The only real limit is the pea brained mind of the human species. Maybe
dolphins already new this for all we know. Undoubtedly there is a lot
more evolution in store for the human species. That is if it survives. :-D
On 09/22/2011 04:19 PM, sgrayatlarge wrote:
(AP) GENEVA — A fundamental pillar of physics — that nothing can go faster
than the speed of light — appears to be smashed by an oddball subatomic
particle that has apparently made a giant end run around Albert Einstein's
theories.
Scientists at the world's largest physics lab said Thursday they have clocked
neutrinos traveling faster than light. That's something that according to
Einstein's 1905 special theory of relativity — the famous E (equals) mc2
equation — just doesn't happen.
The feeling that most people have is this can't be right, this can't be
real, said James Gillies, a spokesman for the European Organization for
Nuclear Research, or CERN, outside the Swiss city of Geneva.
Gillies told The Associated Press that the readings have so astounded
researchers that they are asking others to independently verify the
measurements before claiming an actual discovery.
They are inviting the broader physics community to look at what they've done
and really scrutinize it in great detail, and ideally for someone elsewhere
in the world to repeat the measurements, he said Thursday.
Scientists at the competing Fermilab in Chicago have promised to start such
work immediately.
It's a shock, said Fermilab head theoretician Stephen Parke, who was not
part of the research in Geneva. It's going to cause us problems, no doubt
about that - if it's true.
The Chicago team had similar faster-than-light results in 2007, but those
came with a giant margin of error that undercut its scientific significance.
Outside scientists expressed skepticism at CERN's claim that the neutrinos —
one of the strangest well-known particles in physics — were observed smashing
past the cosmic speed barrier of 186,282 miles per second (299,792 kilometers
per second).
University of Maryland physics department chairman Drew Baden called it a
flying carpet, something that was too fantastic to be believable.
CERN says a neutrino beam fired from a particle accelerator near Geneva to a
lab 454 miles (730 kilometers) away in Italy traveled 60 nanoseconds faster
than the speed of light. Scientists calculated the margin of error at just 10
nanoseconds, making the difference statistically significant. But given the
enormous implications of the find, they still spent months checking and
rechecking their results to make sure there was no flaws in the experiment.
We have not found any instrumental effect that could explain the result of
the measurement, said Antonio Ereditato, a physicist at the University of
Bern, Switzerland, who was involved in the experiment known as OPERA.
The CERN researchers are now looking to the United States and Japan to
confirm the results.
A similar neutrino experiment at Fermilab near Chicago would be capable of
running the tests, said Stavros Katsanevas, the deputy director of France's
National Institute for Nuclear and Particle Physics Research. The institute
collaborated with Italy's Gran Sasso National Laboratory for the experiment
at CERN.
Katsanevas said help could also come from the T2K experiment in Japan, though
that is currently on hold after the country's devastating March 11 earthquake
and tsunami.
Scientists agree if the results are confirmed, that it would force a
fundamental rethink of the laws of nature.
Einstein's special relativity theory that says energy equals mass times the
speed of light squared underlies pretty much everything in modern physics,
said John Ellis, a theoretical physicist at CERN who was not involved in the
experiment. It has worked perfectly up until now.
He cautioned that the neutrino researchers would have to explain why similar
results weren't detected before, such as when an exploding star — or
supernova — was observed in 1987.
This would be such a sensational discovery if it were true that one has to
treat it extremely carefully, said Ellis.
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