question is: are we sticking with Einstein?

but time is not linear, so if one second does not necessarily follow the next then there need be no time travel in order for that same second to precede the last. the neutrino moves out of the typical time and into hyper time, then moves back. Just like in the atomic clock experiments of the 50 and 60s. The clocks came back out of time with the ones left on earth. they traveled at different speeds so they experience different times. The obvious conclusion is that the neutrino's in our time frame were traveling at a different speed than the ones induced by the researchers. IMHO, its a guess but based on some tangible stuff. If they induced a higher or lower energy environment and expected the neutrino's to travel through it as if it was the "normal" energy density environment then of course there would be a difference. Just as when light travels through a gravity well as apposed to when it travels through deep space.

 

Frosty: basically, the theory that nothing can exceed the speed of light is an outcome of Einstein’s Special Relativity Theorem which is, so far, the best explanation we have for several experimental observations. Here’s a simplified history of how that came about:

Back in the 19th century Maxwell’s famous equations suggested that the speed of light in a vacuum must be a constant.

Maxwell and others pointed out that the Earth travels around the Sun at a speed that should effect the result of measurements of the speed of light if it can be measured accurately enough.

The Michelson-Morley experiment measured the speed of light in both directions in several places around the Earth’s orbit and got (more or less) the same answer every time.

A number of scientists came up with ad hoc theories including linear contraction with increasing speed but none of these were satisfactory since they were not derived from logical analysis and did not suggest practical experiments to test the theories.

An acceptable explanation was provided by Einstein’s special relativity theorem which led to the conclusion that nothing possessing mass can exceed the speed of light, and also - unfortunately - to the atomic bomb. The theorem can be and has been tested in several ways, none of which have disproved it.

 

Most here are talking about time as if it were an actual quantity. At present I don't think time exists at all. I think time is something we invented to explain what we see happening around us. Does an inch or a meter exist? No, it is only a measure of length we assign so we can do work with it. Everything changes and time is the measure we assign to the sequence of events that mark that change. A rock ages by minute changes that take place within. At any "time" we look at that rock it will have changed a minute bit and the changes are taking place in billions of parts within that rock. The process is irreversible and "time" to the rock is always forward or positive and can never move backward. The rest of the universe is just like that rock, obeys the same rules and is no more complicated even though our minds have trouble with that last part. Time travel, forward or backward is impossible.

The idea that space may be warped, mutilated, bent or spindled such that two remote points may be brought into contact does not contravene the impossibility of time travel. Once a point in the sequence has passed, it can never be repeated or revisited. Our concept of "time" only has meaning within the space that can be affected by it and that space is very small. This is where my thoughts on the matter lead me and neither strings nor quantums offer any better explanation or simplification.

 

What is important is, we see events happening over time. If the Universe were actually evolving backwards in "real time" and we experienced things happening backwards also, life would appear exactly as it does to us now. If time suddenly reversed itself without our sense of time also reversing, we would presumably re-experience our lives to date backwards and our ancestors would be our descendants. We would go nuts but they would necessarily have to rethink such concepts as causality and would, I suspect, end up being unaware of anything odd in their new world.

If we were a species that experienced time as a fixed dimension rather than as a stream of some kind so that future, present and past were all the same and all visible in some way by merely focussing our attention on When as well as Where, we would have no sense of time passing in our 4-dimensional world or of things like causality, change or motion, and while we were 'alive" our birth and death would be there to be noted and pondered on opposite horizons. To our rational brains, wired as they are, that would also drive us insane, but then there would have been no incentive to evolve such a brain or a sense of reason.

To me, things change, and the changes are spread over something we call time and we must deal with that. It allows us to influence our World, even in small ways, and a great deal of interesting stuff, good and bad, that - overall - I am grateful for, even if I do get a bit weird late at night . . .

 

Einstein patented refrigerators.. knew all about carcinogenics and smoked a pipe not infallible like every one else. I can follow most of his ideas but am doubtful about some.
I don`t like the idea that clocks run at a different rate in different states,if they do I would think they were faulty and need to have an adjustment system.

 

Lots of brainpower in the 10 pages above. Why can't someone figure out what gravity is? How to influence it, block it, focus it....make anti gravity gadgets, cars, boats... Seems that gravity study is more accessible than neutrinos acceleration and speed yet we know diddle of it. Why can't man figure out what gravity is?

 

Guess because we can't even figure out how can a neutrino travel faster than light.

A more broad question: what is a Force in general?

 

Not according to relativity, which, despite the recent anomalous neutrino speed results, even more recently gets massive validation from this week's galactic cluster measurements.

By the way, today I told a joke about the recent neutrino discovery to a guy in my boatyard. He replied that he thought that CERN had got their figures wrong and it was a GPS positioning error. I said "So what the **** are you then, a high energy physicist or something"?

Turns out he was the CalTech experimental physicist who first measured quantum entanglement, the same theory that's up for a Nobel prize next week.

Note to self: be more humble.

 

Um. Er. Hmm. Nope. None of this made any sense to me. Try again in English?

 

c is most definitely the speed of light and every other electromagnetic wave in a vacuum. It's also a limit and a constant, so far as we understand - notwithstanding the recent neutrino experimental results.

This has been tested to extreme accuracy millions of times around the world. Any mass being accelerated to c is VERY easily calculated using Einstein's mass-energy equivalence, which has also been validated and there is no existing contradiction known: E = mc2 which means that any mass approaching c will approach infinite mass and will require infinite energy to reach c. This one is Einstein's simplest theorem.

Concerning your statement about some particles being able to reach closer to c than others, that's purely determined on mass and the amount of energy available to accelerate them, using the above formula.

 

The speed of light is constant "with respect to the observer."

 

Actually, "With respect to ALL observers". See Wikipedia for more detail: "...the speed of light in vacuum was independent of the source or inertial frame of reference"

 

not according to J Magueijo, who solved for the cosmological constant in the field equations. Which were written in the first place because ole Einstein thought there was a flaw in his famous equation somewhere. Which he defined in the field equations but couldn't solve for himself. So its not just that light speed is relative to the observer but also relative to the energy density of the environment its observed in. That energy density is not consistent therefor light speed is not consistent. Which was the error Einstein could work around in the field equations. He couldn't look past the possibility that maybe nothing is a constant.

 

Sorry Ray but it does make sense to me. It is in English. Just saying that there is no such thing as "time" that you could possibly move forward or backward in.

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it

-- Omar Khayyam


Omar understood it.