Einstein in error?

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    Einstein in error?

    Can anyone knowledgeable about science explain for a science near-ignoramus what are the implications of this discovery, if it is proved true?

    #2
    energy will not equal mass x a constant squared perhaps ...or the explanation of why it does will fail .... or space time curvature may need rethinking [er sorry but not quite an ignoramus] ... but if true it is profound!
    According to the best estimates of astronomers there are at least one hundred billion galaxies in the observable universe.

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      #3
      As someone not naturally "knowledgeable about science", can I recommend David BODANIS' book E = mc2 published by Macmillan in 2000, which is an attempt to explain the Equation to Cameron Diaz (who'd said in an interview that she'd like someone to help her understand it). As such, the tone is frequently irritatingly "gee whiz", but Bodanis does communicate the difficulties involved extremely well. (Something to do with how, at extreme speeds, the energy required to get faster turns into mass, which requires more energy to maintain speed, which turns into mass, which .... )

      I'm sure I've also read somewhere (I thought it was in Bodanis, but I can't find it there just now) that scientists had long thought that there could be particles that move faster than light, but that these particles' natural speed was faster than c and that nothing that "began" slower than light could ever reach c.

      Best Wishes.
      [FONT=Comic Sans MS][I][B]Numquam Satis![/B][/I][/FONT]

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        #4
        ConCERNed....or what?

        Pretty amazing news from the Hadron Collider this morning....I mean I don't understand it but the thought that they've found something travelling faster than light is unbelievable.
        Scientists discuss the anomalous but exciting find that neutrinos appear to have travelled faster than the apparently unbreakable barrier of light speed.
        Last edited by johncorrigan; 23-09-11, 09:59. Reason: unenlightened!

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          #5
          If it proves to be true, it will have implications for the Special Theory of Relativity, which is about the properties of objects travelling at speeds near to the speed of light in a vacuum. It will not affect the General Theory, which is about the nature of ‘gravity’ and how large objects like planets behave (that's terribly simplistic, but the warping of space-time isn't the issue here).

          The Special Theory says in effect that the laws of physics act differently at extreme speeds than they do for slow-moving objects. In particular, because the speed of light is a constant, and mass increases and time runs slower as we move faster, nothing can ever actually reach that speed. This is the point in issue; perhaps something can in fact go faster than light in certain very special circumstances.

          What are the implications? Not as much as the media or Hollywood will make out (it is not likely that we could move from accelerating a neutrino beyond the speed of light to human time-travel very easily). The Special Theory of Relativity has done well for nearly a century at explaining and predicting certain things (the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki might agree if they could). Einstein didn’t get it wrong, but there now might be some circumstances his theory doesn’t cover perfectly.

          That is just what happened to Newton’s theory of gravity when Einstein’s General Theory came along – Newton wasn’t shown to be ‘wrong’ exactly for most circumstances, just that his laws no longer held good for all circumstances.

          I hope this helps.

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            #6
            Aeolium (#1), I'm a scientist, though my field is ... well, the field, I'm a biologist who has worked in agriculture and pest control: I'm emphatically not a theoretical physicist, I cant hack the maths. However, I can comment.

            First, there is a lot of underlying caution about whether these results are real, or within the limits of experimental error. In other words, what appears to be a result that runs counter to the long-held theory (that nothing can go faster than light travelling a vacuum) is not a real result but an artefact of experiment. Any practical scientist will tell you that when you carry out an experiment, there are variables that limit your accuracy. Try as you might to make them as small as possible, or in technical jargon, minimise the statistical error bars, there will be variation around your final result. Hence we have statistics (in applied biology it is often called biometrics), a subject which, because of my limited maths, has tormented me all my working life.

            When a scientific discovery is presented to the wider public, the journalists/interpreters leave out the statistics, because the terminology and presentational format is meaningless to those not trained in their use. An unfortunate side effect of this simplification is that scientific discoveries are put over as black and white facts, whereas in fact they are usually edged with shades of grey. These results from CERN will be hedged about with measurements of the limits of precision. The billionth of a second measurement will in fact be plus or minus a certain number of fractions of a billionth. How big these variables are will depend on the level of statistical accuracy you require. Convention dictates that to be "significant", ie real as opposed to random chance, a result must be at least 95% likely not to be due to chance (a probability of at least 95%, or p equal to or less than 0.05). Most scientists would be happier with a 99% or even a 99.9% probability (p equal to or less than 0.01 or 0.001); in my line of business, the living world being very variable, me and my colleagues were relieved to scrape home with p=0.05 (that should be an equals or less-than sign, but I cant do that on my computer).

            The point of all this meandering is that everyone is being very cautious about whether this result is real, or an experimental artefact. They say they have repeated it thousands of times, but this is to some extent illusory substantiation: there's only one large hadron collider and it is what it is, complete with its human engineering imperfections; its a practical construction, not a theoretical concept. And what they are measuring is inconceivaby small; a billionth of anything is so minuscule its not really possible to relate to it. Until there has been a lot more checking, I would prefer to say that the theory has stood us in good stead for a hundred years, Einstein was a very clever man and kicking the bricks out from the foundations he built would be very unwise. In my vague understanding of this work, the only other workers with facilities to repeat these observations are in the States. If they can, that will be a powerful confirmation.

            Of course, Einstein may have been wrong. There have been successive theories about the universe. The ancients thought the world was perched on the back of an enormous turtle. Mediaevalists thought the sun went round the earth. Copernicus blew that one out of the water. Newton took it further, Einstein further still. I'm sure Einstein wouldn't have claimed that was the end of the road.

            A final thought. Whether Einstein was right or wrong is of huge intellectual importance, but to you and me and the man in the street ... so what? The sun will still rise in the morning and you still need to earn a quid.

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              #7
              not so much by the pesky neutrinos but that blasted satellite could drop anywhere and it is BIG .... just hope the archduke will be safely tucked up in a safe place tonight ....
              According to the best estimates of astronomers there are at least one hundred billion galaxies in the observable universe.

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                #8
                Originally posted by aka Calum Da Jazbo View Post
                not so much by the pesky neutrinos but that blasted satellite could drop anywhere and it is BIG .... just hope the archduke will be safely tucked up in a safe place tonight ....
                Watch out for the wee grey bits - they're agony when you step on them!

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                  #9
                  Merging Einstein in Error? and ConCERNED ... or what? on Arts & Ideas
                  It isn't given us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world.

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                    #10
                    More of the laity commenting here. Here is the report by Nature.

                    I understand that the 'discovery' is that there is something which travels faster than the speed of light, but I'm not quite sure what it is. And no, 'neutrinos' doesn't help
                    It isn't given us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world.

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                      #11
                      Thanks Pabmusic and umslopogaas - that is most helpful.....my one afterthought is are they saying how much faster than light speed they measured these neutrinos travelling at?

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                        #12
                        Thanks, fhg, Pabmusic and umslopogaas. I am aware of course that at this stage there is a lot of caution about whether the results are conclusive. And also that just as Einstein's work did not completely invalidate Newton's, this 'discovery' would not invalidate all of Einstein's. I was just interested in how, if the results were authenticated, they might alter scientists' understanding of the universe.

                        A conference discussion at CERN on this is apparently available online this afternoon (might be a welcome alternative to the Rattle/BPO Mahler 8th on R3 )

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                          #13
                          Originally posted by johncorrigan View Post
                          ...my one afterthought is are they saying how much faster than light speed they measured these neutrinos travelling at?
                          I've not seen anything, but it's very (very. very) unlikely to be anything greater than a very small amount. If it were, they'd easily tell if their maths is at fault.

                          French Frank -

                          Neutrinos are parts of an atom - rather like electrons that have no charge - usually produced by radioactive decay. We're in the realms of quantum physics here, and very peculiar things happen. They've discovered particles that appear very briefly in two places at once, and others that can move between A and B without ever crossing the space in between. All very weird.

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                            #14
                            FF-

                            I have not studied the explanations you requested on this thread, so please forgive if I am repeating comments.

                            Studied physics at university, but my business has always concerned electronic matters.

                            The basic experimental problem addressed by Einstein's theory of relativity, is that experiments in the 19th Century (Michelson- Morley) proved that light travels at the same speed (186,000 miles per second), no matter how fast or slow the light transmitter is travelling relative to the observer. To make this fact compatible with Maxwell's laws of electromagnetism, Einstein went through a ground breaking series of revisions of our understanding of basic concepts of geometric dimensions and mass, and showed that a fast moving spaceship (for example) would actually appear heavier and shorter, when measured from Earth. Similarly time intervals would seem shorter. This leads to apparent paradoxes where for example a cosmic ray particle having an extremely short lifetime could actually be detected on earth, although the time for it to travel from the outer atmosphere to the earth's surface is longer than its lifetime as measured in the lab. Or, fanciful, an identical twin travelling to a star and back at a speed near the speed of light, would arrive back on earth younger than his brother, although they were both born at the same time

                            Einstein's equations showed that as moving objects approach the speed of light, they become infinitely heavy and infinitely short - hence the rule nothing can go faster than the speed of light.

                            However I well remember a professor. professor Freeman speculating in a lecture in the 1960's - what if things could exceed the speed of light? At the time I thought it a daft suggestion, but I am sure the theoreticians are now well-prepared with revisions to Einstein's theories, should this latest exprerimental fact hold up.

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                              #15
                              Originally posted by umslopogaas View Post
                              A final thought. Whether Einstein was right or wrong is of huge intellectual importance, but to you and me and the man in the street ... so what?
                              Don't be too sure! In 1831, when Faraday demonstrated his experiments showing the link between electricity and magnetism to William IV the king asked what use all this was. Faraday replied "I don't know, your majesty, but I do know that one day you will tax it".

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