http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/ ... CW20110922

Discuss?

Myself, I have no thoughts that go much beyond, "holy shit, if others can duplicate this...", and then my mind just kinda goes Woah.

We are all just re-cycled stardust, neutrinos being awesome little sub-atomic particles that obviously have been waiting to prove to everyone that they have always been capable of travelling faster than light!

I Love this idea, though coming up with a device that can propel anything larger than a neutrino to travel 60 nanoseconds faster than the speed of light? A tough tough challenge.

Yeah spotted this news yesterday and thought oh shit & my husband's comment was 'First CERN says maybe the the Higgs boson doesn't exist and particle physics is wrong, now they break the speed of light and show Einstien might be wrong, too. Did physicists of the past get anything right..?' and I loved the comment made by the scientists on the BBC article...

"We tried to find all possible explanations for this," said report author Antonio Ereditato of the Opera collaboration.
"We wanted to find a mistake - trivial mistakes, more complicated mistakes, or nasty effects - and we didn't," he told BBC News.
"When you don't find anything, then you say 'Well, now I'm forced to go out and ask the community to scrutinise this.'"

Forced lol :)

http://io9.com/5843112/faster-than-ligh ... ot-so-fast

Good followup.

It's all so interesting! We can only really sit here and watch the scientists do their thing I guess!

I think it's really important to be cautious here.
http://xkcd.com/955/

I'm not saying this isn't awesome however. But the machines at CERN are some of the most complicated ever built by humans and there's a lot that could go wrong. There's a lot of physics that predicts events correctly built on Einstein.

However, Newton and Kepler both had theories that correctly predict events on Earth but aren't right when you look at things outside of the scale they had to work with when they were developing the theories. So there's that.

From what I have read, on the one hand, there are a lot of possible errors in their calculations. On the other hand, they claim that even after corrections they still cannot account for nor discount the result.

An interesting consequence of this could be time travel. Since according to the theory of relativity, time slows down as you approach the speed of light and then STOPS at the speed of light....then if you can go FASTER, theoretically you could go backwards or forwards in time...in theory. However this is only if Einstein's theory holds true PAST the speed of light which no one has even considered before since it was the theoretical speed limit of the universe.

We have always "proven" and then disproven theories for all time. A thousand years ago we KNEW the earth was the center of the universe. Then we KNEW the earth was flat. We also KNEW that time was a constant and not relative. So imagine what else we KNOW. As an ex-scientist (quit my work to be a mom), this stuff fascinates me. It also aggravates me to no end when scientists set ultimatums in their field knowing full well we have broken those consistently over the course of history!

Unfortunately it appears they have made a mistake. Oh WHY!?

But it is indeed very much fascinating! I'd study physics, if I were just not such a sloppy maths student (I always know how it works, but keep screwing it up anyway), but now I am aiming for Biology just because it's my "second best" ;)
Tough I always love scientific articles, information, documentaries, and stuff. I hope I will some day add something to this great pool of knowledge myself. We just know SO little...! And the world is too amazing not to care about it...! :D

Well the other option, is the one that physicists have proven. "The don't move the spaceship but move the table cloth effect." If somehow the universe was "moved" then they would have arrived sooner without going faster (And possibly slower) than the speed of light. That's the theory anyway, that the universe can be moved. (An idea that was investigated and then applied to the possibility of distance space travel.) If I am way off, or very wrong please correct me and try not to laugh at me.

Another note, Einstein's theory for very big things (macro) doesn't agree with particle physics which includes the field of quantum mechanics. That isn't to say that Einstein is wrong, or QM/PP are wrong. That is to say that they don't agree, which feeds the flame for "why?" and the quest for the "universal theory of everything."

Yes, I know, and I think you're quite right!
In theory all of this is possible, and I think it'll be the only possibility we have to get to distant solar systems. EVER. I mean, crap! Even the speed of light seems like a tortoise crawl compared to the size of the universe!
But haven't they made a mistake at CERN? I heard they said that just recently...

I find that strange too... it is as if there is some sort of a borderline which divides the "small" and "big" world, and both worlds are governed by different laws. But that is just... weird, and probably ridiculous too. But, well, the quantum world IS weird and ridiculous for mortal souls like us...! And why isn't the "normal" world like this? I am made up of atoms, if my atoms can all be at three places at once, why can't I? It's just so... strange! But also very intriguing.

Bella (is that your real name? I just realised I have no idea!) - as far as I understand it, atoms can only be in multiple places at once when they are not being "observed", and the act of observation forces it to pick its location in space-time. Because of our physical size, it's impossible for us to not be "observed" by the environment - ie energy from the sun, etc - which is why "we" can only be in one place at a time.

I saw this in a documentary recently and that might not be EXACTLY correct but, if I remember correctly, it's along the right lines!

I'm also reading A Brief History of Time currently. Have attempted to read it twice in the past and gotten too lost after chapter 2 but, now that I'm a bit more informed on quantum mechanics, I seem to be handling it a bit better. Especially when I realised the other day that I understood why faster-than-light travel is theoretically impossible. That was a "yay, it's sinking in!" moment.