Can something (a particle?) arrive somewhere before it is sent?
Asked by
rebbel (
35553
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October 24th, 2011
I am watching a BBC program right now on the neutrinos that seemed to travel faster than light.
In it the presenter uses an example to clarify a certain possible phenomenon: a text message send to a person who is travelling in a space craft that is travelling close to the speed of light.
The receiving person, in the example, would receive the text before the sender had sent it probably using the new technique based on the newly found fast(er than light) neutrino and he even stated that if the receiver sends a reply back that the guy on Earth would receive it before he the Earth guy had sent the original, first one.
That goes beyond me.
Is that possible (theoretically)?
If so, can you explain that to me keeping in mind that I am not a physicist?
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11 Answers
I believe that the neutrino-traveling-faster-than-light phenomena was disproved, if that helps.
Yup, it was an experimental error.
That’s not possible. But that still leaves C (the speed of light) open to being revised, or perhaps even demonstrating that C isn’t the universal speed limit as most physicists believe.
Only when Milo is driving the delivery truck.
totaly absurd concept.. . . which institution is the proponent currently held?
C (speed of light) is the speed limit of normal matter. Matter with imaginary mass (such as a tachyon) would travel faster than C. When anything travels close to the speed of light, there begins to be time dilation, which causes the particle to change the speed at which it travels through time. Once a particle travels faster than C, it begins to travel backwards in time. A particle like this would arrive before it was sent (and not violate any known laws of physics). So, it is possible for this to happen as long as the particle is imaginary (the existence of which has been neither proved nor disproved).
@Rarebear, they’ve found an experimental error in the OPERA’s discovery from September? Gosh, I didn’t know that.
N o t i f I h a v e a n y t h i n g t o d o w i t h i t .
No seriously, the error was that the physicists making the measurement of how quickly the neutrinos traversed a certain distance failed to factor relativity into the GPS locations. Kind of iroic. Overturning relativity by forgetting to use it where we already know it has to be applied.
So far, the Universal COP (Causal Ordering Postulate) is still enforcing the speed of light, and you can’t get there before you leave.
While it almost certainly is some sort of error, there is no paper whose hypothesis of said error has been vetted and accepted. To date OPERA’s results are unconfirmed. (The GPS paper is one of many put forward, none have yet been accepted as correctly explaining OPERA’s results.) Rather more than 80 papers have been submitted and at least two tests are being planned to test OPERA’s the results. Here’s an “update” reference and here’s a reference about a further test supposedly happening soon at CERN.
With regards to sending messages to the past, yes, if the neutrinos actually are going faster than the speed of light it would be possible. I’ve yet to find a intuitive way of explaining it though. However this might help, though I warn you now it involves math (though I found running numbers through the transformations actually makes it easier to understand… sort of).
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