Early morning internet browsing turned up a story on the BBC site mentioning that the huge physics lab, CERN, in Switzerland has repeatedly measured muon neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light.
My world has been rocked. I have always believed that the speed of light is a universal constant.
Whatever can be next?
Is it possible that I really do have a huge dick like all strippers tell me?
Art, coll for bring up a interesting topic. There is actually a nice Wikipedia entry on the topic:
Alas, cool as supra luminal neutrinos would be, the universal speed limit still appears to be c. And physicists who announce otherwise have to resign because the did plug in a cable properly. Hopefully the dude is getting head right now from a chick that is making biased measurements of his dick. I can see it now:
Stripper: "don't worry, if you factor in the Lorentz contraction that dick is huge!" Physicist: "nice!" (Knowing it is bullshit)
Einstein is still right. I personally though, don't believe in "String Theory".
Why would a dancer lie?
fa,
I recall quite a few years ago reading an article in "Scientific American" while flying home. The article was about super conductivity and how close they were to achieving it. Guess that didn't work out so well either.
The particles were actually moving faster than the speed of Farmerart's big dick.
Only things with no mass can move faster than the speed of light... does that mean farmer's dick has no mass and is faster than a speeding bullet?
If your in a vehicle traveling at the speed of right and you turn your lights on, will they do anything?
They will turn on.
.. but cannot be detected because the car will arrive at what ever is there to detect the lights. When the car arrives it will obliterate the detector, whether a gadget or eyes.
Arthur C. Clarke's 1st Law:
"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
I'd bet money the speed of light, like the speed of sound before it, will be broken and generations afterward people will wonder how anyone thought it impossible to begin with.
@FA, exactly what jack and zipman have already stated.
@rh48hr:
the funny thing is that in order for the speed of light to be constant, time is not. You, the car, and the light will all arrive at a fixed detector simultaneously (all traveling at the speed of light) as JH said. However the time of flight measured by the guy in the car will be less that the time of flight measured by the fixed detector. All that warping of time-space business.
But don't worry. Relativity also implies that mass is a function of velocity. (Mass increase with increased volatility.) So, it would take an infinite force to accelerate the car to the speed of light which is impossible anyway.
@drac-bro: I believe in G-string theory. I hypothesize that a hot 19 year old wearing only a G-sting will turn me on. I haven't devised a rigorous proof as yet, but it has proven to be the case whenever I've tested the theory.
Corollary -- things get even better when the G-string comes off!
Jab and mjx - I just threw that out there to be funny (an old Steven Wright joke), but its good to know we have some intelligent people on this board!
A car can't travel at the speed of light, but, in theory, it can travel arbitrarily close to it. From the car's POV, it would be just like turning on your lights at any other speed - those photons would appear to be travelling away from you at 186,000 miles/sec. Someone watching the car from the sidelines would notice a dopler effect.
Wow I'm shocked
homothehut is really dumb. If the car is travelling in a straight line and light ray shoots off at an angle from that line then the car does not have to "obliterate the detector". Stupid senile, old fuck ought to learn better than to talk about things he, obviously, knows zero about. HAHAHA!
There was a time in my clubbing past when I am certain I was spending money faster than the speed of light.
No, if you're traveling at the speed of light (which presently is impossible), time doesn't exist for you. You wouldn't be able to turn on the lights. If you were traveling CLOSE to the speed of light, you'd be able to turn them on (albeit you would do it very very slowly), and the lights would still turn on.
But if you were moving literally AT the speed of light, time would cease to exist. Nor would you be able to STOP traveling at the speed of light because you'd essentially be frozen in time, doomed to collide into whatever object you eventually, inevitably made contact with.
@endless:
The frozen in time issue is correct. (same goes for black holes.)
What do you mean by "presently" impossible to travel at (or near) C?
Traveling at C is mathematically prohibited based on the governing equation of relativity. To accelerate a stationary or slowly moving object up to the speed of light requires an infinite force which is impossible. The only conceivable way would be if relativity is shown to be wrong.
(Light, x-ray, radio wave, etc. are not bound by the acceleration issue. They only travel at C.)
"Traveling at C is mathematically prohibited based on the governing equation of relativity"
Kinda like how strippers are "prohibited" from providing blow jobs in the VIP?
It's all relative.
Interesting place to have a physics discussion, no?
But @mjx01, when I say it's presently impossible, I mean exactly that: we don't know how to make something travel at C yet. I understand it's mathematically impossible given what scientists currently know, but "what we currently know" is always changing and it could be the case that some day that might change.
If a dancer travelled at the speed of light, is she a quark-blocker?
art, I think that was an old story that has already been shown to be wrong. It was a measurement error.
Einstein is still right, and the strippers must be too.