Was Einstein wrong about special relativity?

[TiogaLion]

@Leo Ridens what are your thoughts on this experiment?

These guys think they've measured neutrinos traveling faster than light. This huge if true.

Science | AAAS

www.science.org

 

[s1uggo72]

hmmm I thought this was settled science.

 

[Woodpecker]

Southern neutrinos?

 

[LionJim]

hmmm I thought this was settled science.

Not that I’m an expert, but I have every expectation that the experiment will be proved to be invalid. There’s a mistake somewhere. If Einstein was wrong, someone would have figured it out by now.

Not that this has any connection to the experiment, but you know about Time Dilation? It’s been verified experimentally: time does pass more slowly for objects moving at high speeds.

Time dilation - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[VicVaselino]

If neutrinos are moving faster that the speed of light then they must be coming from the future. If that's true, then the future already exists. If the future already exists, then there is no such thing as free will. That being the case I can do anything I want, since I've already done it.

Sweet.

 

[LionJim]

If neutrinos are moving faster that the speed of light then they must be coming from the future. If that's true, then the future already exists. If the future already exists, then there is no such thing as free will. That being the case I can do anything I want, since I've already done it.

Sweet.

Yeah, your first sentence, this is correct. About the Free Will discussion, I’m hoping that someday I’ll be able to make sense of it. This is the first time I’ve read anything about Free Will in relation to the future already being known. (I’ve been dabbling in it, can’t grasp it.)

 

[Thorndike2021]

I'm guessing tailwind.

 

[LionJim]

I'm guessing tailwind.

Damn, that gave me a good belly laugh. Awesome.

 

[PrtLng Lion]

I've heard this claim before about particles being able to exceed "c". If I had to bet I'd say it's a measurement error.

That being said, perhaps they're onto something here which could be paradigm shifting. Science doesn't advance by just dismissing new ideas as "not possible".

Doesn't necessarily mean Einstein was "wrong", rather that the special theory of relativity was incomplete. Good analogy is how the theory of relativity was a more complete explanation than Newton's laws of gravity and motion.

 

[Nittany1865Farmer]

The real key question is how does this impact our NIL fundraising capability??? Will it make more money for us right now to compete with other pseudo-scientists to sign for next year's recruiting class.

 

[PSU87]

Not that I’m an expert, but I have every expectation that the experiment will be proved to be invalid. There’s a mistake somewhere. If Einstein was wrong, someone would have figured it out by now.

Not that this has any connection to the experiment, but you know about Time Dilation? It’s been verified experimentally: time does pass more slowly for objects moving at high speeds.

Time dilation - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Time dilation?

Is that when time is in the pool?

 

[VicVaselino]

I'm going to hitch a ride on a neutrino, go back to 1986 and watch us kick Miami's *** again.

 

[Chatz5531]

@Leo Ridens what are your thoughts on this experiment?

These guys think they've measured neutrinos traveling faster than light. This huge if true.

Science | AAAS

www.science.org

 

[BobPSU92]

@Leo Ridens what are your thoughts on this experiment?

These guys think they've measured neutrinos traveling faster than light. This huge if true.

Science | AAAS

www.science.org

These researchers laugh at Einstein.

 

[GrimReaper]

@Leo Ridens what are your thoughts on this experiment?

These guys think they've measured neutrinos traveling faster than light. This huge if true.

Science | AAAS

www.science.org

Always good to read the date of an article before lauding it as something new. This one happens to be eleven years old. Then, it's always good to check if there are any follow ups. And, yes, without much difficulty I found one:

Proves that you're no Einstein, Norman or otherwise.

 

[TiogaLion]

Always good to read the date of an article before lauding it as something new. This one happens to be eleven years old. Then, it's always good to check if there are any follow ups. And, yes, without much difficulty I found one:

Proves that you're no Einstein, Norman or otherwise.

Did you notice how much fun everyone is having with this topic? Your response proves something that you'll eventually figure out, I suppose.

 

[Woodpecker]

Always good to read the date of an article before lauding it as something new. This one happens to be eleven years old. Then, it's always good to check if there are any follow ups. And, yes, without much difficulty I found one:

Proves that you're no Einstein, Norman or otherwise.

Ah but maybe the OP posted this 11 years ago and it just made it to the board?

 

[West Coast Nit]

I don't remember all the details but there was a qualification that information cannot travel faster than the speed of light.

 

[BobPSU92]

Always good to read the date of an article before lauding it as something new. This one happens to be eleven years old. Then, it's always good to check if there are any follow ups. And, yes, without much difficulty I found one:

Proves that you're no Einstein, Norman or otherwise.

Maybe he just got it because his interwebs uses slow neutrinos.

 

[Psumatt85]

Time dilation?

Is that when time is in the pool?

I think that is shrinkage

 

[LionJim]

I don't remember all the details but there was a qualification that information cannot travel faster than the speed of light.

This is actually not the case. “Spooky action at a distance” (Einstein’s phrase) is a thing. I’ll elaborate. This years Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for this.

 

[Bkmtnittany1]

Fridays at The Skeller…always some sweet neutrinos bouncing around!

 

[Monty2007]

Something similar that I've watched is Closer to Truth with Alan Guth explaining cosmic inflation on Youtube. LionJim right up your alley.

 

[PSU87]

I think that is shrinkage

Since we're talking physics I used the technical term

 

[PSUriseANDfire]

Southern neutrinos?

You won.

 

[LionJim]

This is actually not the case. “Spooky action at a distance” (Einstein’s phrase) is a thing. I’ll elaborate. This years Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for this.

First, I got to say that I just dabble in physics. I have a ton of popular books on physics; I’m fascinated by quantum physics and have tried hard to understand it. The impact of my mathematical training on my understanding of physics is nil, as far as I can tell. I’ll be waving my hands a lot here. I know I won’t be satisfied with what I come up with, but, after all, it’s not mathematics.

Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle is a specific example of Bohr’s Complementary Principle (you can’t measure two facets of a quantum object simultaneously). This lead to the Bohr-Heisenberg-Born Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics, which basically says that there’s no objective reality until a measurement or observation is made. (Opinions vary. Heisenberg and Bohr themselves didn’t quite agree on what it meant.) When the measurement is made, “the wave function collapses” and you’ve got the reality of the situation. This brings up the Schrodinger’s Cat thought experiment, which Schrodinger came up with in an attempt to illustrate the flaws of the Copenhagen Interpretation. Bohr’s reaction: yeah, the cat is neither dead or alive until we sneak a look.

Einstein was never satisfied with the Copenhagen Interpretation, and kept trying to come up with thought experiments like Schrodinger’s Cat to show that there was some flaw in the Copenhagen Interpretation. In 1935, he, along with Podolsky and Rosen, came up with the EPR Paradox. EPR: If you shoot two identical particles apart from each other and then measure the momentum, say, of one particle, then, according to the Copenhagen Interpretation, the wave function collapses and the momentum of the second particle, which is a certain non-zero distance away from the first particle, is instantaneously determined. (It’s a lot more nuanced than this, but whatever.) This, according to a Einstein, would violate the Special Theory of Relativity, which says that no information can travel faster than the speed of light. Einstein called it “Spooky action at a distance.”

Shoot ahead to 1982, when Aspect set up an experiment to test the EPR Paradox, and, to the surprise of nobody, showed that this sort of instantaneous communication over distance is a real thing, just as the Copenhagen Interpretation predicts. Aspect got the 2022 Nobel Prize for this.

 

[Nitwit]

Unrelated but interesting story about Einstein: When he lived on Mercer St. In Princeton he used to walk a friend of mine to kindergarten. He lived next door to him. And when my friend returned home in the afternoon he often found Einstein having tea and home baked cookies in his kitchen with his Austrian mother (allegedly) as they were also speaking German as my friend’s father was head of the Princeton Theological Seminary which is located near the Institute for Advanced Studies where Einstein worked and where the kindergarten school was also was located. I’m not sure if there was any hanky pinky going on. My friend unfortunately died of lung cancer at a young age

 

[GrimReaper]

Did you notice how much fun everyone is having with this topic? Your response proves something that you'll eventually figure out, I suppose.

Did you notice how much fun I had with it, Mr. Range Ball?

 

[West Coast Nit]

This is actually not the case. “Spooky action at a distance” (Einstein’s phrase) is a thing. I’ll elaborate. This years Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for this.

This is actually not the case. “Spooky action at a distance” (Einstein’s phrase) is a thing. I’ll elaborate. This years Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for this.

I assume you are referring to entangled particles. Everything I read so far states that entangled particles cannot be exploited to transmit information and, at least so far, transmission of information is indeed limited to the speed of light. If you have a source that states otherwise I would like to read it. Please provide a link. Thanks.

 

[PrtLng Lion]

First, I got to say that I just dabble in physics. I have a ton of popular books on physics; I’m fascinated by quantum physics and have tried hard to understand it. The impact of my mathematical training on my understanding of physics is nil, as far as I can tell. I’ll be waving my hands a lot here. I know I won’t be satisfied with what I come up with, but, after all, it’s not mathematics.

Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle is a specific example of Bohr’s Complementary Principle (you can’t measure two facets of a quantum object simultaneously). This lead to the Bohr-Heisenberg-Born Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics, which basically says that there’s no objective reality until a measurement or observation is made. (Opinions vary. Heisenberg and Bohr themselves didn’t quite agree on what it meant.) When the measurement is made, “the wave function collapses” and you’ve got the reality of the situation. This brings up the Schrodinger’s Cat thought experiment, which Schrodinger came up with in an attempt to illustrate the flaws of the Copenhagen Interpretation. Bohr’s reaction: yeah, the cat is neither dead or alive until we sneak a look.

Einstein was never satisfied with the Copenhagen Interpretation, and kept trying to come up with thought experiments like Schrodinger’s Cat to show that there was some flaw in the Copenhagen Interpretation. In 1935, he, along with Podolsky and Rosen, came up with the EPR Paradox. EPR: If you shoot two identical particles apart from each other and then measure the momentum, say, of one particle, then, according to the Copenhagen Interpretation, the wave function collapses and the momentum of the second particle, which is a certain non-zero distance away from the first particle, is instantaneously determined. (It’s a lot more nuanced than this, but whatever.) This, according to a Einstein, would violate the Special Theory of Relativity, which says that no information can travel faster than the speed of light. Einstein called it “Spooky action at a distance.”

Shoot ahead to 1982, when Aspect set up an experiment to test the EPR Paradox, and, to the surprise of nobody, showed that this sort of instantaneous communication over distance is a real thing, just as the Copenhagen Interpretation predicts. Aspect got the 2022 Nobel Prize for this.

Good summary. I hadn't realized that Alain Aspect got the Nobel prize this year.

To add to this... Aspect and team tested John Bell's inequalities and found that the idea of local realism had to be abandoned. [Local realism includes 1) Principle of locality: the cause of a physical change must be local. That is, a thing is changed only if it is touched, and 2) Principle of realism: Properties of objects are real and exist in the physical universe independent of our minds.]

 

[kgilbert78]

I've heard this claim before about particles being able to exceed "c". If I had to bet I'd say it's a measurement error.

That being said, perhaps they're onto something here which could be paradigm shifting. Science doesn't advance by just dismissing new ideas as "not possible".

Doesn't necessarily mean Einstein was "wrong", rather that the special theory of relativity was incomplete. Good analogy is how the theory of relativity was a more complete explanation than Newton's laws of gravity and motion.

Clarke's First Law: “When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.”

 

[LionJim]

I assume you are referring to entangled particles. Everything I read so far states that entangled particles cannot be exploited to transmit information and, at least so far, transmission of information is indeed limited to the speed of light. If you have a source that states otherwise I would like to read it. Please provide a link. Thanks.

Yeah, entangled particles. I’m very partial to John Gribben’s “In Search of Schrodinger’s Cat.” “Everything I’ve read so far” makes me suspect that we’re not talking about the same thing, since you seem pretty familiar with the subject. If so, it’s probably due to a misunderstanding on my part about what “entangled particles” means. My knowledge of entangled particles doesn’t go beyond their role in the EPR paradox. You might want to wiki Aspect.

Quantum entanglement - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[wbcbus]

Not that I’m an expert, but I have every expectation that the experiment will be proved to be invalid. There’s a mistake somewhere. If Einstein was wrong, someone would have figured it out by now.

Not that this has any connection to the experiment, but you know about Time Dilation? It’s been verified experimentally: time does pass more slowly for objects moving at high speeds.

Time dilation - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Is that why Michigan got 2 more seconds?

 

[PSU87]

Is that why Michigan got 2 more seconds?

No. That was due to the Witvoet Certainty Principle: if a situation can favor UM or OSU, it will

 

[Leo Ridens]

@Leo Ridens what are your thoughts on this experiment?

These guys think they've measured neutrinos traveling faster than light. This huge if true.

Science | AAAS

www.science.org

I remember this back in 2011, It turns out that a faulty electronic cable gave them a false (slightly higher) value for the speed of the neutrino. When they replaced the cable the value of the neutrino's speed did not exceed the speed of light.

 

[BobPSU92]

I remember this back in 2011, It turns out that a faulty electronic cable gave them a false (slightly higher) value for the speed of the neutrino. When they replaced the cable the value of the neutrino's speed did not exceed the speed of light.

Cables? Clown Show. They should have gone wireless.

 

[Karl_Havok]

I had to bet I'd say it's a measurement error.

If I had to guess I'd say a lot of the poster's wives round these parts would agree.

 

[Leo Ridens]

Fridays at The Skeller…always some sweet neutrinos bouncing around!

How "fast" were they?

 

[Bkmtnittany1]

How "fast" were they?

The bigger the bouncing neutrino, the slower they were!

 

[West Coast Nit]

Yeah, entangled particles. I’m very partial to John Gribben’s “In Search of Schrodinger’s Cat.” “Everything I’ve read so far” makes me suspect that we’re not talking about the same thing, since you seem pretty familiar with the subject. If so, it’s probably due to a misunderstanding on my part about what “entangled particles” means. My knowledge of entangled particles doesn’t go beyond their role in the EPR paradox. You might want to wiki Aspect.

Quantum entanglement - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Thanks for the link.

In the article you suggested is the following statement: "However, all interpretations agree that entanglement produces correlation between the measurements and that the mutual information between the entangled particles can be exploited, but that any transmission of information at faster-than-light speeds is impossible.[10][11]"