

Neutrinos from CERN to Gran Sasso Respect Cosmic Speed Limit - mvanga
http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2011/PR19.11E.html

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ck2
I hope someday they can explain why 186282 miles per second is the limit in
the first place.

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Cushman
c is 299,792,458 m/s only because the meter is so defined; it makes just as
much or more sense to say that the speed of light is 1, and this is where we
get the Planck units.

From this perspective, it becomes obvious that the question, "Why is the speed
of light one unit length per unit time?" is an absurd one. There is no other
alternative.

~~~
hartror
The question isn't absurd from a lay persons point of view and the explanation
falls short.

What Cushman means is a number like Pi is always 3.14159265, to us or to
hypothetical aliens. Whereas the speed of light can be just effectively
represented as 299,792,458 or 1 depending on the units you use.

What you are effectively asking about ck2 is calculation of dimensionless
physical constants which are of ratios of like-dimensioned physical constants,
for example the fine structure constant. These could in theory be calculated
one day without using experimentally derived values . . . maybe.

The wikipedia page on the physical constants has a good run down on this:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_constant#Dimensional_a...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_constant#Dimensional_and_dimensionless_physical_constants)

As does: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_physical_constant>

~~~
parfe
> _like Pi is always 3.14159265, to us or to hypothetical aliens._

Unless you're counting in base Pi, then Pi is 10.

Pi is only 3.14... in base 10. Just like the c is ~2.99 * 10^ 6 m/s because we
define a meter that way.

~~~
hartror
You are confusing units and numeral systems. Pi is always Pi no matter how you
count whereas c is dependent on how you measure time and space.

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sp332
The original generated lots of discussion 8 months ago:
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3029922>

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taligent
_“Although this result isn’t as exciting as some would have liked,” said
Bertolucci, “it is what we all expected deep down. The story captured the
public imagination, and has given people the opportunity to see the scientific
method in action – an unexpected result was put up for scrutiny, thoroughly
investigated and resolved in part thanks to collaboration between normally
competing experiments. That’s how science moves forward.”_

Couldn't agree more. Whilst there has been a lot of criticism from the science
community it was wonderful to experience a bit of drama and excitement.

God knows everyone is looking for something/anything hopeful to distract from
the endless bad news.

~~~
okamiueru
Really? Has there been that much criticism from the science community? I
though everyone with respectable opinions thought it was handled exactly like
proper scientists should have handled it.

OPERA had unexpected results contradicting the status quo of our understanding
of fundamental physics. They did everything they could to determine and
correct and calibrate possible errors. They published the results and
methodology in hopes that their peers could either help them understand what
went wrong, or confirm it. An they did (the former).

I saw it as the science community at its finest. Sure, there was a lot of
skepticism and disbelief in the accuracy/correctness, but that is part of the
game. You don't take things at face value, and you don't ignore unexpected
results.

\-----

So, I don't have any objection to what you wrote, but, is my impression wrong?

~~~
atakan_gurkan
There has been enough criticism from scientific community at large and more
importantly from within the OPERA collaboration that their spokespeople
resigned from their position.

Not much of that criticism coming from respectable scientists made it to
mainstream media, though. I presume that is because they did not want to show
a "holier than thou" attitude openly. But internally a lot of people thought
"they must have done something wrong" and after they found the error "what
were they thinking?".

I think your impression is wrong, but very understandable unless you
interacted with people offering criticism directly or semi-directly through
one or two persons.

~~~
mayneack
While I don't disagree with your characterization of the criticism, it was
more complex than just "people within the scientific community were critical
and people outside thought they did the right thing in opening up the data and
methodology to criticism when they could not identify a problem in the initial
troubleshooting."

A large part of the community took a "wait and see" approach that was
(obviously) skeptical of the results.

Because of the hype associated with the event, it's not surprising that people
would end up resigning whether or not they really did anything wrong. I can't
say that I have enough of a background to know if they should have resigned or
not, but I certainly wouldn't use the fact that they resigned as conclusive
proof that whatever was done wrong was handled incorrectly as opposed to a
reasonable error.

