Faster than the speed of light?

Bro--Interesting article. One error could have made the speed of the neutrinos seem greater than actual, the other could make that speed seem slower! Maybe they just cancelled each other out? Who knows?

I still don't know how they detect such elusive particles as neutrinos at all, let alone with the accuracy required for that experiment.
 
Jos the Boss said:
I find it amazing how they are exactly the same speed! Maybe they're the same thing...?
Click to expand

Neutrinos and light you mean? Just no I'm afraid, pretty much impossible.

Something I should probably point out is that if neutrinos travel at exactly the speed of light (not less) then it's still a pretty big issue for physics because it is believed that neutrinos have mass, and in physics anything with mass can't reach the speed of light.
 
sushifiesta said:
Neutrinos and light you mean? Just no I'm afraid, pretty much impossible.

Something I should probably point out is that if neutrinos travel at exactly the speed of light (not less) then it's still a pretty big issue for physics because it is believed that neutrinos have mass, and in physics anything with mass can't reach the speed of light.
Click to expand
Impossible is nothing, in some way they must have the same quantity! And does that mean it's only a matter of time until humans reach near that speed?!
 
Why it is impossible for some thing to travel faster then the speed of light.

The speed of light, (or the speed of a photon) in a near-perfect vacuum is exactly 186,282 miles per second. We perceive photons (light) traveling at this speed because they are massless, or have no ‘weight’.

Every particle in our universe (including photons) move or ‘swim’ through what scientists call “the Higgs field”. As a result of this interaction, particles acquire their mass. Different particles interact with the Higgs field with different strengths, which is why some particles are heavier (have more mass) than others. Photons move through, but do not interact at all with the Higgs field.

What does that mean?

Since photons (light) doesn’t interact with the Higgs field, it means they aren’t bound by any speed limit. Photons simply move at that exact speed because that is the fundamental nature of our universe. Wondering why light doesn’t travel at a different speed is like wondering why gravity isn’t reversed or what it would be like if our universe only had 2 spatial dimensions instead of 3 (4 if you include time).

Those constants were set in place when our universe was created at the moment of the big bang.

Having said all this there is something in the universe that isn't light but it travels at the same speed as light, without looking it up does anyone know what this may be?
 
I don't know what else can travel faster than light but I remember watching a program on "the science of Star Trek" and they had a theory that warp drive was possible. By creating an area around the ship of normal time it should be possible to accelerate an object beyond the speed of light. The time bubble would also allow the crew to age at the same rate as their colleagues on their home planet.

Might happen one day...
 
The answer to my little question is gravity

Believe it or not gravity travels at the same speed as light this means that if the sun was to suddenly disappear the earth would continue to be affected by its gravity for a further 8.3 minutes the same time it takes light to reach the earth.

This mean Neptune the furthest planet from the sun would not be affected for 4.12 hours
 
Mephistopheles said:
Photons simply move at that exact speed because that is the fundamental nature of our universe. Wondering why light doesn’t travel at a different speed is like wondering why gravity isn’t reversed or what it would be like if our universe only had 2 spatial dimensions instead of 3 (4 if you include time).
Click to expand

You can change the speed of light should you so wish to do so.

Slow it down to the speed of an HRT ;)

http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/1999/02.18/light.html
 
The speed of light is a constant, it's at the speed of light.
While speed of light seems to travel slower through say water, than just "outer space" doesn't mean that it's going at a different speed. It's simply bumping into more things (at the same speed).

Sort of like when you are in in a room with people and you walk from one side to the other. You do that in a certain time.
However, if there are people in the room you need to say hi to or go around, you might take more time to cross the room.
Your speed is still the speed of walking.

You can aim a laser at the moon and move it, it will move hundreds of miles when you move it, way faster than the speed of light. But that doesn't mean it 'is' going faster than the speed of light.

Just explaining the above, as some people sometimes misunderstand how scientists look at 'the speed of light'.

Regardless if they found that neutrinos travel faster than the speed of light.
Various scientists have to come up with the same results all over the place.
The problem is their speed, and their distance. In order to correctly measure it.

Using GPS for example you can say "sending it over, got it?", "yup", "Okay, time?", "Time is off, gps was off a microsecond"
And there you have it, without exact timing, the result for being off a microsecond is being wrong by a million kilometers per hour.

That is, if I paid enough attention in school and understood this all right.
 
Floris But the speed of walking isn't a constant speed is it? I mean, I sometimes walk faster or slower, depending on if I have to go somewhere or not etc. So I'm not really sure if that's the best example...

Unless I'm misunderstanding you :thinking:
 
Josh said:
Floris But the speed of walking isn't a constant speed is it? I mean, I sometimes walk faster or slower, depending on if I have to go somewhere or not etc. So I'm not really sure if that's the best example...

Unless I'm misunderstanding you :thinking:
Click to expand

I just used walking as an example to simplify the example.
Obviously light doesn't "slow down" as it gets closed to an object, like how a human would slow down to avoid bumping into someone.

The Pits said:
Also, the speed of light is not constant, the speed of light in a vacuum is constant (maybe!!)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_speed_of_light
Click to expand

Says "concept" right there ;)

There are a few things to understand about light, one is that normally something is either a particle or a wave length, and secondly that 'something' (such as sound) requires a medium to pass through.

Light however, is both a wave and a particle.
And the wave requires no medium.

For the wave:
The velocity is the frequency times the wavelength.

For the particle:
These photons travel at a certain speed, say approx. 3 x 10^8 m/s

It's as constant as can get, and the absolute fastest possible speed in science.
All though they're hoping to confirm neutrons going faster, but nothing has been proven.

It goes "faster" through vacuum because it has no medium to pass through.
It goes "slower" through say water, because it has a medium to pass through.
The speed of light is the same in both instances. It just takes more time to travel through a medium as it's bumping into particles.

[here]-----------------------c------------------[there] == takes less long
[here]---c---p--c---------p-------c----p--c--[there] == takes longer

The "c" (constant), or, the speed of light is the same speed of light.

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[edit] I actually found a video explaining it better than what I can do

 
So what you are basically saying is don't get speed confused with vectors, if I remember the mechanical mathematics I learnt 16 years ago correctly. It's possible I don't.
 
Basically, everything which is tangible, i.e., matter or objects you can theoretically touch and pick up have thier own gravity. That is to say that gravity is a force which attracts matter to other matter. A pie is made up of matter, has mass and is a tangible object. The greater the mass of an object, the greater it's gravitational pull. So, if we put two pies close to each other in space, they would be attracted to each other and would come together until they eventually collided. If one pie was twice the size of the other pie, the smaller pie would travel towards the larger pie at a faster rate.

You are attracted to planet earth by it's gravitational pull, but here is the thing: planet earth is also attracted to you by your gravitational pull. However, your mass is much less than that of planet Earth and so your gravitational pull is insignificant relative to that of Earth's.
 
As was said earlier light takes longer to pass through water even air but that isn't because it is slowed down it is because it gets bounced around a bit so it takes a slightly longer route rather than a direct one.

However light is affected and is slowed down by gravity as is time, for instance it takes a photon of light in the form of a gamma ray somewhere between 10,000 — 170,000 years to travel from the core of the sun to its surface, a journey that should only take 2.3 seconds.
 

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