Faster Than The Speed Of Light

[Alexikokopops]

There is probally stuff in the US already pushing past these speeds, I mean look at the blackbird that broke the speed of light 50 years ago, What do you think they have been doing for the last 60 years.

From what I know the next generation of tech is already built, only time will tell when the US top nuts want to reveal there big toys.

Speed of sound: 343.2 m/s

Speed of light: 299,792,458 m/s

The Blackbird broke the speed of sound. Like Concord. The speed of light is nearly 900 times faster.

[dave the caveman]

Im not sure you can describe the methodology as sound or the calculation as logical when they're both clearly wrong, but fair enough, I see your point.

This is more like it though:

[marbelladave]

Im not sure you can describe the methodology as sound or the calculation as logical when they're both clearly wrong, but fair enough, I see your point.

This is more like it though:

The methodology is sound in that it is self consistent.

The double slit experiment is well known but will mean little if you have not experienced the same experiment on the macro level and seen for yourself the interference pattern produced.

The fact that single quanta can behave as a wave until actually observed, when the quantum probability wave front 'collapses' is a little hard for anyone without a bit of basic science to understand.

[Leicester Lass]

What might have been the biggest physics story of the past century may instead be down to a faulty connection.

In September 2011, the Opera experiment reported it had seen particles called neutrinos evidently travelling faster than the speed of light.

The team has now found two problems that may have affected their test in opposing ways: one in its timing gear and one in an optical fibre connection.

More tests from May will determine just how they affect measured speeds.

The Opera collaboration (an acronym for Oscillation Project with Emulsion-Racking Apparatus) was initially started to study the tiny particles as they travelled through 730km of rock between a particle accelerator at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern) in Switzerland and the Gran Sasso underground laboratory in Italy.

Its goal was to quantify how often the neutrinos change from one type to another on the journey.

But during the course of the experiments the team found that the neutrinos showed up 60 billionths of a second faster than light would have done over the same distance - a result that runs counter to a century's worth of theoretical and experimental physics.

The team submitted the surprising result to the scientific community in an effort to confirm or refute it, and several other experiments around the world are currently working to replicate the result.

A repeat of the experiment by the Opera team will now address whether the issues they have found affect the ultimate neutrino speed they measure.

The two problems the team has identified would have opposing effects on the apparent speed.

On the one hand, the team said there is a problem in the "oscillator" that provides a ticking clock to the experiment in the intervals between the synchronisations of GPS equipment.

This is used to provide start and stop times for the measurement as well as precise distance information.

That problem would increase the measured time of the neutrinos' flight, in turn reducing the surprising faster-than-light effect.

But the team also said they found a problem in the optical fibre connection between the GPS signal and the experiment's main clock.

In contrast, the team said that effect would increase the neutrinos' apparent speed.

The team had carried out their measurements for more than three years, exhaustively scrutinising their methods and analysis before announcing the results last year - so why had they not found these issues before?

"That's a good question," said University of Oxford particle physicist Alfons Weber, who is also involved in Minos, the US effort to repeat the neutrino speed measurements.

"Even though you try to check everything, it can always happen that you have overlooked some detail in your analysis," he told BBC News.

Given that the opposing effects only seem to muddy the waters further on whether neutrinos can exceed the "universal speed limit", only more experiments will put the matter to rest.

For its part, the Opera team said in a statement: "While continuing our investigations, in order to unambiguously quantify the effect on the observed result, the collaboration is looking forward to performing a new measurement of the neutrino velocity as soon as a new bunched beam will be available in 2012."

Facilities also at Gran Sasso called Borexino and Icarus will also take part, along with Minos, based at Fermilab in the US, and a Japanese facility called T2K.

With so much at stake, Dr Weber said, these international efforts will go ahead no matter what.

"I can say that Minos will quite definitely go ahead," he said "We've already installed most of the equipment we need to make an accurate measurement.

"Even if Opera now publish that 'yes, everything is fine', we still want to make sure that we come up with a consistent, independent measurement, and I assume that the other experiments will go forward with this as well."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17139635

[Trav Le Bleu]

Ha - this is the problem I have with a lot of science I see today, in many ways, the religion of it. They want for it to be true, so they bend over backwards to try and make it true and report it, if not definite, almost certainly true.

[Raw Dykes]

Ha - this is the problem I have with a lot of science I see today, in many ways, the religion of it. They want for it to be true, so they bend over backwards to try and make it true and report it, if not definite, almost certainly true.

I'm not sure this is accurate. Scientists love finding mistakes. Science is all about hunting for errors. Look at cold fusion.

Science is the opposite of religion.

[Captain...]

Ha - this is the problem I have with a lot of science I see today, in many ways, the religion of it. They want for it to be true, so they bend over backwards to try and make it true and report it, if not definite, almost certainly true.

That's not really what happened in this case though, it was reported in an almost embarrassed way, they really didn't want ot make a big thing out of it, because they were not convinced it was right. I suppose you could say the followers of science picked it up and ran with it whereas the scientists didn't believe it despite the evidence in front of them.

I don't know how we can ever be certain on measuring something faster than the speed of light with the tools we have, I mean how can you accurately capture the speed of something that arrives before it has even left*?

*I know that that is not strictly true, but you get my point.

[Rincewind]

Scientists are always updating and questioning what has been found out. That is what puts science apart from religion. There is always for improvement and rethinking what has gone on before.