Faster Than The Speed Of Light?
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?
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?
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23 comments
Einstein is still right, and the strippers must be too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than…
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)
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.
"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.
@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.
Corollary -- things get even better when the G-string comes off!
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.
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.)
Kinda like how strippers are "prohibited" from providing blow jobs in the VIP?
It's all relative.
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.