E=mc2, but Maybe Not
September 23rd, 2011
Roll over, Einstein
In what may be the biggest earthshaking scientific discovery of this century or the last one, scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, believe they have found a particle that moves at a speed faster than light.
This is a real “say wha?” since nothing, nada is supposed to exceed the speed of light. If the neutrino proves out, it will throw much of our scientific understanding of the physical universe right out the window.
“It’s a shock,” said Fermilab head theoretician Stephen Parke, who was not part of the research in Geneva. “It’s going to cause us problems, no doubt about that—if it’s true.”
Outside scientists expressed skepticism at CERN’s claim that the neutrinos were observed smashing past the cosmic speed barrier of 186,282 miles per second. CERN researchers are now looking to the U.S. and Japan to confirm the CERN lab results. Scientists agree that if the results are confirmed, they would have to chuck Einstein out the window and rethink the fundamental laws of nature. Einstein’s special relativity theory that says energy is equal to the mass times the speed of light squared underlies “pretty much everything in modern physics,” said John Ellis, a theoretical physicist at CERN. “It has worked perfectly up until now.”
Somewhere, Bachmann and Perry must be gloating at having given up math for Christ.
Stay tuned. If this discovery proves out, the possibilities are, as they say…limitless.
UPDATE: Then again, the thought that man, ruled as he has been by the speed of light, can develop a technology that can measure something speeding in excess of the speed of light seems fraught with improbability.
Tags: 3 Responses to “E=mc2, but Maybe Not”
Leave a Reply
This is the year of the Presidential election. How many of you are diligently watching all the stuff going on with the political figures ... 
Could the economy get even worse? 2011 will be remembered as the year of disaster capitalism. Almost $6.3 trillion was wiped from the global markets. ... 
I found this particular article interesting. It started me thinking about how in the few years that I have seen science make a lot of discoveries. And I have to wonder really how much of the money that is spent in the name of science is done so in futility. I mean really. Is there really gonna be anything that is going to go faster than the speed of light?
Yes, the possibilities are limitless. There is so much out there, that we still haven’t discovered yet. Specially beyond our universe, there are other galaxies. Just blows my mind completely!
What a discovery! If this will be proven true, then we can say that there are limitless possibilities when it comes to science. I just hope that this will be for our betterment and not for our destruction.