So, the people running Opera at CERN have run their neutrino experiment a second time with some tweaks and received the same result. Once a mistake, twice a coincidence, a third time is true? Waiting for a different facility to run this experiment and see if they also get the same results.

http://digitaljournal.com/article/314640

I think its ignorant to believe that the speed of light is truly the fastest thing in the universe.

Read some of the geek chatter on this. One of them had a great point that if FTL isn't possible then that would be really disheartening in terms of exploring space and contacting or finding alien life. There are only 11 other stars within 10 light years from earth - or a 20+ year round-trip. The closest being 4.2 light years away. But at least when the sun dies if we've achieved something close to light-speed travel they'll have a few options to relocate.

gut;979846 wrote:Read some of the geek chatter on this. One of them had a great point that if FTL isn't possible then that would be really disheartening in terms of exploring space and contacting or finding alien life. There are only 11 other stars within 10 light years from earth - or a 20+ year round-trip. The closest being 4.2 light years away. But at least when the sun dies if we've achieved something close to light-speed travel they'll have a few options to relocate.

there is an episode of Through the Wormhole that talks about the possibility of faster than light travel. one scientist, from mexico i think, talked about how it should be impossible for man made craft to go faster than the speed of light because of the amount of energy needed to accelerate a craft becomes unreachable due to the ever increasing weight of the spacecraft (as energy is mass). he thought the only possibility would be to harness dark energy and literally contract space-time in front of a vehicle while simultaneously expanding space-time behind the vehicle. its still just theoretical, but it would not break the laws of physics to achieve faster than light travel, and allow us to explore the surrounding cosmos.

sleeper;979809 wrote:I think its ignorant to believe that the speed of light is truly the fastest thing in the universe.

I think you are ignorant.

DeadliestWarrior34;979862 wrote:I think you are ignorant.

Really? Did you read the link? Obviously logic is not your strong suit.

tcarrier32;979861 wrote:there is an episode of Through the Wormhole that talks about the possibility of faster than light travel. one scientist, from mexico i think, talked about how it should be impossible for man made craft to go faster than the speed of light because of the amount of energy needed to accelerate a craft becomes unreachable due to the ever increasing weight of the spacecraft (as energy is mass). he thought the only possibility would be to harness dark energy and literally contract space-time in front of a vehicle while simultaneously expanding space-time behind the vehicle. its still just theoretical, but it would not break the laws of physics to achieve faster than light travel, and allow us to explore the surrounding cosmos.

That's the warp drive from Star Trek. The Enterprise doesn't actually go faster than light, the space in front is contracted and the space behind expanded.

sleeper;979871 wrote:Really? Did you read the link? Obviously logic is not your strong suit.

I read the link and wasn't talking about that. I just think you're ignorant.

tk421;979874 wrote:That's the warp drive from Star Trek. The Enterprise doesn't actually go faster than light, the space in front is contracted and the space behind expanded.

pretty much

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_Alcubierre

In his paper, he reversed the regular way general relativity is applied; instead of going from massive objects to space-time curvature, he constructed a model that could transport a volume of flat space inside a "bubble" of highly curved space, much like a crease in a sheet. This bubble is driven forward by a purely local expansion of space-time behind it, and an opposite contraction in front of it. In this way, a spaceship will be pushed away from the Earth and pulled towards a distant star by space-time itself. One can then invert the process to come back to Earth, taking an arbitrarily small time to complete the round trip. As a result, motion faster than light as seen by observers outside this disturbed region is possible. Faster than light velocity would be possible because the starship would be, strictly speaking, stationary (relative to the space of its bubble) while space-time itself would be moving.

gut;979846 wrote:But at least when the sun dies if we've achieved something close to light-speed travel they'll have a few options to relocate.

Whoever "they" are at that point. 0.00% chance humanity is still existing 5 billion years from now.

DeadliestWarrior34;979876 wrote:I read the link and wasn't talking about that. I just think you're ignorant.

Yeah, ignorant people don't accomplish the things that I've accomplished. Enjoy pushing carts at WalMart the rest of your life.

sleeper;980199 wrote:Yeah, ignorant people don't accomplish the things that I've accomplished. Enjoy pushing carts at WalMart the rest of your life.

Mulva;980130 wrote:Whoever "they" are at that point. 0.00% chance humanity is still existing 5 billion years from now.

So are you banking on man-made or natural extinction event? Or that we stop reproducing and just clone/grow new bodies when we wear these out?

As for extinction events, I think there's a good chance we'll have the technology to overcome it. Obviously we couldn't do anything about an asteroid hitting tomorrow, but 1000 years or even 100 years from now?

In 100 years we'd have to ability to colonize other worlds, hell we could do it now but no one has the will or wants to pay the cost. With the way that the private industry is getting rocket costs down, in 100 years you'll have a permanent colony on the moon and more than likely mars.

So, even if in the extreme unlikely event that every single person is killed on this planet whether through man made or an asteroid, humanity would still survive.

Despite the doom and gloom about this country's future, humanity will be around for a long time. Even if we launched every nuclear warhead on the planet, we can still survive with the correct resources underground.

tk421;980277 wrote:In 100 years we'd have to ability to colonize other worlds, hell we could do it now but no one has the will or wants to pay the cost. With the way that the private industry is getting rocket costs down, in 100 years you'll have a permanent colony on the moon and more than likely mars.

We'd have to be able to terraform Mars and the moon, first. I think we are a long ways off from that yet. Certainly much further off than being 100 years from a self-sustaining colony either place - they'd rely heavily on supplies (building materials, likely even food, etc..) from Earth.

gut;980280 wrote:We'd have to be able to terraform Mars and the moon, first. I think we are a long ways off from that yet. Certainly much further off than being 100 years from a self-sustaining colony either place - they'd rely heavily on supplies (building materials, likely even food, etc..) from Earth.

I think we could terraform Mars, it would take a long time but hell we do it everyday. Just take our green house gas producing plants and put them on Mars.

sleeper;980199 wrote:Yeah, ignorant people don't accomplish the things that I've accomplished. Enjoy pushing carts at WalMart the rest of your life.

I am glad to see you have been promoted to WalMart shopping cart supervisor.

In 2149 we will find a a portal that allows us to go back and start Earth over.

sleeper;979809 wrote:I think its ignorant to believe that the speed of light is truly the fastest thing in the universe.

Well said.

gut;980263 wrote:So are you banking on man-made or natural extinction event? Or that we stop reproducing and just clone/grow new bodies when we wear these out?

As for extinction events, I think there's a good chance we'll have the technology to overcome it. Obviously we couldn't do anything about an asteroid hitting tomorrow, but 1000 years or even 100 years from now?

I didn't see this until now, but I would say a natural extinction event is far more likely.

I'm not saying it's going to happen in 20 years, or even 20,000 years. But the earth is only 4.6ish billion years old right now. You think human beings are going to make it more than twice as long as they solar system has been in existence?

There are 5 accepted mass extinction events in the last 500 million years. Only 1/10th the time that it will/would probably take for the sun to expand and destroy the planet assuming the earth itself hasn't been destroyed by that point.

Also, if you buy into evolution it's likely that homo sapiens will evolve by that point anyway, rendering this all moot. You don't see many homo habilis or neanderthals around today. And I know we're smarter and more advanced than those species, but that doesn't make you any less susceptible to drought, disease, asteroids, new and more complex species, etc.

The technology to colonize other worlds may exist in the near future, but there's a difference between setting up a colony on a planet and finding one to support an entire population in the billions and growing, not to mention the plant/animal life that would be needed to accompany us for survival.

tk421;979874 wrote:That's the warp drive from Star Trek. The Enterprise doesn't actually go faster than light, the space in front is contracted and the space behind expanded.

I was going to say the same thing "so this Mexican scientist has seen Star Trek, good for him"

superman;980350 wrote:In 2149 we will find a a portal that allows us to go back and start Earth over.

I like it, maybe we could meet Adam and Eve? Or possibly go 65 million years and fight off the dinosaurs?

jmog;995014 wrote:I like it, maybe we could meet Adam and Eve? Or possibly go 65 million years and fight off the dinosaurs?

REAL big game hunting! We could wipe out the dinosaurs before the asteroid does!