Faster Than the Speed of Light? Heads up BBC2

www.bbc.co.uk...

Last month an international group of scientists made an astonishing claim - they had detected particles that seemed to travel faster than the speed of light. It was a claim that contradicted more than a hundred years of scientific orthodoxy. Suddenly there was talk of all kinds of bizarre concepts, from time travel to parallel universes.

So what is going on? Has Einstein's famous theory of relativity finally met its match? Will we one day be able to travel into the past or even into another universe?

In this film, Professor Marcus du Sautoy explores one of the most dramatic scientific announcements for a generation. In clear, simple language he tells the story of the science we thought we knew, how it is being challenged, and why it matters.

Tonight this airs on BBC2 and should prove an interesting watch. Despite recent claims this has not managed to be thoroughly challenged.
At the least it might give people a bit of insight to this whole situation.

I'm looking forward to it.

reply to post by pazcat


I think Ronald van Elburg from the University of Groningen in Holland has pretty much debunked the faster-than-light neutrinos claim already. The team indeed forgot to take into account the time it takes for the GPS signal to travel between the Earth and the satellite, which comes down to 64 nanoseconds. Compare that to the 60 nanoseconds that the neutrinos arrived early and you got a pretty water-tight argument there...

reply to post by RationalDespair


Has there been a rebuttal from the CERN team? I have yet to see verified proof that they forgot to account for GPS timing.

No he didn't contrary to popular belief.
His theory is based on flawed assumptions. The clocks were never in motion, they were stationary ground based clocks which had been synchronised by GPS. Amongst other things.

There have been over 80 papers submitted to arvix from people thinking they can actually prove this wrong(it might still be too) but the problem is unless they have access to particle colliders they wont be able to prove a thing. This is going to require months and months of testing in colliders like tevatron and the LHC to try and work out where the flaw is, if anywhere. That's why CERN made it public, to get the independant verification process happening from people in a position to do so.

Lets not forget scientist are a difficult bunch, there is a line up of people ready to throw this out with the water because it will contradict pretty much their life's work.

reply to post by RationalDespair


There was a thread about this not long ago:
Speedy neutrino mystery likely solved, relativity safe after all.

Cheers for this I didnt know it was on, set a reminder on the TV for it!

Just a bump and a reminder that this is on at 9pm tonight UK time. It will probably be on iplayer not long after and if it gets put on youtube then I will put the videos here as well.

This is the Iplayer link, for those in the UK or with a proxy you can watch this now.

The full show can be seen here now for everybody for free. Faster than the speed of light?

It was a quite a good watch, it didn't go as far to give any answers but it was a good summary of events and throws some different possibilities around.