If you're on twitter, you may already know

A group of physicists clocked neutrinos resulting from their experiments as going .0025% faster than light, arriving at the neutrino detector about 60 nanoseconds faster than a beam of light would. They were working with the large hadron collider, but are not directly affiliated with CERN. The experiment was originally designed so that they could see the process of transformation that neutrinos undergo as they travel. They want to recreate their experiment and see if they were correct in their speed estimates, and they also want independent research to have the same results. If they were correct, travel to the past is possible and Einstein was wrong. If not, it was just a bunch of miscalculations.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/science/24speed.html
The community at CERN is pissed because the physicists involved aren't affiliated with them, and they started talking about the results online immediately after they were discovered.

 

Shit just got real.

 

I read this in a free paper on the train just the other day. I hope it's true because then I can go to the past and come back riding a dinosaur. If you can't understand why I would want a dinosaur, just take a look at the pterodactyl porn thread - those dinosaurs are keen.

 

That is awesome! Going to need to watch this one real closely.

 

Magikot: You and I both!

 

Pretty interesting stuff.

 

My initial reaction would be that my stopwatch was off.

 

They got consistent results over three years of experimentation, and while physicists are allowed to claim a discovery if their findings are 5 standard deviations from the norm, these guys have 6 and they still want other people to check it out for themselves. Apparently it was muon neutrinos that are responsible for the peculiar speed. Now, people who aren't straight-up denying the results are saying that possibly Einstein was wrong about the maximum speed of the universe, and it's actually neutrinos that can't be overcome, because everything still seems normal, i.e. effect still follows cause. However, we wouldn't actually know if anyone was able to change the past or not, because it would be our history no matter what.

 

Unless I'm confused, surely more deviations from the norm is a bad thing? As in it further deviates from the average result, thereby making their results less credible? I guess that may have been the point you were raising, but from the way it was posted it sounded like a good thing.

 

Ah, I worded it wrong, and my wording made it mean something entirely different. I was paraphrasing from an article I read. Alright, the deviations essentially add up to how likely it is their data is a fluke. 5 standard deviations means less than one chance in a few million that it's a fluke. They got six deviations, meaning there's even less than "less than one chance in a few million".

 

Like six sigma versus five sigma?

 

Yes, but much more precise.

 

Sorry to be to critical in the first place, I was just confused. I would know this already if only free British newspapers were more scientifically precise. Damn you Metro!

 

No, you were right. The way I said it makes it sound like the deviations are a bad thing.

 

Deviations are never a bad thing!

 

They can be if said deviation is of your flight path during a storm and now there's a mountain in your way...but if you take the Taoist perspective, it's not a good or a bad thing, it's just how things are.

 

Muro
Mutant Patron of How Things Are

Can't decide whether it's a boring or a rad title.
At least I can still say my job is being done no matter what happens.

 

The vibrant green makes it rad.

 

I give a greater probablity to human error than to a remaking of science's worldview.

As for chaning the past, there is a theory derived from CPT-Symmetry that says antimatter is matter traveling backwards in time. But determinism still holds true anyways.

Edit: Noticed this because of this thread:
http://www.science20.com/alpha_meme/fas ... date-83029

 

So do the people who got those results, which is why they want other teams to run the same experiment and see if their results match up.

Yeah, damn effects always occurring after their causes.
I read a book by Richard Feynman regarding quantum theory some time ago, a little over 20 years after the book was published. He said the same thing about antimatter, and he also said that electrons are capable of emitting photons, traveling back in time, and absorbing the same photon they released, though they don't do it all the time. Plus, the only reason they're able to do it is because the rules on a quantum scale are so radically different.
But, it doesn't matter if people find a way to make reverse time travel possible, because you can only travel as far back as the time the machine or wormhole was created.
Funny thing is, there was a proposition to make a huge wormhole suspended in space near the earth (or wherever we are in however long it'll take to build it), but we're so far away from building it, it's not even funny. Its circumference would be 600 million miles. The wormhole itself would be in between two electrically charged plates about 400 protons apart. The charge present between the plates actually causes a repulsive effect much like some exotic matter with negative mass, but only while in a vacuum and with the plates very, very close together. This repulsive effect would keep the wormhole open. Oh, and when you saw how big in circumference this thing would be? Did you imagine it would take about 200 million solar masses to actually set up the wormhole? Because it totally will. People will be able to access the wormhole by doors present in the charged plates. I know the rate of scientific discovery is growing more rapid, but I'm not sure if something like that will even be possible within the next 1,000 years. Ah well, I've been wrong before.