faster than light travel in the news

bobwilson

Couldn't find a suitable subforum for this -

I'm a bit !!!!ed off with the news at the moment, whats all this about CERN being baffled that they found neutrinos that go faster than light?

It was known in 1985 that the neutrino could have a tachyonic nature, which can travel faster than light. ( A. Chodos, A. I. Hauser, and V.A. Kostelecky, The Neutrino As A Tachyon, Phys. Lett. B 150, 431 (1985).)

Tachyons cannot slow down to below light speeds, so if these neutrinos do indeed have tachyonic nature as would appear, they are of course travelling faster than light..

This is nothing new.. how is it possible they haven't picked up on this and are going on Worldwide news channels with old news?! :rotfl:

I only did a lowly degree in Physics at University so how could all these CERN doctors not realise this.

ljonski

Professor Cox says that they might have taken a short cut through another dimension. although im not sure what the money saving angle on this is ?

paddyrg

ljonski wrote: »

...although im not sure what the money saving angle on this is ?

Think how much money the light company could save if they can nail each photon to a tachyonically natured neutrino, and get the light there faster. You're underthinking these things.

Edit - [url]HTTP://XKCD.COM/955/[/url]

leithia29_2

Tachyons are theoretical and have never been observed, so CERN are quite right to be interested in it, have they just observed it for the first time or is it something different?

Whichever that is you can't expect a news channel to fully understand the ins and out of advanced theoretical physics. As far as they are concerned, they may believe that if something can travel faster than light all the laws of physics have disintegrated around their ears. To them, it's not old news.

vyle

Apparently Nikolai Tesla first theorised this, but yeah, as far as I understand it (alas, I have not studied physics), it's the first time the phenomenon has been observed and proven, rather than simply being postulated.

timeportal

Its nothing new, I heard about this next year when they discovered it could lead to time travel

SailorSam

ljonski wrote: »

Professor Cox says that they might have taken a short cut through another dimension. although im not sure what the money saving angle on this is ?

The money saving angle is,
imagine how much you can save in speeding tickets if you can drive fast enough so that by the time the radar camera flashes you'll be long gone.