Faster than the speed of light

[CWH]

It is said that the error that neutrinos travel faster than the speed of light was due to a faulty wire. I have yet to receive confirmation from other testings in other places to validate the result.

Anyway, even if the speed of light cannot be broken, there are ways to force the speed of light to travel faster:

http://m.popsci.com/science/article/...wn-speed-limit

Four-Wave Mixing In four-wave mixing, researchers send "seed" pulses of laser light into a heated cell containing atomic rubidium vapor along with a separate "pump" beam at a different frequency. The vapor amplifies the seed pulse and shifts its peak forward, making it superluminal. NIST
Our nation’s official keepers of time and other standards are breaking one of the cardinal rules: They have figured out how to make superluminal light pulses. This paradoxical sentence — faster-than-light light — is from a new paper explaining how to make the sine wave of light hunch in on itself and arrive a few nanoseconds earlier than it would if it had moved at light speed.

Nothing can move faster than light, as neutrinos coldly reminded us earlier this year. Einstein’s constant C, for the speed of light in a vacuum, is a universal constant. But researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology are playing some tricks with physics.

A short burst of light can be expressed as a curvy wave, with the hump representing the peak of the burst. The whole wave cannot exceed the speed of light, but apparently you can do some physical manipulation to that hump and make it arrive earlier or later than it’s supposed to. Ryan T. Glasser, Ulrich Vogl, and Paul D. Lett at NIST and the Joint Quantum Institute manipulated the hump using a technique called four-wave mixing. It re-arranges the light waves that comprise the pulse of light and makes the hump move forward.
The researchers pulsed ultra-short (200 nanosecond) laser pulses into a cloud of rubidium vapor, according to NIST. Next to this seed pulse, they pumped in a second laser beam at a different frequency. The rubidium amplified the seed light, so its hump hunched forward. While this was happening, photons — because light is a wave and a particle — interacted with the vapor and formed a second pulse, which could also be tuned to travel faster or slower than it is supposed to. The peaks of these light waves arrived at their targets 50 nanoseconds earlier than they would have if they were traveling at the constant C.

Aside from proving that it’s possible to bend the rules, the NIST team could use this breakthrough to study some strange quantum effects of this fast light, which could be useful in quantum information processing.

Could God have forced light to travel much faster than its speed causing the error that the earth and universe are billion of years old?

God creation always amazes me.

[Richard Amiel McGough]

Could God have forced light to travel much faster than its speed causing the error that the earth and universe are billion of years old?

That won't work because there are too many independent ways to estimate the age of the universe.

And why would anyone invent the idea that God would do a miracle that makes the universe falsely appear to be very old? What is your motivation? Oh yeah, I remember. You want to believe that a book written by pre-scientific people is consistent with modern science. Good luck with that!

[CWH]

That won't work because there are too many independent ways to estimate the age of the universe.

And why would anyone invent the idea that God would do a miracle that makes the universe falsely appear to be very old? What is your motivation? Oh yeah, I remember. You want to believe that a book written by pre-scientific people is consistent with modern science. Good luck with that!

You got me wrong, I was thinking in terms of the theory of the Big Bang in which the big explosion could have caused the fragments to travel much faster than light. And it is not just one Big Bang but thousands and perhaps millions of Big Bangs that created the galaxies, stars and planets that we see in the universe today. This may have caused the illusion that the universe is several billions of years old. Just imagine a firework, the lights from the hundreds of fireworks would have reach us at about the same time.




http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/20...ation.universe


News

One Big Bang, or were there many?
· New theory tries to solve problem Einstein raised
· Universe may be much older, say cosmologists

The Guardian, Friday 5 May 2006
The universe is at least 986 billion years older than physicists thought and is probably much older still, according to a radical new theory.

The revolutionary study suggests that time did not begin with the big bang 14 billion years ago. This mammoth explosion which created all the matter we see around us, was just the most recent of many.

The standard big bang theory says the universe began with a massive explosion, but the new theory suggests it is a cyclic event that consists of repeating big bangs.

"People have inferred that time began then, but there really wasn't any reason for that inference," said Neil Turok, a theoretical physicist at the University of Cambridge, "What we are proposing is very radical. It's saying there was time before the big bang."

Under his theory, published today in the journal Science with Paul Steinhardt at Princeton University in New Jersey, the universe must be at least a trillion years old with many big bangs happening before our own. With each bang, the theory predicts that matter keeps on expanding and dissipating into infinite space before another horrendous blast of radiation and matter replenishes it. "I think it is much more likely to be far older than a trillion years though," said Prof Turok. "There doesn't have to be a beginning of time. According to our theory, the universe may be infinitely old and infinitely large."

Today most cosmologists believe the universe will carry on expanding until all the stars burn out, leaving nothing but their cold dead remains. But there is an inherent problem with this picture. The Cosmological Constant - a mysterious force first postulated by Albert Einstein that appears to be driving the galaxies apart - is much too small to fit the theory. Einstein later renounced it as his "biggest blunder".

The Cosmological Constant is a mathematical representation of the energy of empty space, also known as "dark energy", which exerts a kind of anti-gravity force pushing galaxies apart at an accelerating rate.

It happens to be a googol (1 followed by 100 zeroes) times smaller than would be expected if the universe was created in a single Big Bang. But its value could be explained if the universe was much, much older than most experts believe.

Mechanisms exist that would allow the Constant to decrease incrementally through time. But these processes would take so long that, according to the standard theory, all matter in the universe would totally dissipate in the meantime.

Turok and Steinhardt's theory is an alternative to another explanation called the "anthropic principle", which argues that the constant can have a range of values in different parts of the universe but that we happen to live in a region conducive to life.

"The anthropic explanations are very controversial and many people do not like them," said Alexander Vilenkin a professor of theoretical physics at Tufts University in Massachusetts. Rather than making precise predictions for features of the universe the anthropic principle gives a vague range of values so it is difficult for physicists to test, he added.

"It's absolutely terrible, it really is giving up," said Prof Turok, "It's saying that we are never going to understand the state of the universe. It just has to be that way for us to exist." His explanation by contrast is built up from first principles.

But if he's right, how long have we got until the next big bang? "We can't predict when it will happen with any precision - all we can say is it won't be within the next 10 billion years." Good job, because if we were around we would instantly disintegrate into massless particles of light.


God Bless the Universe.

[Richard Amiel McGough]

You got me wrong, I was thinking in terms of the theory of the Big Bang in which the big explosion could have caused the fragments to travel much faster than light. And it is not just one Big Bang but thousands and perhaps millions of Big Bangs that created the galaxies, stars and planets that we see in the universe today. This may have caused the illusion that the universe is several billions of years old. Just imagine a firework, the lights from the hundreds of fireworks would have reach us at about the same time.

Hi Cheow,

I'm glad you brought this up. It's fun to talk physics.

I get the impression you don't understand the concept of the Big Bang when you say "perhaps millions of Big Bangs that created the galaxies, stars and planets that we see in the universe today." That's now how the theory works. The idea is that ALL MATTER of the entire universe appeared in a single Big Bang event when the universe exploded from a singularity. It doesn't make any sense to talk about many "Big Bangs" within an existing universe. It is the universe itself - the entire space-time continuum that contains all matter - that began as a singularity which "exploded." The galaxies, stars, and planets formed a long time after the Big Bang. Here's how the wiki describes it:

After its initial expansion from a singularity, the Universe cooled sufficiently to allow energy to be converted into various subatomic particles, including protons, neutrons, and electrons. While protons and neutrons combined to form the first atomic nuclei only a few minutes after the Big Bang, it would take thousands of years for electrons to combine with them and create electrically neutral atoms. The first element produced was hydrogen, along with traces of helium and lithium. Giant clouds of these primordial elements would coalesce through gravity to form stars and galaxies, and the heavier elements would be synthesized either within stars or during supernovae.

It's fun to speculate about modern physics, but we should start with a solid understanding of what the theories actually state.

Great chatting!

[David M]

Thanks Cheow Wee. I'm gonnato look at this some more.

Hello Richard and Cheow

I also find this a fascinating subject. Will man ever find the basic particle(s) making up all matter and be able to define the basic force(s) making up all forces? What makes up a force?

How many subatomic particles are there? Does the tens of subatomic particles that I was once informed of exist in scientific thinking or have these been replaced by the "quark". I think there are four basic types of quark. Maybe you are more informed as to the latest thinking on this is.

As I consider God to have made all things, I regard God as not being made of the same substance as that which He created, otherwise God could create another God and we are told that there is no other God. Maybe we can conclude that God is not able to create another God and that God is ONE. This would also mean that God could not have created Jesus to be of the same substance as Himself, hence Jesus cannot be God.

For God to have created matter (as we understand it) it would seem reasonable that God must be greater in all respects than the substance He has created. Therefore, being greater means in one respect being faster than anything God has created, or else God could create something that could go faster than Himself. The only way we can explain God's omnipresence is to say that God is outside time and space in which everything else is restricted. This would mean that God can mover faster than light.

As we move up the electromagnetic spectrum which is a scale of frequency we pass through the frequencies/wavelength representing light and we go though the ultraviolet, to X-rays and Gamma rays. This is at the topmost range of the scale with a frequency of 10²⁰. Is there anything beyond Gamma rays that we do not know about? Does God have a resonant frequency? Whether we go to the outer limits of space or to the inner limits of space we are talking + or - powers of 10 which represent incredibly large or small numbers (to us) and yet these numbers might be as nothing to God who works on a scale we cannot comprehend.

I was looking at the scale of the universe a couple of weeks ago and the Hubble space telescope has reached the limit it is able to look into space and where nothing was thought to exist, thousands of galaxies have been observed. Nasa has produced a photograph which they say is the single most important photograph to man, it is this picture of thousands of galaxies in nothing. My question is; if the light is coming to the Hubble telescope representing hundreds of billions of light years from us, then the universe will have expanded even more in that time and what of the light travelling away from the edges of the universe. Does that light keep going outwards towards infinity or is space curved, and is Einstein wrong in this? Such imponderables I doubt will ever be known. As it is Einstein was a genius and a great thinker, but in the end we are dealing with mathematical models to try to explain what we cannot see. Man uses mathematical models to add meaning to what is observed. Mathematics lies at the root of science.

If particles or waves can move faster than the speed of light, this might mean that man has a lot more to find out than he thought. As knowledge has increased science has produced more questions than answers. Is there a limit to what man can find out? I heard it said some time ago that there was not much else for man to find out. He has practically found out all there is to know. Now we have the question; can anything move faster than the speed of light? And now, if the answer is "yes", this opens the doors to asking a bunch of new questions.

Great chatting

David

[CWH]

I think RAM is not aware of the multiple Big Bang theory. This theory could mean that the universe is much older or much younger if the combine powers of the Big Bangs are so huge that its fragments travel many times faster than the speed of light. And since its speed is much faster than the speed of light, they are invisible to the human eyes until its speed is reduced to the speed of light as its energy is used up. The multiple Big Bangs theory could answer many problems faced by the Single Big Bang theory:

Multiple Big Bang Theory


The Multiple Big Bang Theory is just like The Big bang Theory but millions of big bangs taking place simentaneouslyat different points in space. Some may be billions of years back, some in near past and if believed, even somewhereanother big bang is still in a process to create another universe. The 3K cosmic radiology results showed the faint radiation of the big bang, believed that created the universe 4000 billion years ago. This radiation was dated as theoldest and so it was considered to be of the Big Bang. But along with that millions of other strong and faintradiations were obtained and observed. Some of them were form distant galaxies, black holes, supernova,etc. Manywere considered to be the radiations form the quasars and many more were unexplained. These radiations according tothje MBBT are from different Big Bangs some small or some as huge explosions as ours.To explain this, consider a hypothetical situation that our Milky Way is a part of a big bang and the galaxyAnderomeda is the part of other big bang very near to the first one(near means of the order of billion ly). Both ofthese galaxies are now in a different universe which according to BBT, are expanding. At a point of time both theseuniverse will expand and coincide(one universe merging into another).The Milky way and Anderomeda thus also willpossibly collide(we know that both these galaxies are going to collide according to the NASA). This is just one factthat can be possibly explained in a different view with MBBT. This theory just like every other theory BBT, SteadyState, Big Crunch, String Theory,etc., is a belief and a POSSIBLE, not necessarily correct, concept about the birth of the universe.This theory can also explain some mystries behind the formation of balck holes, wormholes.......
This theory is just a conceptual imagination based on my own research and still certainly need to be more polished. Though many astronomers do somehow believe in this concept..i will highly appreciate your opinions to increase my understandings and help in my researches....

God Blessed.

[Richard Amiel McGough]

I think RAM is not aware of the multiple Big Bang theory. This theory could mean that the universe is much older or much younger if the combine powers of the Big Bangs are so huge that its fragments travel many times faster than the speed of light. And since its speed is much faster than the speed of light, they are invisible to the human eyes until its speed is reduced to the speed of light as its energy is used up. The multiple Big Bangs theory could answer many problems faced by the Single Big Bang theory:

Multiple Big Bang Theory


The Multiple Big Bang Theory is just like The Big bang Theory but millions of big bangs taking place simentaneouslyat different points in space. Some may be billions of years back, some in near past and if believed, even somewhereanother big bang is still in a process to create another universe. The 3K cosmic radiology results showed the faint radiation of the big bang, believed that created the universe 4000 billion years ago. This radiation was dated as theoldest and so it was considered to be of the Big Bang. But along with that millions of other strong and faintradiations were obtained and observed. Some of them were form distant galaxies, black holes, supernova,etc. Manywere considered to be the radiations form the quasars and many more were unexplained. These radiations according tothje MBBT are from different Big Bangs some small or some as huge explosions as ours.To explain this, consider a hypothetical situation that our Milky Way is a part of a big bang and the galaxyAnderomeda is the part of other big bang very near to the first one(near means of the order of billion ly). Both ofthese galaxies are now in a different universe which according to BBT, are expanding. At a point of time both theseuniverse will expand and coincide(one universe merging into another).The Milky way and Anderomeda thus also willpossibly collide(we know that both these galaxies are going to collide according to the NASA). This is just one factthat can be possibly explained in a different view with MBBT. This theory just like every other theory BBT, SteadyState, Big Crunch, String Theory,etc., is a belief and a POSSIBLE, not necessarily correct, concept about the birth of the universe.This theory can also explain some mystries behind the formation of balck holes, wormholes.......
This theory is just a conceptual imagination based on my own research and still certainly need to be more polished. Though many astronomers do somehow believe in this concept..i will highly appreciate your opinions to increase my understandings and help in my researches....

God Blessed.

That's right Cheow, I am "not aware" of a Multiple Big Bang Theory. And do you know why that is? Let me tell you - it is because there is on such theory proposed by real scientists. The text you quoted is from an anonymous FaceBook page! And when you read it, it is clear that the author didn't know what he/she was talking about. Just look at what is written - the author claims that the universe is 4000 billion years old, whereas the science says it's about 13.75 billion years old. And then the person says that "the radiation is the oldest and so is considered to be of the Big Bang." That indicates total ignorance of the background radiation. You can't measure the "age" of radiation! It is considered to be a remnant of the Big Bang because of it's uniform distribution. Then the article goes on to assert that different galaxies are in different "universes" which is totally absurd because a universe is defined as the entire set of objects in a space-time manifold. Anything we can see is, by definition, in our universe. The FaceBook article is totally ridiculous.

I think it's great to talk about science, but there is a difference between real science and pseudo-science and half-baked speculations based on ignorance.

[Richard Amiel McGough]

Hello Richard and Cheow

I also find this a fascinating subject. Will man ever find the basic particle(s) making up all matter and be able to define the basic force(s) making up all forces? What makes up a force?

How many subatomic particles are there? Does the tens of subatomic particles that I was once informed of exist in scientific thinking or have these been replaced by the "quark". I think there are four basic types of quark. Maybe you are more informed as to the latest thinking on this is.

Hey there David,

Yes, indeed, this is a fascinating subject. So interesting in fact that I spent a number of years getting educated in it. I have degrees in Mathematics and Physics and was working towards a Ph.D. in Quantum Physics but never finished my dissertation because I got side-tracked by "life issues."

Particles in modern physics are more like "resonate patterns" or "excitations" in a Quantum Field. They represent packets of energy that can move up and down through various states. Each different state is a different particle. That's why particles can collide and convert into other particles. The "things" that exist are really the energy and the Quantum Field - the specific particles that happen to exist at any moment are in a constant state of flux though some particles are extremely stable (e.g. protons have a half-life of about 10³⁶ years). It is the QF that provides the "structure" that defines the set of possible elementary particles (6 kinds of quarks, 6 kinds of leptons). The quarks combine in various ways to make protons, neutrons, and and many other particles.

As I consider God to have made all things, I regard God as not being made of the same substance as that which He created, otherwise God could create another God and we are told that there is no other God. Maybe we can conclude that God is not able to create another God and that God is ONE. This would also mean that God could not have created Jesus to be of the same substance as Himself, hence Jesus cannot be God.

I agree that God is not a "thing" made of matter. But your statement that "God could not have created Jesus to be of the same substance as Himself" doesn't make any sense to me. Nobody has ever said that the man Jesus was of the "same substance" as God and the Doctrine of the Trinity explicitly denies that Jesus was created. That's the whole point - it says that God always has been a Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God never "created" the Second Person.

For God to have created matter (as we understand it) it would seem reasonable that God must be greater in all respects than the substance He has created. Therefore, being greater means in one respect being faster than anything God has created, or else God could create something that could go faster than Himself. The only way we can explain God's omnipresence is to say that God is outside time and space in which everything else is restricted. This would mean that God can mover faster than light.

God doesn't need to move if he is already everywhere, does he? Indeed, he would be incapable of movement if he was already there!

But I don't know what it means to say that something "is" outside of space and time. For example, if God is outside of time, then he couldn't ever do anything like create a universe because any action implies change and change implies time. So it's just word salad to me. (Yes, a very popular salad, but salad none the less!).

As we move up the electromagnetic spectrum which is a scale of frequency we pass through the frequencies/wavelength representing light and we go though the ultraviolet, to X-rays and Gamma rays. This is at the topmost range of the scale with a frequency of 10²⁰. Is there anything beyond Gamma rays that we do not know about? Does God have a resonant frequency? Whether we go to the outer limits of space or to the inner limits of space we are talking + or - powers of 10 which represent incredibly large or small numbers (to us) and yet these numbers might be as nothing to God who works on a scale we cannot comprehend.

There is no theoretical limit to the frequency of electromagnetic radiation (light, x-rays, etc.).

I was looking at the scale of the universe a couple of weeks ago and the Hubble space telescope has reached the limit it is able to look into space and where nothing was thought to exist, thousands of galaxies have been observed. Nasa has produced a photograph which they say is the single most important photograph to man, it is this picture of thousands of galaxies in nothing. My question is; if the light is coming to the Hubble telescope representing hundreds of billions of light years from us, then the universe will have expanded even more in that time and what of the light travelling away from the edges of the universe. Does that light keep going outwards towards infinity or is space curved, and is Einstein wrong in this? Such imponderables I doubt will ever be known. As it is Einstein was a genius and a great thinker, but in the end we are dealing with mathematical models to try to explain what we cannot see. Man uses mathematical models to add meaning to what is observed. Mathematics lies at the root of science.

I love those "scale 10" movies that zoom you in or out by factors of ten. Really gives a perspective on where we are at.

Do you have a link to the pic that NASA produced? It sounds fascinating.

There is no "edge" to the universe. Think of the 2D surface of a ball. It has a finite size, but there is no edge because it is curved. This is the idea of curved space-time. We don't know if it is closed (finite) or open (infinite).

Most of what we think of as "objects" in modern physics are really just mathematical constructs inferred from things we can see with our eyes. It's very abstract. Sir James Jeans said that the universe looks more like a grand idea than a thing. I tend to agree with him.

If particles or waves can move faster than the speed of light, this might mean that man has a lot more to find out than he thought. As knowledge has increased science has produced more questions than answers. Is there a limit to what man can find out? I heard it said some time ago that there was not much else for man to find out. He has practically found out all there is to know. Now we have the question; can anything move faster than the speed of light? And now, if the answer is "yes", this opens the doors to asking a bunch of new questions.

Great chatting

David

I don't think there is any limit to what we can learn. The fundamental premise of Einstein's Special Relativity is that no signals can travel faster than light. But there are all sorts of other possibilities that folks like to speculate about, such as wormholes that connect two points, like drawing dots on two points on a piece of paper and then folding the paper to connect the points so they don't have to traverse the distance on the surface of the paper.

This is a great topic! I'm glad Cheow brought it up.

Richard

[David M]

Hey there David,

Particles in modern physics are more like "resonate patterns" or "excitations" in a Quantum Field. They represent packets of energy that can move up and down through various states. Each different state is a different particle. That's why particles can collide and convert into other particles. The "things" that exist are really the energy and the Quantum Field - the specific particles that happen to exist at any moment are in a constant state of flux though some particles are extremely stable (e.g. protons have a half-life of about 10³⁶ years). It is the QF that provides the "structure" that defines the set of possible elementary particles (6 kinds of quarks, 6 kinds of leptons). The quarks combine in various ways to make protons, neutrons, and and many other particles.

Thanks for this update Richard on quarks and leptons. Also in this "constant state of flux" I can see why there can be shortly lived particles. How can the half-life of a proton be measured? This raises a bunch more questions.

I agree that God is not a "thing" made of matter. But your statement that "God could not have created Jesus to be of the same substance as Himself" doesn't make any sense to me. Nobody has ever said that the man Jesus was of the "same substance" as God and the Doctrine of the Trinity explicitly denies that Jesus was created. That's the whole point - it says that God always has been a Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God never "created" the Second Person.

It was a thought that came into mind as I was writing. With the exception of a verse or two in the NT, which I do not have to interpret as the Trinity, I would never have personally come to the conclusion of a Trinity. There is no denying now that Jesus, the Son of God exists. God has given him eternal life. That means Jesus will live to infinity. Therefore, even as Jesus was born 2,000 years ago make very little difference from now on. On a timeline from minus infinity to plus infinity, it does not make much difference where you begin. We all have a beginning except God. In keeping with the majority of scritpure that states "God is One" and there is none beside Him, that is what I will stick with and I will reconcile other passages of scripture to be harmonious with this.. As you say; "what scripture clearly states".
God and His power (Holy Spirit) are indivisible, one without the other would not make sense. God is ONE which includes His power.

God doesn't need to move if he is already everywhere, does he? Indeed, he would be incapable of movement if he was already there!

We could liken this to our brain. The brain is a single organ yet the brain is made up of multiple parts all interacting and with no central processing unit controlling everything. If as you say, God is everywhere, is the brain of God as large as the Universe and therefore is the Universe is inside the mind of God?

But I don't know what it means to say that something "is" outside of space and time. For example, if God is outside of time, then he couldn't ever do anything like create a universe because any action implies change and change implies time. So it's just word salad to me. (Yes, a very popular salad, but salad none the less!).

By outside I mean not restricted to time as we are limited by time. Although God is not limited by time and God can create anything He wants to, I do not think God goes backwards (in time). Once an event has passed, it is not revisited. I never understood how God (as thought by some) could go into the future and come back. God knowing the future does not mean God travels into the future and comes back to the present. We only have a present and a past to my way of thinking. The future has yet to happen and we can never revisit the past.

There is no theoretical limit to the frequency of electromagnetic radiation (light, x-rays, etc.).

If you could construct a computer to operate at such high frequencies, we can begin to understandable how God can process so much information that He must be acquiring while monitoring what is happening in the world. Also what is involved with the storage and reuniting of the spirit with an incorruptible body after death and at the resurrection. What ever is the highest detectable frequency man can detect, God operates at a higher frequencey. Scientists say that our brains operate at slow speed (a few hundered hertz per second), but because of the parallel processing power of the brain, the computational speed is better than any supercomputer.

I love those "scale 10" movies that zoom you in or out by factors of ten. Really gives a perspective on where we are at.

Do you have a link to the pic that NASA produced? It sounds fascinating.

The only image I can find is that shown in the video. Here is the link to the video (the non-hijacked edition); http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRwpAQbiv7A (I like the intro music (Pink Floyd))

Most of what we think of as "objects" in modern physics are really just mathematical constructs inferred from things we can see with our eyes. It's very abstract. Sir James Jeans said that the universe looks more like a grand idea than a thing. I tend to agree with him.

Hence my thought that the Universe is inside the mind of God. The Universe is the thought in the mind of God. Let's hope God holds on to that thought..

I don't think there is any limit to what we can learn. The fundamental premise of Einstein's Special Relativity is that no signals can travel faster than light. But there are all sorts of other possibilities that folks like to speculate about, such as wormholes that connect two points, like drawing dots on two points on a piece of paper and then folding the paper to connect the points so they don't have to traverse the distance on the surface of the paper.

I agree that we can potentially learn much more about lots of things, but there has to be a limit to how much knowledge our brains can store and a limit to what our brain can process purely from the fact that our brain is a finite size. The unanswerable question at the moment is knowing how far we are from reaching the limit to what we can know and understand.

This is a great topic! I'm glad Cheow brought it up.

Yes, a great subject for speculation though it does not change the here and now.

All the best,

David

[Richard Amiel McGough]

The experiment that suggested neutrinos travel faster than light (CWH's opening post) has been repeated with negative results.

Neutrinos Sent from CERN to Gran Sasso Respect the Cosmic Speed Limit, Experiments Confirm

ScienceDaily (June 8, 2012) — At the 25th International Conference on Neutrino Physics and Astrophysics in Kyoto today (June 8, 2012), CERN Research Director Sergio Bertolucci presented results on the time of flight of neutrinos from CERN to the INFN Gran Sasso Laboratory on behalf of four experiments situated at Gran Sasso. The four, Borexino, ICARUS, LVD and OPERA all measure a neutrino time of flight consistent with the speed of light.

This is at odds with a measurement that the OPERA collaboration put up for scrutiny last September, indicating that the original OPERA measurement can be attributed to a faulty element of the experiment’s fibre optic timing system.

“Although this result isn’t as exciting as some would have liked,” said Bertolucci, “it is what we all expected deep down. The story captured the public imagination, and has given people the opportunity to see the scientific method in action – an unexpected result was put up for scrutiny, thoroughly investigated and resolved in part thanks to collaboration between normally competing experiments. That’s how science moves forward.”

In another development reported in Kyoto, the OPERA experiment showed evidence for the appearance of a second tau-neutrino in the CERN muon-neutrino beam, this is an important step towards understanding the science of neutrino oscillations.