BBC report

At first, I was like
But then I

But...

But...

But!?.

I don't mean to sound crass, but

... HOLY SHITBALLS.

I don't get it...

“Some say that the universe is made so that when we are about to understand it, it changes into something even more incomprehensible. And then there are those who say that this has already happened.”

<3 Douglas Adams

Does this mean I have to go to church now....


I've done things.... terrible things....

wen i can/did haz? http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~imamura/FPS/week-4/week-4.html

this is...incredible...and horrifying at the same time

if this is proven to be true, our entire basis of understanding will crumble, all our theories will be ultimately, despite appearing to be correct, wrong

honestly i hope its a statistical error

EDIT (a point my freind found on the article)

In brief, most everything that's been done in physics for the last 100 years (and things that have come out of it) have been done with the understanding that Einstein's relativity theory is correct, and until now nothing had ever contradicted that.
If it does have a contradiction, then we would have to reexamine basically everything we think we understand about the way our universe works, and we would have had generations of scientists working with flawed views of physics.
It would be absolutely huge, and could possibly invalidate or undermine a huge amount of all physics done in the last century. (is an interesting and shocking point someone made)

I would be extremely surprised if neutrinos went faster than c

I would not be as surprised to find that the measurements of c were off by a little bit. We already know that the signal velocity of light is less than c in a vacuum because of quantum interactions between photons and the virtual particles with which the vacuum constantly boils (quantum fluctuations). We already know that when you put two plates very close together and make a space where there is so little room that particle/antiparticle pairs are less likely to form, that light goes a little bit faster (see the Casimir effect).

Neutrinos interact extremely weakly with matter. Most neutrinos just pass right through the Earth; try that with a photon and see how it works. It would not surprise me much if they interacted less with virtual particles in quantum fluctuations less than light does. Nor would it surprise me much if our measurements of c have failed adequately to take such interactions into account.

Still, it's a potentially revolutionary discovery, and it makes me even sadder that the Superconducting Supercollider was abandoned by congressional stupidity, which had devastating results for physics research.

They were been dragged by skin of aether at the Earths surface. I bet if they fire them the other way they'll be slower...

Just heard this on the telly, and jumped on line to see what I could find.

Could anyone please explain this to me in lay(person) terms? I obviously don't trust CBS do give me an accurate explanation.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/09/22/ap/tech/main20110301.shtml

campermon wrote:They were been dragged by skin of aether at the Earths surface. I bet if they fire them the other way they'll be slower...

Hah!

epepke wrote:

campermon wrote:They were been dragged by skin of aether at the Earths surface. I bet if they fire them the other way they'll be slower...

Hah!

Can I collect my Nobel now?

Nobody knows!

Even if this is confirmed, does it really throw everything on its head and everything we know is wrong? Couldn't this just be a, "Nothing travels faster than light except in the following situation..........."

Obviously things work with our current understanding so they can't be that wrong.

*insert relativity or wrong*