Does this mean ultimate in regards to Faster-Than-Light Travel that Science Will March On?
It seems that way. If this can be repeatedly observed and possibly deduced why, we can begin experimenting how to replicate the effect. Then there will be no such thing as impossible in regards to space travel!
The Imperium of Man's rise just began with this discovery and it didn't take a God-Emperor to do it.
@Caissas
Like you said, they were apparently trying really hard to figure what the hell was up with these numbers for years, before announcing them like this.
But there are still plenty of conceivable ways that there are really, really weird anomalous screw-ups with the instruments, the people behind them, etc.
Versus the thousands of experiments humanity has run that have some very precise things to say about what the speed of light is, and how it relates to everything else in the universe.
Yeah, the possibility's bigger than it usually is, but even from the most basic empirical standpoint, "something's moving faster than the speed of light," isn't a safe bet even worth considering yet. Maybe if we kept getting the result for a much longer time, or similar results started popping up elsewhere, even under similar levels of scrutiny that bet would become a little safer. In the strictest empirical sense, mind you.
I think the quote from the BBC article sums it up:
"My dream would be that another, independent experiment finds the same thing - then I would be relieved," Dr Ereditato said.
But for now, he explained, "we are not claiming things, we want just to be helped by the community in understanding our crazy result - because it is crazy".
edited 22nd Sep '11 4:34:27 PM by Toodle
Well, in the once again most strictly definitive sense, that would actually not be very brilliant at all.
Because that would mean that physics, and the people working on it for the past century or so have been very, very wrong.
Which at the very least means those physicists were not as brilliant as we thought they were.
edited 22nd Sep '11 4:40:07 PM by Toodle
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Actually, the existence of a pure FTL result is a major find, so yes, they would be wrong.
edited 22nd Sep '11 4:40:40 PM by abstractematics
Now using Trivialis handle.The problem is that if this result is true, then it will throw out so much physics that it's not even clear that "the speed of light" is a meaningful concept anymore.
Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's PlayWell, yes, it's actually very cool how adaptive science is.
But even science has to build off of derivative premises.
I'm mostly just saying that the findings here have not been scrutinized well enough for such a fundamental aspect of our understanding to need adaptation in the same way that a lot of other theories and ideas are modified on a regular basis.
Feel free to consider what may happen if it were true. Scientists work from hypotheticals all the time.
But while science is very, very flexible, it does still seem to gain a good deal of its precision and fluency from a rigorous sequence of protocol.
And in case you hadn't noticed, the people associated with these results are indeed basically asking the entire scientific community "Hey guys, we got different numbers than pretty much all of you. Anyone want to come help us figure out what the hell just happened?"
As opposed to trying to literally rewrite everything we know about physics.
Because if the rules related to special relativity were wrong, that's pretty much literally what we'd need to do.
Our concerns would have a lot less to do with how we could possibly build awesome interstellar space ships, and would go back to trying to make sure that rockets don't catch our own atmosphere on fire or that the LHC isn't about to create a black hole.
And we know that! :3
I don't exactly see what you're trying to say. :/
ᐅᖃᐅᓯᖅ ᐊᑕᐅᓯᖅ ᓈᒻᒪᔪᐃᑦᑐᖅWell if it turns out that all physics from the last 100 years is wrong, interstellar travel is the least of our worries.
Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's PlayBah, we already knew stuff could move faster than the speed of light.
After all, Chuck Norr- <is shot>
edited 22nd Sep '11 5:04:48 PM by TotemicHero
Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)

Agreed Occono, it's just "meh, they're probably wrong, end of debate". Which is not a valid statement.
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