It has been theorized for a LONG time that neutrinos could exceed the speed of light. Very cool to see it backed with some solid evidence. The finding itself, to me, isn't as fascinating as what can come FROM the discovery. It opens up routes to other huge questions, namely where does Einsteins theory of relativity break down? Where does it apply? Where does it not apply? It's another data point to hopefully bridge the gap between traditional physics and quantum mechanics. The more data points, the closer to a unified theory science can hopefully get. Its quite cool. I'm going off on the edge here. But what I'd ask is: Does it really exceed the speed of light? Imagine if it really doesn't exceed the speed of light, however from our frame of reference it does. How to explain that? Some sort of dimension tunneling (lets fly off on a crazy whim here, think hyperspace or tunneling through extra dimension(s)). As theory goes, everything is relative. So while a particle in of itself may not exceed the speed of light in it's frame of reference at that speed, it may actually go faster from our dimensional perspective. Who knows why. Space-time, the speed of light, and particles can do some very strange and interesting things.

>> ^kceaton1:

promote He reminds me of a band I knew called Unified Theory. They sound much alike except Jack's is slightly darker and his is nearly a one man show.


I thought of Elliot Smith myself.

*promote He reminds me of a band I knew called Unified Theory. They sound much alike except Jack's is slightly darker and his is nearly a one man show.

OMG! Finally, a Unified Theory of Feline Angular Momentum. Now we can finally explore the outer reaches of the universe!

Refreshness on theoretical physics should be always welcome , however to be technically careful with new proposals is mandatory !
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"Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything

By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Published: 6:02PM GMT 14 Nov 2007
Comments 596 | Comment on this article

The E8 pattern (click to enlarge), Garrett Lisi surfing (middle) and out of the water (right)
An impoverished surfer has drawn up a new theory of the universe, seen by some as the Holy Grail of physics, which has received rave reviews from scientists.
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Garrett Lisi, 39, has a doctorate but no university affiliation and spends most of the year surfing in Hawaii, where he has also been a hiking guide and bridge builder (when he slept in a jungle yurt).

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In winter, he heads to the mountains near Lake Tahoe, Nevada, where he snowboards. "Being poor sucks," Lisi says. "It's hard to figure out the secrets of the universe when you're trying to figure out where you and your girlfriend are going to sleep next month."
Despite this unusual career path, his proposal is remarkable because, by the arcane standards of particle physics, it does not require highly complex mathematics.
Even better, it does not require more than one dimension of time and three of space, when some rival theories need ten or even more spatial dimensions and other bizarre concepts. And it may even be possible to test his theory, which predicts a host of new particles, perhaps even using the new Large Hadron Collider atom smasher that will go into action near Geneva next year.
Although the work of 39 year old Garrett Lisi still has a way to go to convince the establishment, let alone match the achievements of Albert Einstein, the two do have one thing in common: Einstein also began his great adventure in theoretical physics while outside the mainstream scientific establishment, working as a patent officer, though failed to achieve the Holy Grail, an overarching explanation to unite all the particles and forces of the cosmos.
Now Lisi, currently in Nevada, has come up with a proposal to do this. Lee Smolin at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, describes Lisi's work as "fabulous". "It is one of the most compelling unification models I've seen in many, many years," he says.
"Although he cultivates a bit of a surfer-guy image its clear he has put enormous effort and time into working the complexities of this structure out over several years," Prof Smolin tells The Telegraph.
"Some incredibly beautiful stuff falls out of Lisi's theory," adds David Ritz Finkelstein at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta. "This must be more than coincidence and he really is touching on something profound."
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The new theory reported today in New Scientist has been laid out in an online paper entitled "An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything" by Lisi, who completed his doctorate in theoretical physics in 1999 at the University of California, San Diego.
He has high hopes that his new theory could provide what he says is a "radical new explanation" for the three decade old Standard Model, which weaves together three of the four fundamental forces of nature: the electromagnetic force; the strong force, which binds quarks together in atomic nuclei; and the weak force, which controls radioactive decay.
The reason for the excitement is that Lisi's model also takes account of gravity, a force that has only successfully been included by a rival and highly fashionable idea called string theory, one that proposes particles are made up of minute strings, which is highly complex and elegant but has lacked predictions by which to do experiments to see if it works.
But some are taking a cooler view. Prof Marcus du Sautoy, of Oxford University and author of Finding Moonshine, told the Telegraph: "The proposal in this paper looks a long shot and there seem to be a lot things still to fill in."
And a colleague Eric Weinstein in America added: "Lisi seems like a hell of a guy. I'd love to meet him. But my friend Lee Smolin is betting on a very very long shot."
Lisi's inspiration lies in the most elegant and intricate shape known to mathematics, called E8 - a complex, eight-dimensional mathematical pattern with 248 points first found in 1887, but only fully understood by mathematicians this year after workings, that, if written out in tiny print, would cover an area the size of Manhattan.
E8 encapsulates the symmetries of a geometric object that is 57-dimensional and is itself is 248-dimensional. Lisi says "I think our universe is this beautiful shape."
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What makes E8 so exciting is that Nature also seems to have embedded it at the heart of many bits of physics. One interpretation of why we have such a quirky list of fundamental particles is because they all result from different facets of the strange symmetries of E8.
Lisi's breakthrough came when he noticed that some of the equations describing E8's structure matched his own. "My brain exploded with the implications and the beauty of the thing," he tells New Scientist. "I thought: 'Holy crap, that's it!'"
What Lisi had realised was that he could find a way to place the various elementary particles and forces on E8's 248 points. What remained was 20 gaps which he filled with notional particles, for example those that some physicists predict to be associated with gravity.
Physicists have long puzzled over why elementary particles appear to belong to families, but this arises naturally from the geometry of E8, he says. So far, all the interactions predicted by the complex geometrical relationships inside E8 match with observations in the real world. "How cool is that?" he says.
The crucial test of Lisi's work will come only when he has made testable predictions. Lisi is now calculating the masses that the 20 new particles should have, in the hope that they may be spotted when the Large Hadron Collider starts up.
"The theory is very young, and still in development," he told the Telegraph. "Right now, I'd assign a low (but not tiny) likelyhood to this prediction.
"For comparison, I think the chances are higher that LHC will see some of these particles than it is that the LHC will see superparticles, extra dimensions, or micro black holes as predicted by string theory. I hope to get more (and different) predictions, with more confidence, out of this E8 Theory over the next year, before the LHC comes online."

>> ^Memorare:
maybe siftbot is operating in some parallel universe where time is sped up.
In these physics videos one thing they never offer an explaination for is why the quantum level events don't scale up and occur on our macro level since everything is made up of sub-atomic particles organized as atoms. As with the Schroedinger's Cat paradox it would be kind of disappointing to finally discover a unified theory of everything, only to learn that it really doesn't matter since it doesn't scale up to mundane reality and therefore only "exists" as a theoretical concept. (personally i think the notion that the cat is both dead AND alive simultaneaously and observation determines which, is a lot of mathematical bs, ie it's not Really true except on paper but then i'm not a cosmologist or metaphysicist so what do i know)
Also, a simpler question that has an answer but i just don't know what it is...
with all the anti-matter positrons bombarding the planet via cosmic rays, don't they ever bang into some electrons and create a tiny but big enough to be measured matter/anti-matter explosion? Sure matter is mostly empty (or not so empty apparently) space and possible collisions are few, but cloud chambers indicate tons of these thigns zipping around so Howcome there's not bazillions of these tiny explosions going off all around us constantly?


Yes, the quantum world really destroyed the normal stance of science. It is when math stole the show and ruined the normal claims that science was used to making about the world. In the now, we are talking about things that exist outside of our ability to experience them. The only things that can experience them are our machines we create to measure them; and they do so in a diminished and programed method (they interpolate data). So we are left to interpret an interpretation of an event. When you start getting that convoluted then you have to make the realization that you are no longer talking about what "is", but what your machine is interpolating (The forms of the universe aren't necessarily discrete or concrete, but it will be changed by the machine so that a result can be given). We have gotten to the point where we are no longer talking about the way things "are" about the universe anymore, just about how our machines experience the different elements of phenomena in the universe (your eyes are just as much a part of this machine analogy as well, but that is a tale for another day).

I think one of the largest criticisms of the relativist camp that really sticks is there is not sufficient reason to accept the quantum model over any other model that explains things. The grounds for saying the things that exist in quantum mathematics don't lie in understanding of those elements but the claim that since the math works, then it must be true. This is putting the cart before the horse and it begs the question "why". Why not any other way that also works? We could refine Newton to incorporate some of the quantum findings and use that as the explanation of everything. There is not sufficient reason to suppose that forces are the real things in the universe, or space time warps, quantum probability matrices.

Most "old" ways of thinking just get abandon for not being popular among the new generation of scientist trying to make a name for themselves. Quine talked about this extensively. Things move in and out of popularity in this realm like any other and scientists are just like MTV peoples and everyone else of jumping on the new trend. Truly, there is not sufficient reason to believe that Aristotelian motion isn't the real method of locomotion in the universe.

Simply put, new science don't care about whys anymore. New science is about making models of massive amounts of data. It won't ever be able to give a reason if something violates that model, it just has to re-engineer the model to incorporate the new data set. It lacks any truth to it because it is always in need of more data to continue to refine its model. It will never know when the model is complete or 100% accurate. It is actually the end road of the epistemology of empirical materialism. A constantly evolving model of data is the best "truth" you can hope from science. It will never have a why, that simply isn't a role of science. It is because "it is" and that is all they will ever be able to say; now more than ever.


edit (several times for grammar, man I sux at expressing myself)

That is NOT "I love you."

It's "I'm hungry."

I know this because dogs say only five things:
"Hey"

"I'm hungry"

"I gotta go! I REALLY gotta go!"

"I just ate something that I found on the lawn. Now come here so I can lick you all over your face."

and, occasionally,

"Einstein was a pretty smart guy there, but he missed a Fourier transform in step 23 of his proof that would if exploited actually have achieved a possible vector toward the Grand Unified Theory of the Universe. Too bad, really. Oh, and his hair makes him look like a poodle on crack."

>> ^Aemaeth:
>> ^therealblankman:
"In the end the physical world does not succumg to scientific theories..."
Huh?

This simply means science was wrong. Could such a thing be possible?


How was science "wrong" in this example, considering there isn't a "grand unified theory of not travelling faster than the wind"? What happens in the video can be completely explained using highschool physics and the fact that a few armchair physicists on the intarwebs are unable to do so is hardly an example of science being wrong.

>> ^hueco_tanks:
We can smash protons together at near light speed in hopes of resolving the grand unified theory, but still no personal jetpacks! I was promised jetpacks! Why not put 8,000 physicists to work on something I can use!


$200,000 my friend:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_pack

We can smash protons together at near light speed in hopes of resolving the grand unified theory, but still no personal jetpacks! I was promised jetpacks! Why not put 8,000 physicists to work on something I can use!

This is a dupe I think, it's certainly the same thumbnail
http://www.videosift.com/video/Trainspotting-Sickboys-Unifying-Theory-of-Life

Some sort of micro-federalist, or syndicalist structure seems to fit better with dunbar's then either totalitarian socialism, or liaise fare capitalism. The assertion that since socialism does not fit dunbar's, markets somehow overcome this problem lacks any sort of coherent mechanism.

This is a pretty good example of propaganda where a fact is shoehorned into a predetermined ideology. An ideology which the author begins by defining as not an ideological unified theory, even though it is just as much an arbitrary unifying abstraction as marxist "history" whereby socialism is self defined as not an ideology, but a "fact".

According to the Many Worlds theory- an interpretation of quantum mechanics that is undergoing a kind of renaissance of examination- the quantum level events DO scale to the macro level, we in our universe only perceive one possible quantum outcome but all other possibilities are simultaneously occurring in other parallel universes. Therefore Schrodinger's cat may be dead in our universe, but is wholly alive in another. The waveform function of our Macro universe does not collapse at all- all possibilities exist.

In reply to this comment by Memorare:
maybe siftbot is operating in some parallel universe where time is sped up.

In these physics videos one thing they never offer an explaination for is why the quantum level events don't scale up and occur on our macro level since everything is made up of sub-atomic particles organized as atoms. As with the Schroedinger's Cat paradox it would be kind of disappointing to finally discover a unified theory of everything, only to learn that it really doesn't matter since it doesn't scale up to mundane reality and therefore only "exists" as a theoretical concept. (personally i think the notion that the cat is both dead AND alive simultaneaously and observation determines which, is a lot of mathematical bs, ie it's not Really true except on paper but then i'm not a cosmologist or metaphysicist so what do i know)

Also, a simpler question that has an answer but i just don't know what it is...
with all the anti-matter positrons bombarding the planet via cosmic rays, don't they ever bang into some electrons and create a tiny but big enough to be measured matter/anti-matter explosion? Sure matter is mostly empty (or not so empty apparently) space and possible collisions are few, but cloud chambers indicate tons of these thigns zipping around so Howcome there's not bazillions of these tiny explosions going off all around us constantly?

maybe siftbot is operating in some parallel universe where time is sped up.

In these physics videos one thing they never offer an explaination for is why the quantum level events don't scale up and occur on our macro level since everything is made up of sub-atomic particles organized as atoms. As with the Schroedinger's Cat paradox it would be kind of disappointing to finally discover a unified theory of everything, only to learn that it really doesn't matter since it doesn't scale up to mundane reality and therefore only "exists" as a theoretical concept. (personally i think the notion that the cat is both dead AND alive simultaneaously and observation determines which, is a lot of mathematical bs, ie it's not Really true except on paper but then i'm not a cosmologist or metaphysicist so what do i know)

Also, a simpler question that has an answer but i just don't know what it is...
with all the anti-matter positrons bombarding the planet via cosmic rays, don't they ever bang into some electrons and create a tiny but big enough to be measured matter/anti-matter explosion? Sure matter is mostly empty (or not so empty apparently) space and possible collisions are few, but cloud chambers indicate tons of these thigns zipping around so Howcome there's not bazillions of these tiny explosions going off all around us constantly?

There are no extra dimensions in this theory. I think you might be confusing string theory in here, which using projection matrices to collapse dimensions.

A rotation matrix is mathematically different than a projection matrix.

He does predict many new particles, but right now it is clear that the theory makes new connections to physics that we don't already know.

In reply to this comment by krumzy:
Im still reading through the paper (have to catch up on some lie algebra first) but the rotation is significant because it can help you (somewhat) to visualize the different projections onto lower dimensions which describe the effects of different feild forces: gravity + standard model forces.


Although i have to admit im far from understanding any of the actual physics underlying the math, im not too sure about this one. From what i hear, even though it has received some praise, the science community in general hasnt exactly welcomed this guy with open arms. Maybe if this theory helps with research into the Higgs boson, the media will be justified in their hunt for the newest Einstein. Lets not forget, if you read this guy's bio you will see he is very media friendly unlike your typical theoretical physicist locked up in his office, rarely seeing the light of day let alone encountering any human interactions. This one could just be gaining attention for purely superficial reasons, so stay skeptical.