Cern Faster Than Light or Follow The Money: The Time Machine Snake Oil
SO, we’ve the announcement today that scientists at Cern have discovered particles moving faster than the speed of light.
The science world has been left in shock after it was announced that CERN scientists had recorded subatomic particles travelling faster than the speed of light in a finding that could overturn fundamental law of physics.
So, the big question is, is it actually true? Or have they managed to cock up their measurements? Neither you nor I know enough physics to be able to decide that one directly but there is another way to work it out.
Follow the money.
Now, the thing is, if you’ve got faster than light particles (strictly speaking, particles with a rest mass of greater than zero travelling faster than the speed of light in a vacuum) you’ve not just overturned physics and you’ve not just got a method of faster than light travel.
What you’ve really got is a time machine.
So, consider what the world would be like if there were a time machine? There would be that old staple from the sci-fi stories of billions of people turning up to watch the Crucifixion for example. But more locally there would be a rather large number of people from CERN who had won the lottery, wouldn’t there? Scientists are nice guys of course but they’re no less happy to be rich than the rest of us.
In fact, every lottery there’s ever been would have been won by a time traveller. Something which we at least very strongly suspect is not actually true: which means that there’s not a time machine thus that there’s not particles breaching the speed of light.
That we’ve not had boffins from CERN gurning at us while holding large lottery cheques shows that the boffins at CERN have a measurement error, not FTL.
Posted: 26th, September 2011 | In: Technology Comments (2) | TrackBack | Permalink
