Could 2012 be the year that.....?

[flobadob]

If you had said a few months ago that something could travel faster than the speed of light you would have been shouted down and swamped with so-called conclusive proof that this would be impossible. Now there is stirrings that perhaps there are subatomic particles that may in fact break the light barrier.

With this in mind, compounded with other recent discoveries, do you think perhaps in 2012 we will finally work it all out, everything, without doubt?

[cazzz1975]

I think it may take a little longer than 2012 to work out "everything" without a doubt. Fair play to einstein though, he did all his working out in a time before calculators and computers.

[factor-fiction]

There certainly seems a lot of interest in the results although given the relatively short distances involved and the relatively small difference in timings there may be a possibility for error of the odd millisecond

[Graham-W]

I thought the answer to life, the universe and everything was 42.

[beso]

Ah but Graham-W, that was the answer but we never did find out the question.

Incidentally I am sure that answer is wrong. Both 41 and 43 are actually far more significant. Moreover I am convinced the real answer is 163.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heegner_number

[MarkRae]

> that was the answer but we never did find out the question.

We did. It was "What do you get if you multiply nine by six?"

[beso]

You will note that rather than announcing that the speed of light has been exceeded the researchers are asking for help to discover where they are going wrong.

Even if it does turn out that c has been exceeded the very last conclusion I would draw would be that we had finally worked everything out. It would be just the dawn of a new epoch in science.

Late in the 19th century it was suggested that we were on the verge of knowing everything. It was acknowledged that just two small anomalies needed to be worked out. One was the odd thing about the speed of light and the other was the photoelectric effect.

These two phenomena were the first observations to hint at what became Relativity and Quantum Mechanics respectively. Each of these theories took science to a whole new level of understanding that underpins absolutely everyting we know about the Universe.

They are now pivotal in virtually every aspect of our technologies, none that would be have been possible in Classical Mechanics.

[beso]

MarkRae //We did. It was "What do you get if you multiply nine by six?"//

Really?

[flobadob]

beso, you are forgetting to carry over for the speed of light breakage variation. Now 9x6=42. Simples.

[Old_Geezer]

Ah, of course the researchers are asking for help to discover where they are going wrong. They're not daft enough to claim they're proved FTL travel from the first hint in the data. Chances are that would be a career limiting move if a flaw was found.

But the possibility remains that once all the checking has been done, if no flaw can be definitely identified and agreed to be the cause, science could advance. And the rest of us enjoy the speculation.