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What implications does the revelation that neutrinos can move faster than the speed of light carry?

I'm not an expert or a student of physics, but I would guess the reason it's such a huge deal is that until that LHC experiment, it was universally accepted as fact in the scientific community that nothing can surpass the speed of light.

Einstein, one of the greatest thinkers in history, was wrong about at least this.

The biggest ramifications that immediately come to my mind, 'what else could he have been wrong about?'

Brawlsack

Taking an extended hiatus from gaming

Its flipping an entire coin.

All this time they thought the coin was heads(nothing travels faster than the speed of light) and based all their observations on that coin based on the "fact" that it was heads.

Now they're like oh shit, it's tails? What else is changed because of that?

hurp hurp I realize that.

More along the lines of what paths are theoretical physicists going to take over the next decades/years and what sort of implications this has for a layman.

The best answer is a shrug. If they really are faster than light it could mean re-adjusting much of the theories of relativity and have implications on time travel.

It could also be a string theory breakthrough. It's possible that the speed of light is still the speed limit, but neutrinos are able to move along a different dimension, taking a short-cut and arriving earlier than light would, but still not going faster than light along it's shortcut.

What's it mean to a layperson? Probably nothing, but it's tough to say. The work of Einstein and his contemporaries had a fairly quick impact on the world, but it's too early to tell if this discovery means a potential new age or just an unexplainable quirk in an otherwise solid theory.

Dvergar /
Quisling

It is not nearly that simple. The belief that the speed of light is the speed limit of the universe is the bedrock of our understanding of physics, and questioning this assumption has implications for not only theory but also practical fields such as electronics, communication and radiation.



Time travel is pure science fiction.
Time travel is to science as the land of the dog-men is to exploration.



Pretty much this.

The possible implications are:
-Communication systems based on para-dimensional particles, with infinite range and zero latency
-Bypassing the uncertainty principle, allowing for better medical and scientific equipment and possible breakthroughs in bio-engineering (artificial organs, life extension, and parthenogenesis)
-Faster-than-light travel (extreme far future if ever)
-Extremely strong substances (neutronium)
-Superconductors (vastly increased energy efficiency, miniaturization, extremely efficient vehicles, portable lasers)
-Much smaller and more powerful high-power lasers and particle accelerators
-Quantum computing (smaller and much more powerful computers)
-Holograms (exploiting faster-than-light particles and human perspective to construct three-dimensional images)

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

So in other words what you're saying is, it's not nearly that simple, but you agree with everything he said, just with more flowery language?

Brawlsack

Taking an extended hiatus from gaming

No...he's saying it has no implications beyond this one binary fact. I'm saying it does.

EDIT: Assuming his question is rhetorical. That's how I read it.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

Aestu, time travel in the traditional sense is fiction, that much I agree with you on.

However, if human beings ever engineer space travel capabilities of a certain degree, it is theoretically possible to travel to the edge of our solar system and back, and thousands of years have passed. How fast and how far you travel in physical space affects the degree to which existence on Earth has aged. It's not actual time travel, but you could term it time acceleration and still be accurate.

Brawlsack

Taking an extended hiatus from gaming

No, I'm saying that if X changed, then everything based on X changes.

Which is simple in and of itself. Discussing how everything changes is the complex argument.


Also, I have a time machine. But it only goes forward at regular speed. Thank you dimitri martin.

I would have used the more accurate 'time dilation' but the original question was from the point of a layman. Time travel, as in "Put on these bike shorts and we'll take my time machine to go play cards with Harry Truman", and "Ohh, a lesson in not changing history from Mr. I'm My Own Grandfather" is fiction.

Dvergar /
Quisling

"...but temporal distortion does exist on the quantum level, and more importantly, it can be controlled."

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

Brawlsack

Taking an extended hiatus from gaming

In the early 1930s, scientists theorized about neutrinos and their existence.
In 1942, scientists detected neutrinos (which may have existed since the Big Bang) despite being incapable of seeing them.
In the 1970s scientists observed the effect of a neutrino interacting with a proton.
In 2011, scientists believe to have observed properties of neutrinos that were largely thought to be impossible due to our current understanding of Physics.

PS: God doesn't/can't exist.

We learned new things we didn't know before so just to be on the safe side you guys better beat those homos or Jesus is going to be pissed.

Dvergar /
Quisling