The speed of light is NOT constant

7n7is · 2012-01-19 11:38 pm

benb · 2012-02-22 11:39 pm

Loose fiber optic cable adds 60nS to neutrino speed measurement:

BREAKING NEWS: Error Undoes Faster-Than-Light Neutrino Results
BREAKING NEWS: Error Undoes Faster-Than-Light Neutrino Results - ScienceInsider

sofaspud · 2012-02-22 11:47 pm

d'oh!! Thanks for linking this follow-up.

kevinahcc20 · 2012-02-22 11:57 pm

AE remains the Traffic Cop Emeritus of the Universe

SPEED LIMIT
C

vacuphile · 2012-02-23 12:19 am

What a day for science. Plus, what a f*** *p.

SY · 2012-02-23 12:30 am

Science at its best. Publish everything, let anyone look at it, let anyone try to find the flaws. If this holds up, oh well.

DF96 · 2012-02-23 12:27 pm

Perhaps slightly premature to pop corks, but looks hopeful. Once confirmed (in May, I think?), I predict a deafening silence from the Einstein-critics!

SY · 2012-02-23 12:41 pm

My view is perhaps the opposite- if it had held up, I'd pop corks. New physics is always interesting. An amazing result which is due to a measurement error takes us back to the now-mundane.

The idea that crackpots will be discouraged is somewhat naive.

simon7000 · 2012-02-23 2:40 pm

SY said:
The idea that crackpots will be discouraged is somewhat naive.

SY,

Is that Latin or some other language? I mean that unfamiliar word "discouraged."

DF96 · 2012-02-23 2:45 pm

No, I didn't mean discouraged, but I don't expect to hear them apologise for crowing when they thought (for a few months) that Einstein had been proved wrong. And we will draw a veil over the issue that this finding, whichever way it finally turns out, comes from proper physicists and engineers doing their job and not crackpots writing letters in green ink and CAPITAL LETTERS.

SY · 2012-02-23 3:05 pm

Well, even if the result were correct, it doesn't prove Einstein's theories wrong, it just proves them incomplete. Or our understanding of neutrinos as incomplete. Not that this would slow down the nutjobs for even 1 nanosecond, much less 60.

benb · 2012-02-23 6:39 pm

I wonder if in or before Einstein's time there was anyone saying "Newton was WRONG!"

DF96 · 2012-02-23 6:50 pm

Bring back the cosmic epicycles!

SY · 2012-02-23 6:53 pm

DF96 said:
Bring back the cosmic epicycles!

I loved them, but I think their lead singer died a few years back.

Wavebourn · 2012-02-23 6:58 pm

Yeah, and Kipling cited that in his Mowgli story, "Akella has missed!"

simon7000 · 2012-02-23 8:48 pm

benb said:
I wonder if in or before Einstein's time there was anyone saying "Newton was WRONG!"

Oh yeah. From the flat Earthers to the we are inside a sphere folks (A Florida group was the best example of this one).

There still are lots of folks who still don't believe that gravity bit, you know which falls faster a pound of feathers or a pound of lead.

Wavebourn · 2012-02-24 1:45 am

simon7000 said:
There still are lots of folks who still don't believe that gravity bit, you know which falls faster a pound of feathers or a pound of lead.

I don't believe that objects of different sizes with the same mass fall especially in the air during the same time. But I believe in gravity, and would like to know what causes it.

Cassiel · 2012-02-24 9:29 am

I believe in the gravity of the situation.

SY · 2012-02-24 9:59 am

Wavebourn said:
But I believe in gravity, and would like to know what causes it.

"Gravitation," Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler. We used to call it the Gravity Phonebook because it was paperbound and huge. Eddington's "Space, Time and Gravitation: An Outline of the General Relativity Theory" is a lot easier to digest- and afford. Under $10.

DF96 · 2012-02-24 10:35 am

One of the problems of gravity being hijacked by the mathematicians is that they don't ask awkward questions like "what causes it"; they just get on with the calculations. Now of course it could turn out that the universe really is just geometrical, and all the particles and forces which physicists investigate don't really exist, but I would be much happier if someone came up with a good quantum theory of gravitation rather than a geometrical theory of electrons and photons etc. Maybe I am just trapped in my 20th century physics education!

The speed of light is NOT constant

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