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Poll, is Einstein wrong?

Nexus 6

By Nexus 6
in The Astro Lounge

Is Einstein wrong?  

79 members have voted

  1. 1. Is Einstein wrong?


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pete_l

pete_l

Posted
Posted

Even if it does turn out that neutrinos can just about squeak ahead of light, in the speed stakes I can't really see that changes much.

All that has to happen is changing the statement "nothing can travel faster than light in a vacuum" to nothing can travel faster than a neutrino in a vaacuum. And the "c" in E=mc² becomes just that tiniest bit larger.

However, leaving aside the (large) possibility of an error - after all , with the speed of light being 1 foot per nanosecond, it only means the neutrino beam found a smallish shortcut :glasses2:, we don't say Ohm's Law is incorrect because of superconductors or spin-glass alloys that disobey it, do we?

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Ptarmigan

Ptarmigan

Posted
Posted
An interesting read, thanks.

Ummm, but, it starts with c=299,792,458 m/s -- well that is plainly wrong!

When He created this universe He was clearly having a bad 7days, what He intended was c=300,000,000m/s !

So a wee while later He thought "not to worry, no one will notice for a few billion years, I'll just slip in a few neutrinos a little bit faster and set it all to rights", and He reached for another glass of aqua vita

:glasses2:

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HippyH

HippyH

Posted
Posted

Like most scientific advances, being based on previous work, later scientists are 'more correct'. When Newton worked on gravity he assumed light traveled instantly. Just because Einstein allowed for the 3.3 nS it takes for light to travel a metre doesnt mean Newtons equations are incorrect. So, light travels a bit faster than we first thought. Doesn't make Einstien 'wrong'

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Si W

Si W

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Posted

E=MC2, energy equals mass x the squared root of light, yet the neutrino is a mass less particles, so the sum of energy based on Einsteins formula will always equal zero, even if the speed of light is variable, so as no energy is involved you could say that the neutrino could exceed the speed of light. but yet again with supernova 1987A which was 168,000 light years away, neutrino's arrived and were detected just before the visible light was detected, if they were travelling faster than the speed of light they could of arrived months or even years before the visible light.

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jamespels

jamespels

Posted
Posted

Far too few options in this poll, to be honest!

We also need:

- "I don't know enough about this to comment meaningfully": about 99.9% of all likely respondents, at a guess - me included.

- "Einstein is 100% correct AND neutrinos still get from A to B at an apparent speed > c": Do we know nearly enough to say they are not just taking a shorter route? Who knows - they may create their own wormholes (for want of a better term) as they go or do something even more exotic we have not even considered yet.

Based entirely on how things have panned out in history (i.e. not on any scientific understanding of the problem), I think this observation may well be correct. As others have commented, Special Relativity is a refinement of Newtonian gravity based on a better understanding and Newton himself effectively credited a lot of his work to his predecessors (standing on the shoulders of giants and all that). There is no reason at all why the Cern researchers may not have stumbled on a set of circumstances we had not previously encountered and which tust need further refinement of Special Relativity. If this is the case, Einstein was no more "wrong" than Newton was - he just didn't see all the detail. If it does prove to be an error, odds are that we will eventually find something that does violate Special Relativity and that we will continue to stumble across these things, generating refinement after refinement until the end of humanity.

Personally, I HOPE the discovery is correct - this is the sort of discovery that could give a real boost to the world right now - massive investment in a whole new branch of physics - potentially major longer-term implications for computing, transport and who knows what else.

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Superewza

Superewza

Posted
Posted
Maybe we've got the speed of light wrong.

Unlikely, you don't measure it based on mathematial formula exactly - you use actual physical equipment.

OHXhgrQUDnI

There is an easier way using microwaves but that's more fun :glasses2:

As for Einstein, i don't think he was wrong. Perhaps he was right in three dimensions? Was Newton wrong, per se?

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Si W

Si W

Posted
Posted
E=MC2, energy equals mass x the squared root of light, yet the neutrino is a mass less particles, so the sum of energy based on Einsteins formula will always equal zero, even if the speed of light is variable, so as no energy is involved you could say that the neutrino could exceed the speed of light. but yet again with supernova 1987A which was 168,000 light years away, neutrino's arrived and were detected just before the visible light was detected, if they were travelling faster than the speed of light they could of arrived months or even years before the visible light.

I'm going to sit on the fence on this one, too many if's and but's from both sides. Until there is conclusive evidence to prove or dis-prove, I'm not going to hang onto Einstein, if he's wrong he's wrong, that's science and progression, just because he's a great man and contributed to science I'm not going to take his side based on his prestige/image as a person.

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Nexus 6

Nexus 6

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Ok folks, apologies for not including more options with this poll, it seemed to me its one or the other, even without a great deal of knowledge of the principles involved on such a topic I was only asking for opinions of what you lot thought.

A casual chat about the fundamentals that govern our universe, so nothing to heavy then.......

Thanks again for looking and posting. :glasses2:

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JulianO

JulianO

Posted
Posted
E=MC2, energy equals mass x the squared root of light, yet the neutrino is a mass less particles, so the sum of energy based on Einsteins formula will always equal zero, even if the speed of light is variable, so as no energy is involved you could say that the neutrino could exceed the speed of light.

1. There is some doubt about whether the neutrino is massless.

2. E=mc^2 is a special case of the general equation that relates to things with mass. Use E^2 = m^2c^4+p^2c^2 for generality. Which becomes E = pc for massless particles.

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Si W

Si W

Posted
Posted
1. There is some doubt about whether the neutrino is massless.

And this is where is all falls on it's head, if the neutrino has mass, and it reached 100% of the speed of light it would of used all the energy/mass in the universe just to get there as per e=mc2, or is the neutrino mass less and it did go faster than the speed of light?, or has someone at Cern got his/her maths all wrong, or even, the equipment could be out, time will tell.

still on the fence :p

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George Jones

George Jones

Posted
Posted
1. There is some doubt about whether the neutrino is massless.

Actually, experimental evidence indicates that there is very little doubt that neutrinos do have mass.

The theory behind this is very interesting. The are three neutrino types (associated with electrons, muons, and tau particles) and three neutrino mass states, but there is not a direct correspondence between neutrino types and neutrino mass states. Each neutrino type is a linear combination of the three mass states. The mass states are the stationary states, so linear combinations like the neutrino types oscillate. For example, an electron neutrinos oscillates into a mu neutrinos and tau neutrinos as they travel, i.e., neutrinos change type as they travel. This explains the missing solar neutrinos.

This (theory and the theory's correspondence with experiments) is explained nicely at a final-year undergraduate level in sections 11.2 and 11.3 of the second edition (completely absent from the first edition) of Introduction to Elementary Particles by David Griffith.

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JulianO

JulianO

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Posted
Actually, experimental evidence indicates that there is very little doubt that neutrinos do have mass.

As they're very difficult to catch, and no one has weighed one yet, there is a big uncertainty about how much they weigh. I think they're only getting estimates of the upper limit of the mass, but lower limits probably go down to something close to or even 0.

Again as above, that brings up the question of how they can travel at c. Or is it just really really close to c just like their mass is really really close to 0? :p

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George Jones

George Jones

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As they're very difficult to catch, and no one has weighed one yet, there is a big uncertainty about how much they weigh. I think they're only getting estimates of the upper limit of the mass, but lower limits probably go down to something close to or even 0.

While it is difficult to find individual mass values (I think experimental progress is being made), there is considerable experimental evidence for different masses, and thus they all can't be zero. The physics community is very much in agreement on this. If you have access, I encourage you to look at the reference I gave

Again as above, that brings up the question of how they can travel at c. Or is it just really really close to c just like their mass is really really close to 0? :p

The latter. Neutrino mass seems to be on the order of a millionth of the mass of an electron, so, in physical processes, neutrinos usually are emitted with energies that give them speeds close to light speed.

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Mr Spock

Mr Spock

Posted
Posted

Of course Einstein is wrong. The same as the people hundreds of years ago thought the Earth was the centre of the universe were wrong. Theories and knowledge are only temporary.

But you are not allowed to say it - anyone who does is burned at the stake... :p

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George Jones

George Jones

Posted
Posted
Of course Einstein is wrong. The same as the people hundreds of years ago thought the Earth was the centre of the universe were wrong. Theories and knowledge are only temporary.

But you are not allowed to say it - anyone who does is burned at the stake... :p

Yikes, I said it!

Even though I think that relativity eventually will be falsified, I don't think that the neutrino experiment has done this, so I voted "No".
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