In Brookhaven Collider, Scientists Briefly Break a Law of Nature
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Indeed.
A law differs from a scientific theory in that it does not posit a mechanism or explanation of phenomena: it is merely a distillation of the results of repeated observation. As such, a law is limited in applicability to circumstances resembling those already observed, and is often found to be false when extrapolated. (via Wikipedia: Scientific Law)
One example is that "Hooke's law only applies to strain below the elastic limit." As another, the laws of classical mechanics break down on the Plank scale. This doesn't mean that classical mechanics is false; it simply means that the law is not applicable under some states. Laws do not explain why something happens and usually break under extreme extrapolation, such as this experiment.
Relativistic effects break classical mechanics, but only because of previous imperfect understanding. It all boils down to available evidence, as long as there is no evidence to the contrary a law is considered 'solid', less perfect but still practically usable even if there is a better one.
When computing how long it will take an elevator to crash in to the basement of a building you won't need relativistic effects accounted for. You probably don't have time for that anyway ;)
Granted, this is a subtlety that scientists grasp easily, and laymen do not, so this article probably gave the wrong idea to many people who read it.
That is, if we investigate further, we find that the statements of science are not of what is true and what is not true, but statements of what is known to different degrees of certainty: "It is very much more likely that so and so is true than that it is not true;" or "such and such is almost certain but there is still a little bit of doubt;" or – at the other extreme – "well, we really don't know." Every one of the concepts of science is on a scale graduated somewhere between, but at neither end of, absolute falsity or absolute truth." - Richard P. Feynman
On a related note, where is my liquid-quark fueled warp engine? I'n not giving all that gold for you to propel to 99% c for nothing, am I?
Dumb, sophomoric "humor" aside, what practical implications does this discovery have? There is a blurb about proteins and what we can digest, which to a layman like me makes no sense, and something about a desolate universe made up of dark matter, which again fails to come home to me.
A dark matter universe would be a pretty bleak place because ther would be no ordinary matter, no galaxies, no stars, no planets, no me, no you,
We like symmetry, Dr. Kharzeev, of Brookhaven, noted, but if the symmetry between matter and antimatter had not been broken long ago, “the universe would be a very desolate place.”
The reason why universe would be a very desolate place is because if there was symmetry between matter and antimatter, they would immediately annihilate themselves. Why exactly is the observable universe composed almost entirely out of matter and not antimatter is now one of the greatest unsolved problems in physics, although several hypotheses exist - some of which even propose that there is also a universe composed almost entirely out of antimatter.
A dark matter universe would be a pretty bleak place because ther would be no ordinary matter, no galaxies, no stars, no planets, no me, no you,
The thing that occurred to me as I was reading this is how different life can be depending on how much energy is cheaply/freely available.
Think back to within the last century: I have more horsepower sitting in my driveway than the average small village of 100 years ago (and that's not counting the actual horses in my pasture :-) . Kilowatts of cheap electricity are available at every wall socket. How has that changed our lives? How much different would life be if gigawatts of power were available at that same wall outlet at the same cost?
"The same day as an article on the subject" is probably a little premature for any theories about its utility, too, although I'll certainly be interested if anyone who knows what he or she is talking about with physics thinks that this could be used to build an ansible or something...
you could argue that limitations for ftl come from translational symmetry (conservation of momentum and energy), but that's not what was broken here, as far as i know.
I couldn't find the actual paper -- the most recent paper on Arxiv from STAR, http://arxiv.org/abs/1002.1641, is about the electric charge balance function.
-Homer Simpson to Lisa when she invented a perpetual motion machine or something like that for her science project.
Someday I am going to write a "Quoting the Simpsons HOWTO", but I fear it will be too little too late.