faster than light claims

I've had a lot of email asking for comments on the news of observations of faster than light neutrinos.  (the paper is up on arXiv for those of you who have a bit of physics - it isn't overly technical as physics papers go, probably they realized it would be of great interest to the general public)

Carl Sagan's comment from Cosmos is appropriate:

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"

The speed of light is a hard speed limit in physics.  Faster than light observations have been made many times, but each case has been knocked down after the careful analysis that comes from intensive and brutal scientific scrutiny. Such is the nature of science which turns out to be something of a contact sport.  It is likely that this observation has problems too, but should it survive it would be fantastic.  Independent confirmation, of course, is required.  The result must be repeatable.

If this holds, it would point out a fundamental flaw in our understanding of nature and force a dramatic rethinking.  It may not impact how physics works on an everyday level - after all - Newtonian physics works just fine for most of what we observe (although your gps wouldn't work without an understanding general and special relativity) and most of us don't need to worry about quantum mechanics when we measure things in the kitchen.  The impact would be at a deeper level of understanding nature.   So this is a very long shot, but such events are not unknown and it would be thrilling..

There is a larger issue.  The public may interpret this as physics being overturned, while physicists see this as an exciting long shot - the game is afoot, but is likely to take a long time before there is clarity.  

Many news outlets report any number of studies without any background on how robust they are and where they fit in the scheme of understanding nature.  Have they been verified and do the majority of experts in the field agree?  Do they lead to verifiable predictions?  Evolution is very settled science and has driven biology and medicine for decades.  That human activity has been responsible for much of global warming is robust and accepted science - but the media and politicians give space for views of - well - very bad science and non-science.  Any number of medical results are reported and people change behavior based on very unverified science.  The role of certain foods and compounds in diet is often overblown based on single low quality studies with questionable funding sources.  Vaccines and autism ... the list of these things is long.  There are serious issues with the communication of science.

 - nature always has the final word

 

and a joke - should this be called c++? ...  Bjarne would not be pleased.

 

 

Comments

[Alan]

It would be thrilling indeed. If not C++ then perhaps C#?