h a l f b a k e r yGetting blown into traffic is never fun.
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First of all, "send a message to the past" is not a new idea. I think they did it in a movie once. |
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Second, Neutrinos possibly traveling FTL =/= time travel. What you need is a method of manipulating space-time. Of course, the math says this can be done but if you succeeded there would be some causality paradoxes resulting in a tear in space-time and God would probably have to come down from heaven and slap you. |
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Finally, The Guardian? Really? I could not find a single *reputable news source for these "FTL Neutrinos". Wouldn't they be called tachyons? |
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If the effect were caused by being in a gravity well then that could explain the lack of precession from the supernova. |
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Don't they teach anything at university these days ? |
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Wouldn't the gravity well have an equal effect on the non-FTL particles, too? The neutrinos would still arrive earlier if they were moving faster than everything else. |
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I was mostly focussing on the part of the article reminding us that under special relativity objects with mass cannot reach the speed of light. Therefore, these neutrinos would have to have negative mass exceed it, and a particle with negative mass would be impossible to detect on any current equipment. |
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I was thinking that light would be effectively slower in a gravity well than in deep space, and neutrinos might be immune to spacetime stretching for some reason. |
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So light took a longer curved path and the neutrinos didn't... or ramblings to that effect. |
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// Don't they teach anything at university these days ? // |
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Analysis of a statistically significant* sample of graduates from the 2011 academic year tend to indicate that the principal skills imparted by University education seem to be, in no particular order, "Drinking cheap lager out of cans", "Listening to loud music", "Laughing hysterically at in-jokes that aren't funny even when they've been explained", and "Communicating in grunts". |
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It is also apparent that Universities are no longer teaching subjects such as "Personal hygiene", "Living within your means" and "Being able to write a coherent and meaningful sentence in English, including a subject, verb, and object.", the latter being specially disturbing when the incoherent semi-simian involved has just been awarded an Honours Degree in English. |
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//...and a particle with negative mass would be
impossible to detect on any current equipment// he
said, as he watched the chair disengage from the
floor and race upwards into the heavens. |
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to the uninitiated and the humorless (not you, 21
Quest), Einstein himself had said this, searching for
link... |
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Searching in the future, or the past ? It's quite important to be
definite… although in fact, there's no actual difference… |
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Dr. Dan Streetmentioner might have something to say on the
topic, though. |
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Surely if the neutrino experimental data were
correct, we'd
have heard about it before now? |
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You have, it came in an envelope marked, "Reader's Digest Prize
Draw" . Did you not get yours …? |
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Not time travel: parallel universes. If an electron out in Andromeda somewhere zigs both left and right there's a local split but, unless that information is conveyed in some manner, the rest of the universe doesn't bother. If nothing can travel faster than light then c is one of the defining factors. |
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"Note to self: don't announce that your results indicate neutrinos travel FTL - you'll just have assorted idiots demanding time travel and warp drive" |
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Tachyons moving much faster than the speed of light (not 0.1e-34x faster) would do wonders for communication and contacting those aliens who could tell us how to actually travel FTL or travel through time, so I guess in a way this does have some impact on time travel. |
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[8th_of_7] In the old days there were University-
level courses in personal hygeine? |
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If the recorded neutrino was really capable of FTL travel it would have travelled back in time before reaching it's destination thereby registering a slower time. Therefore it is merely only necessary to record a neutrino travelling at the speed of light or less to prove FTL travel. |
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I'll take my Nobel Prize winnings in tokens for the ward's positive reinforcement vending machine please. |
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But why would going FTL make something travel back in time? |
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// there were University- level courses in personal hygeine? // |
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Of course, have you never heard of the University of Bath ? |
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FTL croissant to [lurch]. But he's already got it; in fact, he had it before I sent it, it's THAT FAST. |
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I feel obliged to insert a reality check: the people at CERN
are still leading with the "something may be wrong with
our equipment" theory. They don't even know _if_ they've
found something, much less what it is. |
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So we don't yet know if we can travel back in time?
How did they film those dinosaurs for Terra Nova,
then? |
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DIYmatt superman proved it in that cold war documentary. |
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//Finally, The Guardian? Really? I could not find a single *reputable news source for these "FTL Neutrinos".// |
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I'm boggling at this. If you can't accept *the guardian* as a generally reputable news source, who can you possibly trust? |
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Crochet and Macrame Monthly is generally considered reliable within
its own specialised sphere. Apart from that, the National Enquirer is
probably your best bet. |
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The "FTL" neutrinos turned out to be a faulty electrical connection
somewhere, giving a slow time signal at the receiving end. No
scientists had ever thought there actually was anything to FTL, the
folks who were getting the funny results had only asked for help in
finding their problem (but they went about it slightly wrong --- I mean,
how can anyone else find their faulty connect). |
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Neutrinos as communication would be awful. There was once an
article talking about scientific predictions, and how hard it is to say
something is impossible --- the thing the article guaranteed would
never be built was a wrist-mounted neutrino communicator. |
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Here's my illustration about neutrinos: Hold out your thumb between
your eye and the sun, for one second. Six billion or so neutrinos from
the sun went through your thumb in that second. Notice, please, that
I didn't say to go outside, or even to do this during the day. Even with
the entire mass of the earth between you and the sun, there would
likely only be one less neutrino during that second. (Your thumb
made no difference at all --- chances are that your body will only
catch one neutrino in your entire life (we'd throw you a party, but
there's no way to detect it happening).) |
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Neutrinos are detected in enormous tanks of clear liquid, by the
flickers of light that sometines happen, somewhere in all those
atoms. Your bandwidth is going to be very narrow, and your detector
very big. |
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//(but they went about it slightly wrong --- I mean, how can anyone else find their faulty connect)// |
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If they'd known what the problem was, then they probably wouldn't have asked. There were many ways the discrepancy could have arisen.
For all we know, there might have been numerous useful trouble-shooting suggestions in amongst the things they'd already thought of. That they did then find the issues fairly quickly, after having been already searching for over a year suggests so. |
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