Did Einstein get it wrong?

[Crazybob]

If Scientists at CERN have the right readings on their instruments, then there is no longer a big read light set-up when you reach the speed of light. Physicists firing neutrinos 730 kilometers had the particles arrive a fraction of a second earlier than expected. A fraction faster than the speed of light. They sent 15,000 bunches of neutrinos with the same result. Read the entire article here.

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/09/23/world/europe/switzerland-science/index.html?hpt=hp_p1

[Duke of Buckingham]

I can understand the excitment given by the knoledge that some particles can give 1,000,020/1,000,000 of the speed of light. As far as we know neutrinos are very stealthy particles that can not transport information. Well that would be interesting if we were limited to the speed of light, even in theoretical phisics that is to be proved maybe we are mesuring a distortion on gravity on the curvature of space or the proof of some other dimension. CERN is a very expensive experience that had too much delays in a Europe in chrisis. They are needing with urgence to find anything. Einstein was seated alone seeing the universe on his own brain. He had no CERN to play with. I love Einstein.=((

Maybe we changed from 299 792 458 m / s to 299 798 453 m / s as our limit speed.

I hope CERN can find new and better things on particles and can give us a better knoledge of our Universe. Confirming or not old theories. We are only in the beginning and will need to learn a lot. Let's keep our minds opened with a critical and constructive spirit. I dont think this fast steps are good to science.

Duke Still Loving Einstein:D

[STMahlberg]

I saw that article this morning when I was at work. Interesting stuff; I hope their calculations are spot on... I'll admit that when I say, "Any Theoretical Physicist that says, 'Impossible' is a hack!" is a bit strong but I think the article shows best what I mean. That word just shouldn't be in their vocabulary.

[Slicker]

I bet a few of the particles cheated and took a shortcut through the collider. OK, not exactly a shortcut, but the inside of the curves like a racecar driver does. Cut the corners as close as you can and the distance is reduced making it look as if it was faster. Some day I'm going to try measuring the distance to the in-laws (almost 1000 miles away) and figure out how much shorter it is to always take the inside lane on the curves of the expressway. I'll bet it saves a mile or two.

[zombie67]

http://xkcd.com/955/

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/neutrinos.png

[NJCaNS]

I bet a few of the particles cheated and took a shortcut through the collider. OK, not exactly a shortcut, but the inside of the curves like a racecar driver does. Cut the corners as close as you can and the distance is reduced making it look as if it was faster. Some day I'm going to try measuring the distance to the in-laws (almost 1000 miles away) and figure out how much shorter it is to always take the inside lane on the curves of the expressway. I'll bet it saves a mile or two.You really need to find a thinking hobby. :)
p.s. Try not to cut any one off getting the the inside curve. I almost did a few times trying the same thing while driving to my dad's. :D

[Duke of Buckingham]

http://blog.omegazadvisors.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Change-Curve.jpg
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dfx65-I7yWU/Tkckb9bGORI/AAAAAAAAAN4/2wgafPwDu6I/s1600/i-dunno-lol.jpg

Faster-than-light (also superluminal or FTL) communications and travel refer to the propagation of information or matter faster than the speed of light. Under the special theory of relativity, a particle (that has mass) with subluminal velocity needs infinite energy to accelerate to the speed of light, although special relativity does not forbid the existence of particles that travel faster than light at all times (tachyons).

On the other hand, what some physicists refer to as "apparent" or "effective" FTL is the hypothesis that unusually distorted regions of spacetime might permit matter to reach distant locations faster than it would take light in the normal or undistorted spacetime. Although, according to current theories, matter is still required to travel subluminally with respect to the locally distorted spacetime region, apparent FTL is not excluded by general relativity.

Examples of FTL proposals are changing the frequency of mass to a higher state by applying high frequency waves of energy, the Alcubierre drive, and the traversable wormhole, although the physical plausibility of some of these solutions is uncertain.

In the context of this article, FTL is transmitting information or matter faster than c, a constant equal to the speed of light in a vacuum, 299,792,458 meters per second, or about 186,282.4 miles per second. This is not quite the same as traveling faster than light, since:

Some processes propagate faster than c, but cannot carry information (See Examples section immediately following)).
Light travels at speed c/n when not in a vacuum but travelling through a medium with refractive index = n (causing refraction), and in some materials other particles can travel faster than c/n (but still slower than c), leading to Cherenkov radiation (see phase velocity below)

Neither of these phenomena violates special relativity or creates problems with causality, and thus neither qualifies as FTL as described here.

In the following examples, certain influences may appear to travel faster than light, but they do not convey energy or information faster than light, so they do not violate special relativity.

For an earthbound observer objects in the sky complete one revolution around the earth in 1 day. Proxima Centauri, which is the nearest star outside the Solar system, is about 4 light years away. On a geostationary view Alpha Centauri has a speed many times greater than c as the rim speed of an object moving in a circle is a product of the radius and angular speed. It is also possible on a geostatic view for objects such as comets to vary their speed from subluminal to superluminal and vice versa simply because the distance from the earth varies. Comets may have orbits which take them out to more than 1000 AU. Circumference of a circle radius 1000 AU is greater than one light day. In other words, a comet at such a distance is superluminal in a geostatic frame.

If a laser is swept across a distant object, the spot of light can easily be made to move at a speed greater than c. Similarly, a shadow projected onto a distant object can be made to move faster than c. In neither case does any information travel faster than light.

For a motionless object that "radiates" (or more correctly, is the source of) a static electric field (such as an electric charge) or a static gravitational field (such as a mass), the lines of the static field itself do not propagate through space, but only may be thought of as existing in space. At a distance from the source of the static field, this may cause an effect which may make the behavior of the field appear to change with speeds faster than light, if it is suddenly viewed from a different reference frame.

An observer moving relative to a charged object sees the field lines continuing to point at the moving object. Due to Lorentz symmetry, no absolute velocity of a system through space can be measured, and thus measurements from any reference frame must be the same as measurements taken from a reference frame that moves with constant velocity relative to the first frame. In consequence, for a distant object moving transversely at a constant velocity which does not change, the direction along the static field back to its source is always and instantaneously correctly oriented to its actual position, no matter how far away the field-source is. Since there is no "retardation" of the apparent position of the source of a static field, this effect seems to be "transmitted" faster than the speed of light.

Because of these effects, a static field undergoes no aberration as seen by an observer, and because of the Lorentz symmetry, it always points to the instantaneous direction source as if it continued with the same relative velocity of source and emitter at a previous time calculated by their distance from each other, divided by c. Thus, static fields from objects moving with constant velocity are always kept "up to date" at distances from the source. However, no information is transmitted (propagated) from source to receiver/observer by a static field, even if the true and instantaneous correct direction to the source is maintained at constant relative velocity. The fact that the source is "there," does not count as information, since it is at most only a single bit, and does not change immediately if the source-motion changes due to its own acceleration. If the source of the field does accelerate from its constant velocity, then its static field still behaves as though it had continued with its former constant-velocity (this is now incorrect, as the direction of the field farther way from this distance now point in the wrong direction, and not exactly at present instantaneous position of the source). The correct "update" in the static field due to the acceleration, moves outward from the emitter only at the speed of light. This is a fundamental reason why emission of electromagnetic and gravitational waves requires the emitter to accelerate. Such emitted waves do undergo aberration when detected by an observer, since they do propagate away from the source at the speed of light. Also (unlike the static field) such waves are capable of carrying information, but they carry it only at the speed of light.

For example, the direction of the static gravitation field from the Sun points exactly at the Sun's current position, and is not corrected by the 8.3 minutes of travel time that light takes between Earth and Sun. There is no aberration for static gravity. Light from the Sun, as a wave, does show annual solar aberration, and the optical image of the Sun, as seen in Earth telescopes, shows the position of the Sun as it was in the sky, 8.3 minutes before. However, since the relative velocity of Earth and Sun stay approximately constant, the gravitational position of the Sun (direction of the Sun's pull on the Earth) does not show the retardation (light-aberration) effects of its optical position. Thus, the direction of the Sun's pull on the Earth and direction of sunlight, are from slightly different directions. If the Sun possessed a static electrical charge, the pull (or push) from this effect would be felt by the Earth in the direction of solar gravity, not the direction of sunlight.

In quantum mechanics, static fields are transmitted by virtual particles, which may have speeds that exceed c. When physicist Richard Feynman was once asked by a questioner how gravity could escape the event horizon of a black hole, he replied simply that a static gravitational field would be carried by virtual gravitons, which have no trouble traveling faster than light. More mundanely, static electric field effects show the same lack of light speed limitations, and electric fields would also "escape" the influence of a black hole. Thus, black holes may be electrically charged

The rate at which two objects in motion in a single frame of reference get closer together is called the mutual or closing speed. This may approach twice the speed of light, as in the case of two particles travelling at close to the speed of light in opposite directions with respect to the reference frame.

For example, two fast-moving particles approaching each other from opposite sides of a particle accelerator. The closing speed would be the rate at which the distance between the two particles is decreasing. From the point of view of an observer standing at rest relative to the accelerator, this rate will be slightly less than twice the speed of light.

Special relativity does not prohibit this. It tells us that it is wrong to use Galilean relativity to compute the velocity of one of the particles, as would be measured by an observer traveling alongside the other particle. That is, SR gives the right formula for computing such relative velocity.

It is instructive to compute the relative velocity of particles moving at v and -v in accelerator frame, which corresponds to the closing speed of 2v > c. Expressed the speeds in units of c, β = v/c:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/d/5/e/d5e38fb0026bd97afd819b87219de322.png

Although the theory of special relativity forbids objects to have a relative velocity greater than light speed, and general relativity reduces to special relativity in a local sense (in small regions of spacetime where curvature is negligible), general relativity does allow the space between distant objects to expand in such a way that they have a "recession velocity" which exceeds the speed of light, and it is thought that galaxies which are at a distance of more than about 14 billion light years from us today have a recession velocity which is faster than light. Miguel Alcubierre theorized that it would be possible to create an Alcubierre drive, in which a ship would be enclosed in a "warp bubble" where the space at the front of the bubble is rapidly contracting and the space at the back is rapidly expanding, with the result that the bubble can reach a distant destination much faster than a light beam moving outside the bubble, but without objects inside the bubble locally traveling faster than light. However, several objections raised against the Alcubierre drive appear to rule out the possibility of actually using it in any practical fashion. Another possibility predicted by general relativity is the traversable wormhole, which could create a shortcut between arbitrarily distant points in space. As with the Alcubierre drive, travelers moving through the wormhole would not locally move faster than light which travels through the wormhole alongside them, but they would be able to reach their destination (and return to their starting location) faster than light traveling outside the wormhole.

Dr. Gerald Cleaver, associate professor of physics at Baylor University, and Richard Obousy, a Baylor graduate student, theorize that by manipulating the extra spatial dimensions of string theory around a spaceship with an extremely large amount of energy, it would create a "bubble" that could cause the ship to travel faster than the speed of light. To create this bubble, the physicists believe manipulating the 10th spatial dimension would alter the dark energy in three large spatial dimensions: height, width and length. Cleaver said positive dark energy is currently responsible for speeding up the expansion rate of our universe as time moves on.

[Branden]

I cant wait to see what else will come out of these findings. What possible effects could this have on the future of particle physics?