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Re: Faster than light results at CERN

2 by aldo
The Blessed One
I thought it was indeed very interesting, particularly for this quote
Subir Sarkar, head of particle theory at Oxford University, said: "If this is proved to be true it would be a massive, massive event. It is something nobody was expecting. The constancy of the speed of light essentially underpins our understanding of space and time and causality, which is the fact that cause comes before effect.

"Cause cannot come after effect and that is absolutely fundamental to our construction of the physical universe. If we do not have causality, we are buggered."

Albeit it's worth noting we're dealing with tiny margins here - billionths of a second.

6 times the stated margin of error for the detectors, but still; what are the odds of it being an unknown sensor issue rather than a fundamental change in physics?

(NB: that isn't a rhetorical question)

Re: Faster than light results at CERN

10 by aldo
The Blessed One
FSF wrote:I guess we can only wait until the Japanese and/or the Americans publish their results...
Well, even the CERN team haven't actually formed any conclusions yet, only published their data. I skimmed the paper they released; everything physics-y is completely over my head, but the conclusion is essentially to 'OMG WTF?'

Bearing in mind that it's a bit of an ultimate nightmare, too. Given the amount of checking and testing required to determine the standard error, they have two interpretations. Either they fundamentally broke physics, or they have a complete utter b#stard of a mistake to find and fix.
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