[lit-ideas] Re: No shock that report Einstein "may have been wrong" may have been wrong
- From: "Walter C. Okshevsky" <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 24 Sep 2011 17:36:43 -0230
If we find that there really is stuff that runs faster than the speed of light,
is this discovery simply a new empirical fact about the universe we can add to
the other ones, or does it constitute a "paradigm shift" in Kuhn's terms? And
if the latter, what precisely is it that makes this empirical finding so
fundamental?
Walter O
MUN
Quoting Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>:
> Some famous scientists seem less phlegmatic than Adriano and, indeed, seem to
> have a rather different understanding of the implications of such a finding
> being
>
accepted:-http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/sep/23/physicists-speed-light-violated?intcmp=239
>
>
> 'Brian Cox, a professor of particle physics at the University of
> Manchester, urged caution. "If you've got something travelling faster
> than light, then it's the most profound discovery of the last 100 years
> or more in physics. It's a very, very big deal," he said on BBC 6 Music on
> Friday. "It requires a complete rewriting of our understanding of the
> universe."
> Professor Jim Al-Khalili at the University of Surrey said it was most likely
> that something was skewing the results. "If the neutrinos have broken the
> speed of light, it would overturn a keystone theory from the last
> century of physics. That's possible, but it's far more likely that there is
> an error in the data. So let me put my money where my mouth is: if
> the Cern experiment proves to be correct and neutrinos have broken the
> speed of light, I will eat my boxer shorts on live TV."'
>
> Of course, Cox is discredited easily - for singing "Things Can Only Get
> Better", playing Hannibal Lecter in 'Manhunter' and, worse, accepting a
> professorship at the so-called University of Manchester. Al-Khalili only
> appears on BBC4 and they never do live TV and since 1986 he has owned no
> boxer shorts but sports briefs, so his threat may be dismissed idle.
> Nevertheless their responses ring of realism/falsificationism, in terms of
> philosophy of science, rather than instrumentalism or conventionalism. This
> might be explained by their being proper scientists and not given to
> positions comfortable for an armchair philosophiser.
>
>
> Donal
> London
>
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Adriano Palma <Palma@xxxxxxxxxx>
> To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Friday, 23 September 2011, 13:28
> Subject: [lit-ideas] shock that report Einstein "may have been wrong" may
> have been wrong
>
>
> what gtr & str require is that there is a maximal speed, whether it is in
> fact C or the speed of neutrinos the theories're neutral about.
> regards
> Â
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