Thread: Faster than light?

I posted this in Astrophysics, but now I'm thinking this might be a better place:

DailyTech - CERN Physicists Observe First Faster-Than-Light Long-Distance Travel

Now, for the first time, subatomic particles have been witnessed as travelling faster than the speed of light. CERN, the European physics organization known for maintaining the Large Hadron Collider, has been playing with neutrinos in its OPERA experiment. As they don't interact with normal particles it's been sending them through the Earth, hurtling from CERN in Geneva, Switzerland to INFN Gran Sasso Laboratory in Italy. The journey is 454-miles (730-kilometers) long.

But the CERN researchers noticed something intriguing. The neutrino traversed the distance 60±10 nanoseconds faster than light would have according to advanced analysis using GPS systems and atomic clocks to measure the time it took the roughly 15,000 neutrinos produced to complete their journey. Those results indicate that the neutrinos were travelling two-parts-per-million faster than the speed of light.

What does this mean for SR/GR?

These results turned out to be due to a technical problem in the measuring equipment :

Faster-than-light neutrino anomaly - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

These neutrinos in fact travelled at subliminal speeds, as expected.

Thanks Markus

I found the wiki article right after I posted this. I need to exercise more care, clearly...

Neutrinos have a very minute mass.
And any particle that's travelling at light speed should stop moving in time.
So to best of my logic any particle travelling faster than light should travel back in time.

Originally Posted by RobinM

I posted this in Astrophysics, but now I'm thinking this might be a better place:

DailyTech - CERN Physicists Observe First Faster-Than-Light Long-Distance Travel

Now, for the first time, subatomic particles have been witnessed as travelling faster than the speed of light. CERN, the European physics organization known for maintaining the Large Hadron Collider, has been playing with neutrinos in its OPERA experiment. As they don't interact with normal particles it's been sending them through the Earth, hurtling from CERN in Geneva, Switzerland to INFN Gran Sasso Laboratory in Italy. The journey is 454-miles (730-kilometers) long.

But the CERN researchers noticed something intriguing. The neutrino traversed the distance 60±10 nanoseconds faster than light would have according to advanced analysis using GPS systems and atomic clocks to measure the time it took the roughly 15,000 neutrinos produced to complete their journey. Those results indicate that the neutrinos were travelling two-parts-per-million faster than the speed of light.

What does this mean for SR/GR?

Why don't you try reading the date of the article before posting?

Originally Posted by MaxPayne

So to best of my logic any particle travelling faster than light should travel back in time.

This is incorrect and the biggest thing misunderstood amongst laymen. Time stops at c you're correct but even 1metre faster than light and time becomes imaginary. No number when squared becomes a negative.

Now let's plug in a number greater than the speed of light.

where is some number greater than the speed of light

So what does this mean that time becomes imaginary? Well it means that you simply can't go faster than light and to stop making threads about faster than light travel.

So what does this mean that time becomes imaginary? Well it means that you simply can't go faster than light and to stop making threads about faster than light travel.

yes, you are right....But I think this equation only applies to particles having mass .(please correct me if I am wrong)

Also if there are particles that interact with space differently, the space could well be giving them a push instead of pulling it (reducing its acceleration). (Ah you get the idea, lol)
Photons don't get any such help, so it can only travel at c.

Also it is not necessary to travel through space, you can just vanish from some point and pop up at some other place. If I am not wrong this law only explains why objects can't travel through space faster than light.

Imaginary time can be used to describe events before Big bang.

Originally Posted by MaxPayne

yes, you are right....But I think this equation only applies to particles having mass .(please correct me if I am wrong)

Also if there are particles that interact with space differently, the space could well be giving them a push instead of pulling it (reducing its acceleration). (Ah you get the idea, lol)
Photons don't get any such help, so it can only travel at c.

Also it is not necessary to travel through space, you can just vanish from some point and pop up at some other place. If I am not wrong this law only explains why objects can't travel through space faster than light.

Imaginary time can be used to describe events before Big bang.

You're implying that there could be a particle with negative mass? I think particles existing with negative mass is nothing but exotic thinking. If however you're talking about particles with 0 mass such as light then the equation shows you perfectly well why the speed of light is the absolute limit. If you sat on a photon you would not experience any time. If that photon somehow went faster than light, time would become imaginary, and what does that even mean?

In regards to teleportation this is still a very skeptical subject and while it is possible on the quantum level, the object doesn't travel though space faster than light. It just gets there before light. For example if me and you race around a track, we both agree to run 10mph, you run the correct route, but I cut across the corners and finish first, I did not run faster than you, I simply took a shortcut and arrived first.

So when you're saying things like "faster than light" you must clarify what you mean because people think you're talking about objects moving though space-time faster than light, which is not the case, they simply take a shorter route.

nevermind, my mistake.