Faster then light

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This is creating uproar in the media at the moment. I'll reserve my opinion until independent research has been completed. Neutrinos are highly difficult to measure accurately anyway and E=MC2 obviously proves the speed of light is constant. That said it wouldn't be too far fetched that Einstein was wrong about the more weakly acting tiny particles. He thought Edwin hubble was crazy when he suggested our galaxy was not the whole universe.

http://xkcd.com/955/

The constancy of the speed of light is a postulate or assumption underlying the Theory of Relativity. It is not a self evident or axiomatic truth. And it is surely not "obvious". The intuitively obvious thing to assume is that velocities add. In relativity theory this is not the case. It is very counter-intuitive.

ruveyn

What would it mean for us if there was something faster than the speed of light? If this turns out to be true what then?

I'm not getting into that one too much...


Basically only things with 0 rest mass can attain c. Things like sub atomic particles. When you try to accelerate things with rest mass to c they gain "infinite" mass. This is supported by a wealth of observations so forgive me when I say its obvious.

Supported by a wealth of observations =/= obvious.


According to the current theory. If you want to establish that the current theory is correct, you can't do this by assuming that the current theory is correct. Circular reasoning is invalid.

Then why is light drawn to black holes?

If a photon has zero rest mass then it shouldn't be drawn by gravitational pull. So the photons energy provides its mass via e=mc2. This "gaining" of mass can only go so far, as far as c that is. This is proven fact. Any more energy would create too much mass to accelerate. Kind of a catch 22 situation or rather an infinite loop.

As to whether neutrinos gain mass in the same way. The jury is still out on that.

Black holes, like every other gravitational body, curve space. Light isn't drawn to black holes, light goes in a straight line, which is curved.

One article said they repeated the experiment about 15,000 times over several months. It's not that some one guy performed one experiment. Not saying it's true, but I think we should give the scientists some credit.

No. Light its-self can be bent by gravitational attraction.

Fact.

http://www.google.com/m/url?client=ms-a ... Zt9Hw2U40w

That's what I said.

Light goes straight. It is space that is bent by the gravitation.

ruveyn

Yes yes yes lol....

But it doesn't change the fact that photons *have* to have mass provided by energy to be affected by gravity in the first place (Even though at rest the photon is massless). Because gravity needs mass to attract. This is why photons can travel at c and atoms can't and is also how we come to the assumption that matter can't travel faster than light. Because the mass to energy ratio gets stuck at a certain point and this point is c.

Anyway does the train turn the bend or does the track?

No, photons do not need to have a nonzero mass to be affected by gravity. Come to think of it, even newtonian gravity predicts the bending of light when one considers Newton's corpuscular theory of light, even if the particles of light have zero mass. This simply due to the equivalence principle which implies that objects will fall at the same acceleration, regardless of their masses.

I almost forgot to mention. It is not just mass but both mass and energy that is responsible for the bending of space-time in general relativity.

I've been following this story, and most of the research going on at CERN for several years. And I really hope the recent findings are corroborated simply because it would force us to reexamine many of the things we have long accepted as fact.

These types of threads are amusing to me simply because I'm doubting anyone questioning the validity of the findings has dedicated the majority of their lives to particle physics, nor do they likely have access to a small hadron collider, let alone a large one. (If any of you do happen to have access to a particle accelerator of any size, I take it all back, please just let me come and play with it, I have some theories about Higgs Boson I'd like to run by you, I'll bring the beer)

Kidding aside, no one seriously believes that we have already made all the foundation changing discoveries there are to be made, do they? That thought just depresses me....