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One-Minute Physics explains how to break the speed of light by pointing a laser at the moon. I think this boils down to appearance vs. reality, but I may be mistaken. Anyway, it sounds fun to try! -via The Daily What Geek
Scientists at CERN in Geneva are releasing results of an experiment and are asking for scientific reviews. They’ve found that subatomic neutrinos may move faster than photons, which means faster than the speed of light. If all findings are accurate, this would debunk Einstein’s theory of relativity claim that nothing can move faster than light.
Over 3 years, OPERA researchers timed the roughly 16,000 neutrinos that started at CERN and registered a hit in the detector. They found that, on average, the neutrinos made the 730-kilometer, 2.43-millisecond trip roughly 60 nanoseconds* faster than expected if they were traveling at light speed. “It’s a straightforward time-of-flight measurement,” says Antonio Ereditato, a physicist at the University of Bern and spokesperson for the 160-member OPERA collaboration. “We measure the distance and we measure the time, and we take the ratio to get the velocity, just as you learned to do in high school.” Ereditato says the uncertainty in the measurement is 10 nanoseconds.
However, even Ereditato says it’s way too early to declare relativity wrong. “I would never say that,” he says. Rather, OPERA researchers are simply presenting a curious result that they cannot explain and asking the community to scrutinize it. “We are forced to say something,” he says. “We could not sweep it under the carpet because that would be dishonest.” The results will be presented at a seminar tomorrow at CERN.
*60 nanoseconds = 0.00000006 seconds. Double-checking the results must be painstaking.
Today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day shows the aftermath of powerful collision between two asteroids in the belt between Mars and Jupiter. They estimate the speed of the impact at “15,000 kilometers per hour — five times the speed of a rifle bullet — and liberated energy in excess of a nuclear bomb.”
What Hubble saw indicates that P/2010 A2 is unlike any object ever seen before. At first glance, the object appears to have the tail of a comet. Close inspection, however, shows a 140-meter nucleus offset from the tail center, very unusual structure near the nucleus, and no discernable gas in the tail.
Link Photo: NASA/ESA/D. Jewitt (UCLA)
Who says turtles are slow? This strange-looking soft shell turtle made a quick getaway! -via Unique Daily
Sarah, a cheetah at the Cincinnati Zoo, set a world record for the 100 meter dash today by covering the distance in 6.13 seconds. The event was held at Mast Farm, the zoo’s cheetah breeding facility. The race is a remote contest between Sarah and Zaza, a cheetah at Cheetah Outreach in South Africa. Zaza is expected to run her race later this month. To compare, the human world record is 9.58 seconds, held by Usain Bolt. Link to story. Link to Sarah’s blog. -via Metafilter
Ever wondered what it would be like to travel in a jet-powered porta-potty? Me neither. Seeing someone else doing it still is interesting though. It’s every ten year old boy’s dream come true -a whole collection of jet and rocket powered vehicles, including fire trucks, recliners, tractors and more. Plenty of speed record holders here kiddos, so click the link and have fun exploring the speedy side of life.
The world of moths is one that we’ll probably never fully understand, but a recent study by Rothamsted Research brings us one step closer:
Moths that fly high above our heads throughout the night are not at the mercy of the wind but use a sophisticated internal compass which can help them travel up to 400 miles in a single flight . . . While it is not clear how the creatures – in this case, the Silver Y moth – actually navigate between sunset and sunrise, researchers from the UK and Germany have found that the insects can judge the best conditions for flight based on direction and windspeed, selecting the fastest moving layers of atmosphere so, with their own speed of 10mph, can cruise at speeds of up to 55 mph.
In other words, moths are smarter and faster than many of us have imagined.
(Image by Everything is Permuted)
