speed of light? bah!

MDM, even according to your link, a tacheon is hypothetical!

I love sci-fi, but we're talking actual science. :)

I'm wondering if this news is going to affect the market-value of DeLoreans.
 
I remember seeing a demo video on a tachyon in my college's planetarium when I was back in college in the early 1980s. We also read about them in Physics class.

So, pardon me for not being amazed.
 
Tachyons are interesting, but again, no experimental evidence for them has been found. Entirely hypothetical at this point. Doesn't stop the new age-rs though; I remember seeing glass "Tachyon beads" in catalogs back in the early 90s. Supposed to make you more attuned to the universe or some such rot. I always found that one particularly funny! Anyway, proving the existance of tachyons would be news as big as this.

Cold Fusion also looks promising these days. There's some stuff going on at the National Ignition Facility (https://lasers.llnl.gov/about/) using lasers to create fusion. That's still a ways off though. There's also the Energy Catalyzer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Catalyzer) which has all the markings of a hoax, but it IS performing. I believe one can be skeptical and excited at the same time.

The really big aspect of the neutrino experiment is the potential for growth to a new field of physics. Just as relativity expanded the world described in newtonian physics, we will need new physics to expand relativity. Again, this experiment needs to be replicated elsewhere (I think there's a collider in New Mexico that comes close to the tech at CERN), and we're not anywhere near the tech to manipulate it, but there's potential here. No amount of skepticism can extinguish the excitement of the idea of our view of the universe changing! It's like being in the room when string theory first came about (another concept of which there is no experimental evidence). I wish Richard Feynman was around to see this!

Oh, yeah, and we found water on the moon too.
 
The interesting paradox here is the closer an object gets to approaching the speed of light as it travels, the more it will condense and implode. Once it goes faster than light, the particles can move apart.
 
Once again, good science, bad science journalism. This is what CERN actually said:
http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2011/PR19.11E.html

Good science: making observations, and reporting on those observations, rather than what you expect to find. Making those observations public for independant verification, coming up with theories why the results may or may not have been valid, and then testing them (as they will in May).

Bad science journalism: EINSTEIN WAS WRONG! IDIOT! NO, WAIT, CERN WAS WRONG! DUMB GUYS SHOULD HAVE SHUT UP UNTIL THEY WERE SURE!!!

Particularly silly given that one of the two theories that CERN presented for cause of error would have the neutrinos moving FASTER than they had measured. The folks at CERN deserve a round of beer for exploring every possible option. The science journalists of the world (both in September and now) deserve a third grade textbook on the scientific method.

Obviously, I'm a big nerd, and I love reading about all the crazy, cutting edge science that has no impact whatsoever on my life. The bad reporting has really been getting my goat lately... :bang:
 
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You nailed it, Josh. I'm in full-agreement with you. Pulp science is what you read in newspapers and magazines. Real science is found in peer-reviewed scientific journals (and the only people who read those are professional scientists). TV programming is the worst!

Science is patient. Journalism is not.
 
I often am at a loss as with whom to be the most annoyed:
1. The idiot journalist that misreports scientific data, with my personal fave typically involving sensationalist numbers like "A 500% increase in X!" Okay... Well... what was it before? 1? And now there's 6? Whoopteedoo!

2. The idiot editor that cuts down an idiot reporter's "full" report from 3,000 words to 200 in an effort to "optimize" column inches, while surely retaining the "most" germane info.

3. The idiot consumer of that particular print, online, or broadcast "news" product that tolerates constant abuse of science by the reporters and editors.

Exactly WHO is the idiot responsible for this rubbish? :grrr:
 
I don't know, I'm inclined to find fault with the CERN guys or with whomever released the news prematurely. It's really up to professional scientists to behave professionally.

Why wouldn't or shouldn't journalists publish such news? It's interesting and exciting. Hey, the CERN guys said it happened. Or did they? Anyway. It sells, so...

Dan Brown has become a very rich man by playing fast and loose with science, history, religion...hey, what hasn't he played fast and loose with? But he's a fiction writer, not a professional scientist. What's the CERN people's excuse? =P

And how did such info get released in the first place? Could it have something to do with CERN being overly eager for attention which might help to justify its existence and its budget?

That's not hating on CERN though. I love CERN and that fact that it exists and that it's doing its thing.

Anyway, all in good fun, right?
 
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That's sort of my point, richy. CERN is doing their job (and pretty well). The original statement (from september) was:
“This result comes as a complete surprise,” said OPERA spokesperson, Antonio Ereditato of the University of Bern. “After many months of studies and cross checks we have not found any instrumental effect that could explain the result of the measurement. While OPERA researchers will continue their studies, we are also looking forward to independent measurements to fully assess the nature of this observation.”

“When an experiment finds an apparently unbelievable result and can find no artefact of the measurement to account for it, it’s normal procedure to invite broader scrutiny, and this is exactly what the OPERA collaboration is doing, it’s good scientific practice,” said CERN Research Director Sergio Bertolucci. “If this measurement is confirmed, it might change our view of physics, but we need to be sure that there are no other, more mundane, explanations. That will require independent measurements.”

Pretty much an open invitation to the scientific community to check their results, and give them new ideas as to how to confirm or disprove the results they got. Again, good scientific practice, reporting on the results they found. They speculated about what the results *might* mean, but really just said, "hey, guys, check our math"

I saw more than a few "Einstein was wrong!" headlines when the story first hit, which is not what CERN was saying at all (even if the FTL neutrinos are confirmed, it does not "break" relativity).

But more egregious is the current reporting. CERN has stated "hey, we found two possible sources of error, one confirms, the other disproves, but we're going to test them both in May".

The headline from Time that Cracker Funk linked? Einstein Was Right All Along: ‘Faster-Than-Light’ Neutrino Was Product of Error with similar such headlines from Popular Science, Ars Technica and Fox News. Again, check CERN's press release that I linked in my last post. That's not what CERN said, at all.

Okay, headline grab, right? Sensationalize to get people to read the article where you put out the real facts. The article does not ONCE mention the second possible error. They only present the facts that support their view...which is exactly NOT what CERN is doing.

They absolutely should be reporting on this; this is exciting stuff! I just wish they were doing a better job of it. Or, at the very least, reading what CERN is releasing (not just the parts they like).
 
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