Faster than the speed of light?

[SiHart]

Very interesting stuff being discovered at Cern...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15034852

[Jason Thompson]

The key point there is 'if it is right'. So far this has been done once. The essence of science is reproducibility. Of course this doesn't stop the media from grabbing hold of it as if the whole of science has just been turned upside down.

I predict a whole bunch of 'Einstein was wrong, so science clearly knows nothing' ignorance from many quarters now, sadly.

[Rob McCow]

Although... they did say that they had repeated the experiment a few times. I suspect that there will be a calibration error, but you never know. It's worth being sure!

Either that, or maybe we don't know the speed of light as accruately as we think we do?

[Awesome Wells]

Does this mean time travel is now possible? AWESOME. When is Richard Branson launching his Virgin Tardis?

[Alex Me]

Surely if it's disproving, or at least showing fault in, Einstein's relativity, Then it means time travel is less likely. Though I don't know enough about physics to be sure of that.

Saying that I suspect is probably just some sort of calibration error. Its not like Cern has been short of faults since its launch.

[Stuart Wallis]

If anything is faster than light, it's bills and OHMS letters.

[WhiteCrowNZ]

Einstein might not have predicted this, but Freddie Mercury did!

Thing is there are always special cases etc in science. It's like Isaac Newtons theories of motion and gravitation. He was working in the 17th Century - and we still teach his theories now.

However we've also found areas (relativity is one) where they don't quite hold. So things like the observation might just mean there's some aspect of relativity we're not aware of, and need some more rules.

[Stuart Wallis]

And bearing in mind that ancient Greek theories were still the basis of medicine until relatively recently. This side of the Theory of Everything turning up, there'll always be something for physicists to fine-tune.

[Si Hunt]

But that said, I doubt it's possible.

Si.

[Si Hunt]

It would be exciting if faster than light travel became a possibility.

Si.

[WhiteCrowNZ]

But most science we have today isn't just philosophies, but applied science. We know Einstein was in the ballpark with his theories, because we have observed relativity in astronomy and indeed time-dilation in particles at high speed.

[Stuart Wallis]

But that said, I doubt it's possible.

Si.

Alright then, set fire to its trousers, set the dogs on it and see how fast it runs then!