Anyone making this claim must explain why the neutrinos from the supernova SN_1987A arrived at the same time as the photos from it did. Somewhat significantly longer path length so any FTL has a considerably earlier arrival time.

Gary, did you mean "Photons" and not "Photos". If photon's then my understanding is that the neutrinos arrived 3 hours earlier than the photons did.

Anyone making this claim must explain why the neutrinos from the supernova SN_1987A arrived at the same time as the photos from it did. Somewhat significantly longer path length so any FTL has a considerably earlier arrival time.

Gary, did you mean "Photons" and not "Photos". If photon's then my understanding is that the neutrinos arrived 3 hours earlier than the photons did.

Damn keyboard ... yes Photons.
And my understand the photons were expected to arrive three hours late because photons travel slower than c in a medium like the gas of a star.

The baseline is 168,000 light-years for the supernova, consider the baseline of the recent experement was 732 km and they arrived 0.00000006 seconds fast, how much sooner should they have arrived for the supernova? A light year is 9.4605284e15 meters so the supernova baseline is 1.589368771e18 km. That means they should have arrived about 1.30276e8 seconds before the photons or 4.1 years! 3 hours or 4 years is a huge difference.

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I was told that neutrinos get out of a supernova faster than photons, which explains the three hours difference. But if neutrinos have a mass, how can they travel at the speed of light? Maybe they can travel slower a little, or faster a little, in which case they are tachyons, with an imaginary mass.
Tullio

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Anyone making this claim must explain why the neutrinos from the supernova SN_1987A arrived at the same time as the photos from it did. Somewhat significantly longer path length so any FTL has a considerably earlier arrival time.

Gary, did you mean "Photons" and not "Photos". If photon's then my understanding is that the neutrinos arrived 3 hours earlier than the photons did.

Damn keyboard ... yes Photons.
And my understand the photons were expected to arrive three hours late because photons travel slower than c in a medium like the gas of a star.

The baseline is 168,000 light-years for the supernova, consider the baseline of the recent experement was 732 km and they arrived 0.00000006 seconds fast, how much sooner should they have arrived for the supernova? A light year is 9.4605284e15 meters so the supernova baseline is 1.589368771e18 km. That means they should have arrived about 1.30276e8 seconds before the photons or 4.1 years! 3 hours or 4 years is a huge difference.

Gary, seems like the neutrino is suffering from poor time keeping? Blame this on the gluon, he's a sticky customer. Could be something to do with the neutrino constantly changing it's flavour. To be able to go any further here we do really need this neutrino experiment to be confirmed or not. Everything is pure speculation at the moment but there's plenty of sound logic and argument that states this neutrino experiment is flawed. If this experiment is proved, and I sincerely hope it is then valid arguments like yours are going to form the basis of some very serious and exciting research. But by reading between the lines, regarding this neutrino experiment, something coming from this experiment has excited scientist irrespective of the fact that this experiment may yet get disproved....They have clearly seen something else here and I think it might be on the lines of extra dimensions and that this neutrino experiment has, if not already, got them the closest to proving them.

I was told that neutrinos get out of a supernova faster than photons, which explains the three hours difference. But if neutrinos have a mass, how can they travel at the speed of light? Maybe they can travel slower a little, or faster a little, in which case they are tachyons, with an imaginary mass.
Tullio

Since the neutrino has zero charge (neutral) perhaps gravity has no effect upon it the way gravity does with the photon. But I don't suppose this is true though, yet I don't think the neutrino is travelling faster than the photon, well certainly not in a three dimensional universe where we see it interacting. I plumb for the extra dimensions having less effect upon 'it' than the effect their having upon the photon. This effect having nothing to do with speed but more to do with distance each particle has to travel between a given point.
Tul', my fingers are still crossed and that SASSO have got it right.

Question

If Einstein were alive today, and had access to all the latest scientific discoveries, do you think he would modify and re think or modify his two main theories of Relativity and Special Releativity?

Chris, who do you think we all are..."ruddy scientists" here?..he-he-he.

I really don't know Chris? It's a dam good question though...but someone in the name of Stephen Hawkins would be one of the best to put this question too. They do say that he is the nearest we've got so far to having another Einstein brain amongst us.

Apologies for the mis-typing I was on the phone to someone at the time! Can't multitask these days :-)

Yep, Hawking is seen as that. I'm beginning to think that a clue might be in all these things that scientists think can exist in two states at the same time. If enough of them can be encouraged to be in a certain set of states at one time, who knows what might happen.

Yes Chris, this is a great line of thinking here. You can see why there is so much excitement around the SASSO experiment for it potentially opens up a new science that many scientist believe is there. A science that could easily provide the logic behind or prove the multi-state theory through new experimentation. Multiple dimensions, just what unbelievable events can/do occur here that some would conciser "mind blowing" to the extreme. How about a particle that can be in two different places at the same time simply because in a multi-dimensional universe there are no single points, i.e. all points are shared by other dimensions too so giving your point more positions to exist in at the same time???? well, I know what I mean?

I believe that Einstein did not care much about experiments. He does not even mention the Michelson-Morley experiment is his papers on special relativity. "Theory determines what can be observed", he says.
Tullio

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I believe that Einstein did not care much about experiments. He does not even mention the Michelson-Morley experiment is his papers on special relativity. "Theory determines what can be observed", he says.
Tullio

Tul', there was one particular experiment that disproved some theory that Einstein had. Einstein would not change his mind on it until he finally saw this experiment first hand. Just can't think what it was about but it was only very recently that I came across this fact.

I believe that Einstein gave more importance to "gedanken" experiments than real ones, like the Einstein-Podolski-Rosen paradox of 1935 which gave rise to a new field of quantum mechanics, that of non separability.
Tullio

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Einsten could be wrong, together with all modern physics, by making the statement that C (speed of light) is constant.

At this moment, this still didn’t changed and there is a lot of experiments, and even some cracks in modern cosmology, that challenge that C is constant.

I strongly believe that the speed of ligh is not the limit or either a
constant. However I’m only a curious on this matter not a theoretical on physics or cosmology.

The Horizon problem and other cracks in the big bang theory, indicates that it’s possible to travel faster than light, that in fact there is VLC theory.
If proven to be true, than most of what we know has to be revised.

If Einstein was wrong, no particle accelerator would work, and they work and give us an understanding of the subatomic world. Ditto for fission reactors and fusion reactors, and they work, The OPERA experiment on neutrinos used GPS satellites to measure the exact distance from Geneva to Gran Sasso, and they are based on general relativity. So it is difficult to maintain that Einstein was wrong. Certainly, relativity has not yet been combined with quantum mechanics to give us a Grand Unified Theory. Einstein had tried to unify electromagnetism and gravitation, and has failed. This is still the main problem to be solved by physicists, but we must include also the two nuclear forces, which Einstein willingly ignored. The neutrino experiment must be repeated and physicists like Sheldon Glashow, a Nobel laureate, have already criticized it in an article just published with Andrew G. Cohen.After all, it was not designed to measure the neutrino speed but the possibility of a neutrino changing a parameter called "flavor" from Geneva to Gran Sasso. The speed measure was only a side product.
Tullio

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Einsten could be wrong, together with all modern physics, by making the statement that C (speed of light) is constant.

At this moment, this still didn’t changed and there is a lot of experiments, and even some cracks in modern cosmology, that challenge that C is constant.

I strongly believe that the speed of ligh is not the limit or either a
constant. However I’m only a curious on this matter not a theoretical on physics or cosmology.

The Horizon problem and other cracks in the big bang theory, indicates that it’s possible to travel faster than light, that in fact there is VLC theory.
If proven to be true, than most of what we know has to be revised.

Doc, it has been said by various scientist over the past 10 to 15 years that "C" the speed of light should not have been set as a constant. Even Einstein when calculating his famous equation never set it initially as a constant but on assuming light could only ever have the speed he experienced it at then decided to set "C" as a constant. I don't suppose it will be long now before someone proves the constant or not. Personally I think Einstein was wrong and if eventually proved wrong he will pop his head up out of his grave and say, "Well, that was a bit silly of me but just a slight error on my behalf". So for Einstein to be wrong means only that he was correct with his first setting for "C" not to be a constant....he still wins either way.

When I titled this thread I wondered if Einstein was wrong about nothing being able to exceed the speed of light. He stated that nothing could do that as because at that speed, mass would became infinite and there would be an infinite amount of energy needed to move it.

Logically, to travel between planetary systems or stars, would require faster than light travel to make it viable. This is why I think that one day we will discover that in certain circumstances matter can exceed light speed. I doubt it will happen in my lifetime, and maybe not at the LHC, but I do think it will point the way.

If the SASSO experiment is proved I wounder if other certain particles, yet to be found, can multi-dimension hop like the neutrino may be doing. Might find that string theory get to show one day that the string itself, on this minute scale, time does not figure in it's movement so has not constraints upon it. They say that the universe has no need for time perhaps this theory will get proved and that also "things" can be in two different places at the same instant.

c is a constant according to Einstein, but it is also bound to 2 other constants, e and h, by a dimensionless quantity called the fine structure constant, which gives the ratio of the strength of the em interaction to the strong nuclear interaction. So, if you modify c you should also modify the electron charge and the Planck constant in order to maintain that ratio.
Tullio

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Here is another good point:
GR and OPERA
Tullio

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Are the Neutrinos themselves observers ? Are we all in the same reference plane ??
If Neutrinos have rest mass--it's not likely that they can exceed or approach completely the speed of light.

If Neutrinos have rest mass--it's not likely that they can exceed or approach completely the speed of light.

They have a very slight amount of mass so Einsteins laws must still prevail here.
Newtons laws worked on the large scale, Einsteins law took-over on the small scale, perhaps a new yet undefined law takes over on the minute scale. The minute scale being where super dimensions have a major effect upon unseen quantum events.

I think that Einstein will be proved correct in the long run. Here is an article that depicts some of the thoughts going around. I believe, without re-reading the entire thread, that some of us came up with the same possibility. The realy interesting part is the last paragraphs.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/10/mundane-explanations-neutrinos/

Among the most recent ideas is a paper invoking Einstein’s supposedly challenged theory of relativity. The OPERA team used GPS satellites to accurately measure the 730-km distance between their detector and the CERN beam where the neutrinos were produced. Yet, according to special relativity, calculations will be slightly different when two observers are moving relative to one another.

Since the satellites were zipping around the Earth, the positions of the neutrino source and the detector changed. According to the paper, the movement would account for a 64 nanoseconds discrepancy, nearly exactly what the OPERA team observes.

Ultimately, it will take a great deal more time and scholarship before the physics community settles on the true explanation for the OPERA results. Until then, vigorous debate is likely to continue.

Steve

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Warning, addicted to SETI crunching!
Crunching as a member of GPU Users Group.
GPUUG Website

They say that the universe has no need for time

That is basically true, it doesn't. We on earth use "elapsed" time because it heps us to judge how long it has been beween events occuring. We also need time to co-ordinate space flights. If we hadn't got the re-entry burns right we would have lost even more shuttles. Atomic clocks are also useful in scientific experiments.

Time only exists because mankind exist and invented the concept. If there is any intelligent extra-terrestrial life they probably have a similar concept, but for sure will call it something else, and the unit of measure will be for certain different.

Another thing I know about time is once is gone you can't recover it back "tempus fugit"

Time only exists because mankind exist and invented the concept. If there is any intelligent extra-terrestrial life they probably have a similar concept, but for sure will call it something else, and the unit of measure will be for certain different.

Time is nothing more than duration, and it would exist whether mankind put an understanding to the concept or not. The only thing mankind has done with the concept of time is put a unit of measure on it. As you suggested, an alien race would likely also put a unit of measure on duration, but it would likely be a completely different unit of measure based upon their own concept of duration - but duration exists nonetheless.