is no such thing as gravity" school of thought, that Casimir force, gravity, "dark energy", "dark matter" and the cosmological constant are all the same thing.  What we call gravity is just a macro-scale effect of vacuum energy pushing against matter.

--Dave

[01101010]

Fuck you all, I want to believe in magic! 

[Ghambit]

Hmm, could be there is a casimir effect going on within the earth also... making regions of space between close matter less dense due to reduced vacuum fluctuations, allowing the neutrino to travel quicker.

/headhurts

Which would fit with the "There is no such thing as gravity" school of thought, that Casimir force, gravity, "dark energy", "dark matter" and the cosmological constant are all the same thing.  What we call gravity is just a macro-scale effect of vacuum energy pushing against matter.

--Dave

And is also the only force (we know of) that could possibly translate between 'branes.
I had a theory where dark energy is actually just the leftover momentum from before the big bang, which was caused by two 'branes colliding to form our universe.  Stuff traveling within this momentum moves faster for still the same spatial density reasons.  e.g. space is stretched along these "birth stretch marks" of space therefore allowing faster than light travel.

[ghost]

I'm pretty sure there's a rounding error there somewhere.  

CERN does not make rounding errors.

More likely, they either:
a) detected the advanced wave function of the particle (which would disprove Feynmann and still be a "wtf" moment)
b) the spatial density of the measurement region was less than the surrounding space (which is still "wtf" and would actually bolster the argument of a particularly ingenius 11 yr. old on youtube)

I'm inclined to believe it was the latter, which to me isnt a hard conclusion to come to if you subscribe to hyperspace.  I mean, we're talking energies approaching those necessary to produce micro-black holes.  Spatial fabric is not "vanilla" at this point as it isnt when the Higgs pops up either.

The math changes are what interest me most.  The philosophies are kinda the latest fad though... assuming I'm right.

edit:
this is involving the OPERA experiment, which actually shoots the neutrino beam from a station over 700km away.    Likely the result is a combination of the distance and the energy involved.  Gods I love science.

edit2:
Heh, their network is full of people right now.  Cool.

That was a joke.   

[Ghambit]

Actually, not really a joke.  They themselves think they might've made a mistake, even after going over the data over and over.  A 'rounding error' is not at fault, but it could be as they call "systemic."  That's why they made it public before publishing.

Who else can recreate the damned experiment though?  It's kinda what they say goes.

[ghost]

They certainly could have made a mathematical error somewhere along the line, but it was likely not a rounding error.

[Ghambit]

Digging around I found out the accepted experimental error is +/- 10ns.  The experiment has been ran 15,000 times over 4 years and statistically has actually shown a c+60ns variance.  The neutrino arrives 10metres before it's supposed to.  Or, in 2.3ms (the time it takes light to travel 700km) it's gone an extra 10metres.  On cosmological scales, obviously this becomes fairly significant... especially since for this to work in some theories requires acceleration.

There's some thought now that photons may actually now have mass, and dont travel at c.  But, this I dont agree with.  

edit:  there's some confusion over whether the particles are traveling faster than light or faster than c.  There's a big difference here obviously.  Needs more clarification.

edit2: it's ns not ms

[Arthur_Parker]

There's a big difference here obviously.

Obviously

[Ghambit]

There's a big difference here obviously.

Obviously

Ok, it's definitely "c" (meaning speed of light in a perfect vacuum) and not simply speed of light, per the article directly from CERN.
For those interested, there's a conference coming up today on the matter.
http://webcast.cern.ch/

I'm trolling physicsforum right now trying to gain some more insight.  The people over there seem rather fixated on photonic mass, which is really only half a solution if at all since you'd still need RELATIVELY warped space-(time) to pull it off.  Or there's some type of causality issue going on here perhaps.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Clearly, a wizard did it.

[Furiously]

Are they traveling through a vacuum the whole distance?

[ajax34i]

Speed-of-light experiments yield baffling result at LHC

Neutrinos sent through the ground

Neutrinos don't interact much with matter; they pass through planets easily.  For all intents and purposes everything is vacuum to them.

But the mention of "vacuum" above is to differentiate between the speed of light "c" (THE constant that Einstein and physics people use) and the various other speeds that light can have in various media (fiberglass, water, etc), where some materials can slow light down to a crawl.

[Lucas]

Ideally, would this also open possibilities of future starships traveling faster than the speed of light?

As Stephen Hawking correctly (at least in my opinon) stated, the future of humanity resides outside planet Earth.

Obviously, beside the resolution of other problems related to that (bone degradation during the voyage, adapting to another planet conditions etc.), the major factor is the *duration* of the voyage itself.  Currently, for a "simple" probe like "New Horizons" (heading to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt), it takes 9 years to get there. Then consider that the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is  4 light years away :P. Discovering a way to travel that fast will be the greatest (and most important) scientific breakthrough in human history.

[Lantyssa]

Gravitational sling-shot effect.

[Lucas]

Gravitational sling-shot effect.

The same used by the probes nowadays, you mean? (Galileo, Cassini and others used it, as far as I recall)

By the way, as previously stated by Ghambit, there will be a live webcast about the discovery: today, from 10am EST to 12pm

http://indico.cern.ch/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=155620

Kinda proud that Italy, among others, was involved in this  :)

[Ghambit]

Dont pat yourself on the back yet, it's still more than likely a systemic anomaly.  They just cant figure out from where and it's not clear if they've already accounted for the few anomalies some have spoken of, like c-variances in the GPS system due to atmosphere, breakdown times during neutrino inception (you cant fire a neutrino, it has to be made from a tau/muon particle wherein things can get 'spooky'), and even quantum tunneling.  In regards to the latter, someone calculated that coincidentally it'd gain 80ns of space if tunneling through an aluminum nucleus.   

This webcast will be pretty well watched methinks.

Also, even if the data holds I still do not believe c was ever "broken."  You must be careful when you say this.  It's more like space-time was haxored.

disclaimer:  I am an armchair physicist like normal people and know shittall.

[Simond]

So, should we now be looking for a guy from the future coming back to this day trying to destroy the evidence? How does this stuff works exactly?

We should prepare for unforeseen consequences.

[Cyrrex]

What a fucking weird coincidence.  I drove to work today many billionths of a second faster today than I did yesterday.  I'm talking tons of billionths.  I bet there'll be some scientists waiting to talk to me when I get home.  No way it was a rounding error, though I was speeding a bit.

[Ghambit]

What a fucking weird coincidence.  I drove to work today many billionths of a second faster today than I did yesterday.  I'm talking tons of billionths.  I bet there'll be some scientists waiting to talk to me when I get home.  No way it was a rounding error, though I was speeding a bit.

What the hell are you getting on about??  I dont understand your analogy.

[Paelos]

What the hell are YOU going on about.

I don't understand half this thread.

[01101010]

From what I understand:

We have discovered that a fundamental prinicple (law of physics?) may have been broken in the fact that a "thing" has been identified as traveling faster than the speed of light, which has been deemed the limit.
We are now trying to limit the damage to that principle with the "exception to the rule" debate to minimize its impact on the foundations of this area of science.
Finally, further testing and reconstruction of this experiment will end the world by destroying time itself... that date has been calculated as some time in late Dec. of next year.

*disclaimer: I am on Vicodin today and really don't give a shit about making any sense... I can't wait to see what this SAS report is going to look like on Monday too...