Challenging Einstein is usually a losing venture

[steve2470]

http://news.yahoo.com/challenging-einstein-usually-losing-venture-214054440.html

GENEVA (AP) — Betting against Einstein and his theory of relativity is a way to go broke.

For more than a century, everyone from physicists to the Nazi Party — which encouraged the publication of the tract "One Hundred Authors Against Einstein" — has tried to find cracks in his work. And all have failed.

On Thursday, the world's biggest physics lab unveiled a shocking finding: that one type of subatomic particle was clocked going faster than the speed of light. If true — a big if, even the scientists there concede — it could undercut Einstein's theories. Physicist Michio Kaku of City College of New York called it "the biggest challenge to relativity in 100 years."

Antonio Ereditato, who participated in the European experiment as head of the Albert Einstein Center for Fundamental Physics in Bern, knows what is at stake. After his team fielded two hours of technical questions, some a bit sharp, from a skeptical audience Friday, Ereditato had a beer in hand and was asked about the idea that his work was challenging the secular saint of modern physics.

[ixion]

1. Einstein, a personal hero of mine, didn't solve everything

so, yes, he should be challenged whenever it's appropriate.

[piratefish08]

2. shouldn't ANYTHING in science be questioned when new evidence comes to light?

isn't that why it's 'science'?

[ixion]

3. That's exactly what it is, in theory

but the Bell Tower Academics always cling to the past.

[originalpckelly]

4. The thing that really does it is the supernova observations.

In one experiment, if this superluminal travel were real, the neutrinos would have arrived about 5 years earlier than the light from the supernova, but they arrived only 3 hours earlier, as predicted because they can escape a star faster than the photons, since they are electrically neutral.

[Orrex]

6. Spare us your witchcraft!

[caraher]

5. Weird to bring in the Nazis...

What's very different in this case is that we have a large team of excellent scientists who have an actual measurement at odds with theory.

Most challenges to Einstein come from cranks, many of whom understand neither Einstein's theory nor the flaws in their alternatives, and come in the form of arguments, not data.

That said, my gut feeling is that there's something not yet understood about the experiment such that we won't see the end of Einstein's relativity. But there's a real chance we've seen something entirely new here, and it needs to be taken very seriously!