Wait, no. Physics is screwed, again.

[ckam]

Remember that neutrino experiment [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/113292-Scientists-Baffled-By-Seemingly-Faster-Than-Light-Particles] that went faster than the speed of light and everyone freaked out; then a month later, they said they figured out the problem [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/113742-Science-Dont-Worry-Physics-Is-Safe]?

Well, apparently they just redid the test a while ago and arrived at the "we found something faster than the speed of light" results again. They're going to inevitably do more tests and the new results have yet to go over scientific review, but it seems like they finalized the findings to themselves after already taking so many tests.

The difference this time around was that they used shorter "bunches" for the neutrinos. Someone else is going to have to explain this, but they apparently affect the measurements the scientists made since they last 160x longer than they're first report about the results... Blah.

There are going to be other kinks the scientists will definitely iron out, but that will come within time.

My thoughts on this is that I hope physics can be broken. I really need to travel back in time for personal and political reasons.

link [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15791236]

 

[rangerman351]

Is it just me or do neutrinos sound like they belong in a well balanced breakfast?

 

[Plumerou]

so what if it goes a bit faster?, scientific method people, and besides, dont you all want space ships that can travel at hyper speed? well here is the first step :O!

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

Is it just me or do neutrinos sound like they belong in a well balanced breakfast?

I have always thought this

OT: When you hit 88 miles per hour.... You're going to see some serious shit.

 

[Dr_Horrible]

Is it just me or do neutrinos sound like they belong in a well balanced breakfast?

I have always thought this

OT: When you hit 88 miles per hour.... You're going to see some serious shit.

Same here, buy your Neutrin-Os today!
[sub]part of a balanced breakfast[/sub]

OT: Well, I'm hoping this works out, because I want to see some FTL shit go down, because it would be cool.

 

[Saltyk]

Well, I'm pretty sure physics breaks down on the atomic scale. Shit get crazy at that level. But it's not so much that they are broken I'd say, but rather that we don't fully comprehend all the laws of physics. In other words, we don't know how it works completely. Maybe one day, we'll figure this stuff out and the Starship Enterprise will be born in reality. And then, the Death Star. Because we just can't have nice things.

Is it just me or do neutrinos sound like they belong in a well balanced breakfast?

I have always thought this

OT: When you hit 88 miles per hour.... You're going to see some serious shit.

"No, you'll be violating the speed limit. So do try to drive slower than that."

Also, I do love my neutrinos in milk. Best part of the morning!

 

[RatRace123]

All this sciencey stuff just goes over my head.
Have we developed FTL space travel yet? And if not, why?

 

[Neverhoodian]

Is it just me or do neutrinos sound like they belong in a well balanced breakfast?

Nah, they belong in Dimension X.

If it is possible to travel faster than the speed of light then NASA's funding problems will be over. It would also have the added bonus of killing the "I don't want to live on this planet anymore" fad (don't like it? Then leave).

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

Have we developed FTL space travel yet? And if not, why?

No. Accelerating things to near light speed requires stupid amounts energy for mere sub-atomic particles. Try doing that to a whole ship.

 

[RatRace123]

Have we developed FTL space travel yet? And if not, why?

No. Accelerating things to near light speed requires stupid amounts energy for mere sub-atomic particles. Try doing that to a whole ship.

Stupid science, ruining my fantasies again.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

Have we developed FTL space travel yet? And if not, why?

No. Accelerating things to near light speed requires stupid amounts energy for mere sub-atomic particles. Try doing that to a whole ship.

Stupid science, ruining my fantasies again.

I know right? What a dick.

 

[TheScientificIssole]

Is it just me or do neutrinos sound like they belong in a well balanced breakfast?

Holy shit, PROBLEMS=GONE. You just solved a bit of depression, though now that I"m solved I have to stop eating my depression foods. DAMN.
OT: You know what this means, set phasers to fun, we can travel at warp speed.

 

[KiloFox]

Well, I'm pretty sure physics breaks down on the atomic scale. Shit get crazy at that level. But it's not so much that they are broken I'd say, but rather that we don't fully comprehend all the laws of physics. In other words, we don't know how it works completely. Maybe one day, we'll figure this stuff out and the Starship Enterprise will be born in reality. And then, the Death Star. Because we just can't have nice things.

see... the way i see it... if we can accelerate an atomic particle to FTL speeds, then what's stopping us from accelerating all the particles in a single atom to FTL speeds? then what's from stopping us from moving a whole gods-damned SPACE SHIP to FTL speeds? way i see it, logically, if i can move part of something fast, than if i scale up the required energy properly, than i can move a much BIGGER something at the same speed. sure it might take COLOSSAL amounts of energy to get a spaceship to go FTL... but at that point we'll probably have invented a safe fusion reactor... (and logically we can even reverse that process... using the waste from fusion reactors in fission reactors, and that waste in fusion reactors... et cetera resulting in STUPID efficient energy) and we would probably have a much easier time coming up with the energy consumption problem by then...

then again... we could always just try and develop an alternative to FTL travel, and that's essentially taking a shortcut across time-space... and basically manifesting a wormhole to take us somewhere (probably what hyperspace actually is, i'm pretty confident that's what the Halo game's "slipspace" drives are, et cetera)... but FTL travel is probably easier to shoot for right now XD

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Wait, isn't this a good thing. Discovering something that can travel faster than light suggests that it is indeed possible to do so. This is good thing. Also physics aren't broken, physics as we currently understand them are broken. People previously only thought that nothing could go faster than light because until now nothing had been discovered that could. Well now something has so the speed of light is no longer the ceiling velocity which cannot be exceeded.

Have we developed FTL space travel yet? And if not, why?

No. Accelerating things to near light speed requires stupid amounts energy for mere sub-atomic particles. Try doing that to a whole ship.

Doesn't mean it's not possible though.

 

[milna64]

Okay. SO.

When you start travelling really fast, time gets longer (slows down), distance gets shorter, and most importantly you begin to weigh more. The more something weighs, the more energy it requires to make it travel fast, until eventually, your mass becomes infinitely large and the energy to make that happen also tends to infinity. The only way to get around this is too have no mass.

Massless particles exist, and they must travel at a certain speed, which we will call c. Light is composed of massless particles called photons, and so they travel at the speed c. c, by the way, is an intrinsic property of the universe and it is basically a measure of how difficult it is to travel through empty space. It has also been defined to be an EXACT number. The meter is measured as "how far light travels in 1/c seconds".

So anyway, the only way to travel at speed c, is to have no mass. Neutrinos have been measured to have mass, albeit unimaginably small. (roughly 1 thousanth that of an electron, or less). This means that to travel at the speed of light, neutrinos need to have an infinite amount of energy, which is impossible.

The fact is that the limitations on the speed of light isn't a stand-alone fact in physics. If it was wrong, or it was found that particles CAN travel faster than c, huge waves of well established physics will have to be thrown out and the scientific community will have to start over.

In my opinion (I have a degree in theoretical physics by the way), it is far more likely that the experiment is broken in some way than such a massive amount of physics to be wrong. However, I am willing to accept the possibility that I am wrong. That would actually be incredibly exciting...

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

Wait, isn't this a good thing. Discovering something that can travel faster than light suggests that it is indeed possible to do so. This is good thing. Also physics aren't broken, physics as we currently understand them are broken. People previously only thought that nothing could go faster than light because until now nothing had been discovered that could. Well now something has so the speed of light is no longer the ceiling velocity which cannot be exceeded.

Have we developed FTL space travel yet? And if not, why?

No. Accelerating things to near light speed requires stupid amounts energy for mere sub-atomic particles. Try doing that to a whole ship.

Doesn't mean it's not possible though.

Never said that, he was just asking why we haven't yet.

 

[RADIALTHRONE1]

OT: When you hit 88 miles per hour.... You're going to see some serious shit.

Damn you and your stealing my line!

 

[Boom129]

The sooner they discover time travel the better, there are a few things I'd like to fix about last summer.

FTL=Time Travel is based on a technicality, in that an object can reach its destination before anyone sees it happen.
So no, that wouldn't work

 

[Thaluikhain]

Take note of the very first words of that article.

"If confirmed by other experiments".

As yet, there is nothing to see here.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Wait, isn't this a good thing. Discovering something that can travel faster than light suggests that it is indeed possible to do so. This is good thing. Also physics aren't broken, physics as we currently understand them are broken. People previously only thought that nothing could go faster than light because until now nothing had been discovered that could. Well now something has so the speed of light is no longer the ceiling velocity which cannot be exceeded.

Have we developed FTL space travel yet? And if not, why?

No. Accelerating things to near light speed requires stupid amounts energy for mere sub-atomic particles. Try doing that to a whole ship.

Doesn't mean it's not possible though.

Never said that, he was just asking why we haven't yet.

Which should be fairly obvious. We only just discovered that it's even possible to travel faster than light. Getting us traveling that fast is still a whole other issue.