Faster than light neutrinos

My favourite joke of the moment is:

“We don’t allow faster than light neutrinos in here” said the bartender.

A neutrino walks into a bar.

Or, how about:

“Neutrino”
Knock Knock
“Who’s there?” 

You won’t believe the hours I’ve spent trying to explain them to those with, shall we say, a zero interest in or understanding of ‘science’ and recent discoveries.

Nevertheless, both bring home the point that it seems likely that CERN has discovered that it is possible to travel faster than light.  Well, if you are a neutrino that is.  And it’s only a maybe.

To me this is as bizarre as when I found out that at the quantum physics level, ‘stuff’ wouldn’t do certain things when it was being watched.  Yeah, a ‘shy’ part of physics, and completely true.  WTF is that about?

Anyway, to the matter of the faster than light neutrinos.  I guess this is like the Star Trek moment when they first discovered ‘warp drive’.  Ok, Star Trek is all made up of course (Or is it??), and not like real life (Or is it??), and I’ve just sounded like I might be some kind of Star Trek geek by mentioning them, damn it.

What’s been slightly disturbing has been the media hype about Einstein ‘getting it completely wrong’ with his Theory of Relativity.  When, in truth, Einstein didn’t get much completely wrong at all, did he?  His theory fitted current knowledge and explained the ‘law’ of physics as we understood it until 5 minutes ago when things might have changed.  The Theory of Relativity was just one theory of many, all of which still hold true as the foundations of our understanding.

Media organisations, a bit like religious people, love to crow and bark when science has a “Hang on a minute, let’s think about this again!” moment like the one we are now going through.  They see it as getting ‘one over’ on science as if science isn’t just a process and methodology, but some kind of single tangible enemy.

Well, of course, ‘science’ is indeed an enemy to ‘blind faith’ as the scientific and logical approach to understanding goes against all that religions force their subjects to unquestioningly believe forever and ever.

In the past of course, to make excited pronouncements about possible new theories about things around us would result in scientists being tortured to death by the Church.  Thankfully for a few years now that hasn’t happened. Instead they look on and sneer as scientific theories evolve, taking any opportunity to laugh and point about previous theories being ‘wrong’ as if it somehow reinforces their ancients illogical yet entrenched beliefs.

However, the nature of science is to keep testing the current theories until new theories are more apt, and then keep testing those forever and ever. Hey, look at the evolution of the periodic table!  Einstein himself would have been excited and proud to have discovered that ‘stuff’ can exceed the speed of light. He wouldn’t have been upset or embarrassed.  He was a scientist.  Science is about never being ‘settled’ on an idea, but constantly checking and re-checking it.

There are levels at which scientific discovery becomes a ‘faith’, such as the cherry-picked mumbo-jumbo based on science that is now the Global Warming religion, and I suppose there will even be those who won’t see a word spoken against the theories and laws proposed by Einstein, maybe calling themselves ‘Einsteinists”.

If it is true that ‘stuff’ can travel faster than light, then not only does the e=mc² forumla need revising, but we can all get excited again about the possibilities we had started to dismiss, like the concept of time travel, which needs travel at faster than light speed or for us to use particle physics in an extreme and new bendy way.

It’s possible that the universe has whole dimensions we’d not previously considered, and that there are whole new ‘layers’ yet to discover.  To me, this is exactly why scientific investigation, exploration and discovery is so exciting, and why it must continue to be one of mankind’s most important pursuits.