<p>Neutrinos clocked moving at faster-than-light speed</p>
<p>[Faster-than-light</a> neutrinos? Astounding! - Technology & science - Science - msnbc.com](<a href=“http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44629271/ns/technology_and_science-science/?gt1=4300]Faster-than-light”>http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44629271/ns/technology_and_science-science/?gt1=4300)</p>
<p>Yeah man I know.
I don’t know wether to be sad or happy.
Sad because I’ve always looked up to Einstein and his contributions to Physics and the way we all view the World today.
Happy because i am living in the time that the famous genius Einstein’s theory may or may not be disproven…and that’s a big deal to me. </p>
<p>I guess you can say I’m bittersweet about it.</p>
<p>Darn, I misspelled whether.</p>
<p>This is amazing! But I have to wonder – if something is travelling faster than the speed of light does it actually exist?</p>
<p>This will not hold up - Einstein’s theory is not wrong.</p>
<p>That’s what you said about Newton, DocT! :D</p>
<p>DS is currently taking a course on Special Relativity. His prof sent out an email urging students to be skeptical at this point. The prof is a particle physics guy who also works at CERN and seems to suggest that it won’t hold up. If confirmed, he thought it would be an “interesting development.”</p>
<p>Also, he reminded them that they were studying SR regardless of any new findings and that it would not affect the class or the problems they were solving in any way :D.</p>
<p>it would be a refinement of the theory, just like Einstein didn’t prove Newtonian physics wrong either.</p>
<p>
You know, you can edit posts for a short time (like 20 minutes) after you put them up. Just click on the edit button, revise, and save.</p>
<p>Relativity, both special and general, are confirmed theories that have withheld more than a century of testing. They are not incorrect.</p>
<p>My own thoughts on the matter, as an expert on the mathematical foundations of quantum physics (admittedly theory, so my opinions are limited):</p>
<p>1) They did something wrong. Yes, they performed the same experiment 15,000x and got the same result each time. But who knows? There could be a problem with their equipment (which would be significant, since it only passed the light speed barrier by .0025%) or some problem with calculations. I would describe this as the most likely result.</p>
<p>2) Remember, and this is very important, the speed of light was not established until the 70s! Until then, it was just described as a constant c. Who says that the original experiment at UC-Boulder establishing the speed of light was not incorrect, if only slightly? Obviously, these things are tested over and over again to maintain certainty, but if there is an error in methodology, then this error likely proliferated among the experiment confirmation tests as well.</p>
<p>I repeat. Relativity is not incorrect. Something went wrong somewhere, likely at CERN or with the original measurements of the speed of light, but relativity is a well-tested fact that is not only experimentally sound, but also theoretically sound.</p>
<p>It is almost certainly systematic error. There are four or five experiments around the world that are doing exactly the same thing as this neutrino experiment at CERN, and they all measure the correct travel time. </p>
<p>Einstein will not be proven wrong.</p>
<p>The wonderful thing about science is that just because someone’s theories are proved wrong, it doesn’t necessarily detract from that scientist’s accomplishments. Based on what we know at a point in time, a scientist makes a theory that explains more things and move forward. If at a later date a new theory comes that explains everything of the old one and more, we don’t have to be prejudiced and cling to the past. At the same time we can still celebrate the accomplishments of the scientist whose theories have been proved wrong.</p>
<p>“it would be a refinement of the theory, just like Einstein didn’t prove Newtonian physics wrong either.”</p>
<p>In physics, theories are not proved wrong (at least since Newton on) as post #8 has said. Post #10 however is correct. The results will be proved incorrect.</p>
<p>The world is flat! Everything else is meaningless.</p>
<p>Is the speed of light constant???</p>
<p>not when it goes from one material to another.</p>
<p>There once was a lady named Bright,
Whose speed was faster than light.
She went out one day,
In a relative way,
And returned the previous night!</p>
<p>What is the shape of the trajectory of light, in a constant material, and in a vacuum?</p>
<p>CERN scientists appear to be a bit dubious as well. They are reporting their findings and urging others to examine, replicate, etc.</p>
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</p>
<p>Uhh what? We actually determined it to very good precision using old interferometry experiments. 60 nanoseconds out of 2.4 milliseconds is a difference of 0.0025%. While this seems small, it’s actually pretty big for a speed of light experiment, where we can count fringes to a very small precision.</p>