If everywhere in physics where we say “the speed of light” we instead say “the cosmic speed limit”, and from this experiment we determine that the cosmic speed limit is slightly higher than the speed of light, does that really change physics all that much?
We have measured both to higher accuracies than the deviation here. One way to measure the “cosmic speed limit” is by measuring how things like energy transform when you approach that speed limit, for example, which happens in particle accelerators all day every day.
I’m aware that we’ve caculated ‘c’ both by directly measuring the speed of light (to high precision), as well as indirectly via various formulas from relativity (we’ve directly measured time dilation, for instance, which lets you estimate c), but are the indirect measurements really accurate to parts per million?
Fortunately for me, wikipedia turned out to provide good citations. In 2007 some clever people managed to measure the c in time dilation to a precision of about one part in 10^-8.
Dark matter ? But as explained by Manfred above, we have estimates of “c the speed of light” and of “c the fundamental constant of GR/QM” that match and don’t match with the OPERA team… so I’m just noticing I’m confused for now. And waiting for further tests (like Fermilab or Japanese team who said they’ll try to reproduce it).
If everywhere in physics where we say “the speed of light” we instead say “the cosmic speed limit”, and from this experiment we determine that the cosmic speed limit is slightly higher than the speed of light, does that really change physics all that much?
We have measured both to higher accuracies than the deviation here. One way to measure the “cosmic speed limit” is by measuring how things like energy transform when you approach that speed limit, for example, which happens in particle accelerators all day every day.
I’m aware that we’ve caculated ‘c’ both by directly measuring the speed of light (to high precision), as well as indirectly via various formulas from relativity (we’ve directly measured time dilation, for instance, which lets you estimate c), but are the indirect measurements really accurate to parts per million?
Fortunately for me, wikipedia turned out to provide good citations. In 2007 some clever people managed to measure the c in time dilation to a precision of about one part in 10^-8.
Very good sir!
Then what would be constraining the travel speed of light in a vacuum?
It is possible that a photon’s energy/ mass is doing so. I believe this was discused in detail in the previous post.
Dark matter ? But as explained by Manfred above, we have estimates of “c the speed of light” and of “c the fundamental constant of GR/QM” that match and don’t match with the OPERA team… so I’m just noticing I’m confused for now. And waiting for further tests (like Fermilab or Japanese team who said they’ll try to reproduce it).