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Was Einstein right after all?
Published: 23 February, 2012, 22:13
An undated portrait of German-born Swiss-US physicist Albert Einstein (1879-1955), author of theory of relativity, awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921 (AFP Photo)
TAGS: SciTech
The CERN laboratory in Switzerland has found a flaw in an experiment that was set to prove Albert Einstein's social theory of relativity wrong. It will be carried out again in May 2012.
One of the fundamental theories of Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity states that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light (300,000 kilometres per second). The famous big bang institute near Geneva tested the theory in September 2011. Their result was impressive. Based on results they claimed to have managed to beat the ultimate universe speed by 60 nanoseconds; a nanosecond is one-billionth of a second.
The results of the experiment were met with great criticism by scientists worldwide as they are part of fundamental physics theory. Albert Einstein claimed that if anything could travel faster than light, time travel would be possible.
And it looks like they were too fast to count the nanoseconds. The institute has admitted the speed reached could have been overestimated.
Physicists say incorrect speed measurements could have been taken due to a loose cable connected to one of the speed-measuring devices, meaning Einstein may well have been right after all. CERN will try to check that again in May this year.
But for now Einstein's theory lives on.
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Well....If Einstein is wrong, they'll all just blame his Serbian wife Mileva Maric who planted the 'relativity' idea in his head in the first place.
As ever, John very interesting. The tlricae I linked to does refer to your point, that the field was much more wide-open and undiscovered at the time of Einstein's breakthrough: It also helped that he was struggling with these problems at a very propitious time. Stephen Jay Gould has pointed out that the reason it's so hard to hit .400 in major league baseball today is that the whole level of play has been raised. In the 1920s and 1930s there were many weak teams, against which it was easy for top hitters to pump up their averages. Today though, there are fewer consistently weak teams. Batters have a higher standard against which to try to stand out.Einstein was like one of those old-time batters. Today there are thousands of physicists in the world, but when Einstein was at the patent office there were scarcely any 97 perhaps six full-time physicists in Switzerland and at most a few hundred in other major countries. He could take the time he needed for quiet mulling without too much worry that anyone would catch up to him. Oh, and I love the Albert, don't tell God what to do quote. Classic!!