[simplegeek]

Guys, I'm sorry I missed this recent news but I've a question that I hope some people can answer for me. So does this mean that Einstein's theory might not hold? Do we see any well-established theories break as result of this? I'm totally naive about this but curious so any answers will be appreciated.

[orblivion]

I'm not the best to answer this, but I'll briefly say that if Einstein's theories don't hold, it will be in the same sense that Newton's theories didn't hold post-Einstein. Newton's theories still apply, for all practical purposes, to all every-day life situations, and Einstein's theories will still apply, for all practical purposes, to every fringe case seen so far ("every-day" nuclear physics, etc) until this experiment. Einstein's theories will just break down in even more fringe situations, which we would have to start to understand the nature of now.

[lutorm]

We sort of already know that "Einstein is wrong" in this strong sense, since GR is incompatible with quantum field theory. It still works just as well within its realm of applicability, though.

[Florin_Andrei]

Exactly. Even if the Opera experiment turns out correct, your GPS will not cease to function all of a sudden.

[mortenjorck]

The half-century after Einstein's pioneering work saw the world's basic conceptions of energy resources and of armed conflict transformed. One can only imagine the prospect of living in a post-FTL world.

[docgnome]

To be honest, it's most likely someone making a mistake or equipment failure or something. We'll just have to wait and see if someone else can replicate it.

[noodle]

equipment miscalibration, not failure. unless i'm misreading it, the results of these experiments show consistent FTL speeds across 3 years.

[docgnome]

Right, my bad.

[codehalo]

Actually, this may be a good thing if the experiments turn out to be correct. There has been a lot of difficulty integrating gravity into the current theories to get a Grand Unified Theory/TOE. Maybe this will make physicists think about other novel ideas.

[docgnome]

Possibly, but it's best to not get excited over results are this surprising. At least until someone else can duplicate them :-P

[codehalo]

Indeed.

[Confusion]

No matter what they discovered: Einstein's theories of relativity will hold. They will hold forever, just like Newtons theory of gravity will hold forever. It's just that its range of applicability may become smaller and smaller.

There have been numerous experiments that perfectly validate both the special and general theory of relativity. The outcomes of the same experiments will not suddenly change. The theories predict the outcomes of these experiments to within experimental accuracy. GPS wouldn't work if special relativity wasn't a sufficiently accurate description of reality.

However, it may turn out that there are also experiments that are not sufficiently described by the theories of relativity, even thought that was previously expected.

[AndreiVajnaII]

The theory of relativity is based on the fact that the speed of light is the same for any observer, no matter if that observer is standing still or moving. From this supposition, the rest of the theory is just mathematics. So if there is something than can move faster than that speed, then the theory will still hold, as long as everybody observes the same speed, in any state of movement they are.

[hexagonc]

The problem is that we already have previous measurements of the speed of light (in a vacuum) to high precision and they have all been roughly the same. Now I haven't read the paper but the surprise of this latest experiment is that they are measuring the speed of a particle as faster than previous measurements of the speed of light. If the latest measurements are accurate then that implies that it is possible for particles to move faster than the speed of light, or the speed of light has changed, or previous measurements were worse than expected. The first or the second possibilities would both violate special relativity.

Also, if I recall my college physics correctly, special relativity not only predicts that the speed of light will be the same for all observers but that it will also have a particular value, based on some physical constants related to electromagnetism.

[AndreiVajnaII]

No, like I said, the special theory of relativity is based on the speed of light being the same for all observers, not on its exact value. That is a supposition on which the theory is based, not one of its predictions.

If, for example we now find out that neutrinos move with 1.0002% of the speed of light, but that their speed is the same, measured by any observer, we will just replace the speed of light constant in the special relativity formulas with the speed of neutrinos constant.

But that all depends what the interpretations of the results are going to be.

[nirvana]

My background is in physics and one of my first programming jobs was writing code for a lab of international importance. At the time, I would engage the other members of the lab in an ongoing debate about Einstein, where I'd take the position that Einstein was wrong (About anything, or everything, whatever the handy topic was.) I was, and am, an Einsteinian skeptic.

I learned a lot in that, and one thing that actually surprised me is that in many cases, I was able to make a good argument that Einstein was wrong, and there was no empirical evidence to support his view on the particular point we were discussing.

The point of that is not that I believe Einstein was wrong. It is that this is not a situation where any single experimental result can show that the theory doesn't hold, or does hold. There are many experiments where his theories do seem to hold (though I enjoyed poking holes in them). If this result is repeatable and turns out to be correct, it will cause many physicists to re-evaluate many theories, and have huge implications.

Einsteins work resulted in many theories, and of course a grand set of them called relativity (and special relativity)... the media simplifies this to "nothing can move faster than the speed of light".

I can see the situation where this causes an adjustment in the specific interpretations of his theories. Or it could turn out that these results are both true, and consistent with his theories. For instance, prior to the understanding of matter there were many theories about mass that are essentially true on the macroscopic scale, though once you understand that matter is made up of atoms you see where they don't hold on the microscopic scale.

This result could reveal a level of reality beyond what Einstein understood, such that he's right from our macroscopic scale, but there's a whole other branch of physics in there.

So, I'm not declaring victory. I think this is good news, though, because it might be the beginning of the revelation of an error in understanding that, when resolved, results in a big jump forward in physics.

PS- I'm not interested in getting into a physics debate. Its been too many years, and I've spoken vaguely because the specifics are not what I'm addressing.

[mjb]

You say:

> I learned a lot in that, and one thing that actually surprised me is that in many cases, I was able to make a good argument that Einstein was wrong, and there was no empirical evidence to support his view on the particular point we were discussing.

Then:

> I'm not interested in getting into a physics debate. Its been too many years, and I've spoken vaguely because the specifics are not what I'm addressing.

You can't go making a claim like "there was no empirical evidence to support his view" about nearly any of Einstein's physics papers and then not want to debate it.

That's like saying "I have proof that bigfoot exists, but it's been too many years and I don't want to actually present that proof, so just believe me because my background is in being a bigfoot expert".

In any case, your assertion is false - there is a great deal of empirical evidence for all of Einstein's important theories.

Sure none of this evidence is proof, but it is good evidence. We know that if Einstein's theories of relativity are not true they are at least very good approximations over a very wide range of scales. It would take truly extraordinary evidence to justify a conclusion about the falsehood of relativistic theories at large scales. Some of this has been done (physics, like all science, is an ongoing debate), but many of those original theories are still believed to hold.

> So, I'm not declaring victory. I think this is good news, though, because it might be the beginning of the revelation of an error in understanding that, when resolved, results in a big jump forward in physics.

Taking the position that a piece of science will be eventually proven wrong and gloating when it is proven wrong isn't big or clever. Every theory of the past has gone the way of Phlogiston, and we can reasonably expect every theory of today to go the same way. However, saying "I think this is wrong" isn't contributing until you say "and here is my evidence".

By the way, "I'm not declaring victory, but" is the same as "I'm not a racist, but".

[nirvana]

"You can't go making a claim like "there was no empirical evidence to support his view" about nearly any of Einstein's physics papers and then not want to debate it."

You're taking a statement I made about a particular view in a set of topics that were chosen for the purposes of debating where he might be wrong, and applying it to the entirety of his "papers".

"In any case, your assertion is false - there is a great deal of empirical evidence for all of Einstein's important theories."

I never asserted there was no empirical evidence for Einstein's theories.

The fact that you didn't address the point I was trying to make, and instead are giving me what seems to be an unsophisticated laymen view of "einstein couldn't have been wrong about anything!!!" is exactly why I'm not interested in debating physics here. Plus, its irrelevant to the actual topic.

[hugh3]

You do realize that proving "Einstein was wrong" is a favourite activity of the many physics cranks who hang around sending letters to physics departments year in year out?

And that of all the thousands of folks who have claimed to have a "proof" that relativity is wrong, the they break down as about seventy percent simple misconceptions and thirty percent complete nonsense, with the remainder being zero?

At the time, I would engage the other members of the lab in an ongoing debate about Einstein, where I'd take the position that Einstein was wrong (About anything, or everything, whatever the handy topic was.) I was, and am, an Einsteinian skeptic.

It's a good thing you left physics for programming, because it doesn't sound like you have a particularly strong commitment to scientific principles. To get a Nobel Prize it would be perfectly sufficient to show convincingly that Einstein was wrong about one thing [insert caveats here, obviously I don't mean trivial things]. If you believe Einstein was wrong about "anything and everything" then you're just committing the cardinal sin of believing things because you want them to be true, rather than because there's sufficiently convincing evidence that they're true.

[MarkPNeyer]

believing in something to be the truth, no matter how much 'convincing evidence' there is to support that conclusion, isn't really a scientific princple. skepticism, on the other hand, most certainly is.

science isn't about believing in anything to be the truth; it's about constructing analytical models that make accurate predictions while consistently exercising skepticism about the ability of any model to do so.

[hugh3]

Yes, the English language really lacks the vast suite of words we need in order to express our degrees of certainty about things. Words such as "know", "believe", "think" and "suspect" don't express these things properly, but we have to make do with what we have.

I don't think that "believe" is a particularly bad word for the relationship of a rational person to a fairly well established fact, though. I believe, for instance, that the Earth has an iron-nickel core. I fully acknowledge the possibility that it might not, and am fully ready to change that belief based on new evidence, but I think it's fairly well established and I am willing to act as if it were true.

[TheAmazingIdiot]

It is very apparent that Einstein was wrong, only because his theory does not account for quantum effects. But it works for human sized stuff and up to galactic supercluster motion.

It is also apparent that Quantun Chromodynamics is also wrong because it does not account for gravity. But it works for super small stuff including CPUs and subatomic theory.

But they both work tremendously well for their scope. Hence the seeking for a Theory of Everything, because each is incompatible with the other without that mystery glue. But they both are "Wrong" - because they themselves say their theories are incomplete.

[icarus_drowning]

Look, I know there's some disagreement with this comment, but why has this received so many downvotes? It isn't wildly unhelpful, is rather reasonably phrased, and doesn't attempt to pounce on the situation and make sensationalist claims...

Again, I'm not arguing this shouldn't be addressed if you disagree with some or all of it, but it isn't like this is some kind of trollbait that usually receives this kind of aggressive downvoting...