On 11/20/2011 11:10 PM, Justin Pinnix wrote:
I'm no physicist, but is it possible that the speed of light is faster than we thought it is? Space isn't a perfect vaccum, and we know neutrinos are less affected by "stuff" than photons. Maybe they travel closer to c than the actual photons we have been able to measure...
The speed of light is the speed of photons. For all we know we have pinned down the speed of light fairly well, and a deviation of 25 ppm or so would have been noticed.
The speed of "normal matter" (electrons, quarks, etc), all being particles of charge and thus interacting with photons also seems to obey the speed of photons, and then the laws of relativity surely applies.
The speed of neutrinos might be higher than photons, and current measures seems to indicate a slightly higher speed, but then again neutrinos does not interact with photons. Possibly this has a deeper meaning. It might be that the laws of relativity is relevant within that force-carrier system, but not outside it. This doesn't really shakes the laws of relativity in its grounds, it just defines a slightly different box within the laws applies.
Recall, physics advances with unexplained observations. Either it can be explained within the existing system and everybody is happy about that, or new core theories needs to be developed. Neutrinos has been hard to do qualitative measures on and looking at the OPERA, MINOS and T2K experiments indicates that there is indeed not small efforts.
Now, regardless if photons and neutrinos has the same speed or not, it becomes interesting to ask what makes them have the speed they have. If it differs, why is the photons slower than neutrinos? Is there in fact some underlying subtle force acting on them?
If we think we don't quite understand neutrinos, do we really understand photons? Their particle/wave duality is indeed strange and just taken for granted now, but it is really not explained.
This little micro-cosmos may have familiar names by now, but even with vibrating strings, membranes and other esoterical stuff, we just don't really understand it very well, we just have a bunch of theories.
Cheers, Magnus _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
