Friday, September 23, 2011
Time Travel! Is It Real?
I know what you are thinking: that is not possible at all, and it only happens in movies. Physicists at CERN Institute in Geneva, Switzerland have discovered a way to make particles travel faster than the speed of light. They were able to beam neutrinos, tiny particles that have almost zero mass, 500 miles to a lab in Italy. These particles traveled 60 billionth of a second faster than the speed of light; that may not seem like much, but it is still faster than light. That is insanely fast. This may not seem like much, but it is huge. They just disproved Albert Einstein's theory that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. This changes almost everything we thought we knew about the world of physics. Now, what does this have to do with time travel? It has long been accepted that anything that travels faster than light also travels backwards in time. So everyone thought that backwards time travel was impossible because it is impossible to travel faster than the speed of light. Now that door may have been opened. Obviously, this is nowhere near perfect and the results still have to be confirmed by other scientists. I don't think anyone actually believes we will be traveling back in time; that just seems too fictional. But who knows, science has proved us wrong before.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
Being a math and science nerd, I found this information to be quite exciting. However, as awesome as this story is, I feel that scientists ought to turn their attention to global issues that dramatically affect us today. What affects me more: global warming and the energy crisis, or time-traveling massless particles? I think these brilliant scientists could and should be using their time, money, and smarts for better purposes.
Colin, this is definitely great news! I also think Jeremy brings up a very good point. Yes, global/environmental issues should be one of the highlights in today’s millennium. However, I also think that the US government should be more supportive of the science department. According to usgovernmentspending.com, only 4% of the US government expenditure is spent on “others”, which basic science research falls is a part of. But at the same time, 25% of the government expenditure is reserved for the defense department, which mainly consists of the military spending. After seeing this ratio, I think the government can spend a just little more on science research.
I believe that there is some confusion surrounding this news that needs to be cleared up. To begin, CERN is not proposing a new theory or claiming to have defeated Albert Einstein’s widely accepted theory of relativity. As quoted from James Gillies, the head of communications and spokesman for CERN, “‘It's important to make clear that nobody is claiming a discovery, or any contradiction with relativity. The OPERA experiment has a measurement they can't account for, so they're opening it up for further scrutiny, and hopefully an independent measurement from another lab.’” The CERN lab has released such controversial findings in the hopes that other labs and nuclear physics based groups elsewhere may hopefully reproduce the experiment and either confirm or contradict their results. More to the point, travelling even 60 nanoseconds faster than the speed of light is by all definitions a very big deal –and one that we must first look upon with great scrutiny. Einstein’s theories, while theories rather than laws, have been time tested and proven over and over and over again. They have withstood generations of independent testing and confirmation, and it is through this rigorous process that they became so accepted and crucial to the physics community. A single, independent finding suggests nothing new in the face of such data - until that is, the findings can be reproduced. Unfortunately, though, in the coming months I predict that other independent groups will seek to disprove CERN’s findings, rather than attempt to confirm them. Why? A form of self-serving bias I fear. To reject the theory of relativity – a theory that has become the heart of and has roots across almost all sciences – would be an immense blow to both the pride and ego of scientists everywhere. As we discovered in Unspun, it is psychologically painful to admit that one is wrong; instead, the individual will seek to undermine such counter claims and evidence. In my own opinion though, these biases will most likely be satisfied, as I am highly skeptical of CERN’s results. However, I concede that if such findings could be reproduced, it would be fantastic news. And on that note, I feel I must disagree with Jeremy and Mariko. The prospect of particles travelling at speeds greater than the speed of light suggests a plethora of new and innovative technologies, ones that affect our lives just as much as global warming or the energy crisis. In fact, technologies derived from such new theories could provide the answers to our generation’s current problems. Additionally, I feel that questions of U.S government funding for the sciences really does not apply to this article. CERN is international organization centered in Geneva, Switzerland, and the United States is not currently a member of CERN. However, I concur that if such findings prove to be grounded, then U.S government funding to the sciences should comparably increase.
Again though, I emphasize that until these findings can be confirmed or denied, all we can do is wait - but don’t hold your breath.
Post a Comment