Neutrinos still travel faster than light

[Angrboda]

Unfortunately, there are numerous assumptions about reality, intuitive judgements, which must simply be discarded, because some of our common sense notions become incoherent or downright invalid in QFT. This is very hard to do coming at it from a "PBS Nova" science popularization type angle, as it takes you out of a lazy Aristotlo-Newtonian consciousness into a world where these "funky notions" aren't just frill at the edges, they are the meat of the matter. Not sure how that can be approached from a pedagogical or popularization angle. The world, in a nutshell, simply does not work the way most people think it does. I wonder if it's a matter of not having evolved cognitions which can wrap around these ideas, or simply unlearning bad habits; I suspect more of the former than the latter.

[Anomalocaris]

If you can't explain it simply, then you don't understand it well enough.

[Welsh cake]

If you can't explain it simply, then you don't understand it well enough.

True for general relativity, but for quantum mechanics if you can explain it simply, then you don't understand just how complicated it is.

[IATIA]

Nobody 'understands' quantum physics. There is math that describes actions, interactions and possibilities, but no one actually understands the particles and waves because they are what we measure. It cannot be a wave and a particle, but when we attempt to 'look' at a wave, we 'see' a particle. This wave/particle duality means there is a 'form' that we have yet to grasp or describe.Then there is "spooky action at a distance", which has yet to be explained within the confines of relativity. Any 'consensus' on QM relates to observations and predictions of results, but not to 'what' is actually being observed or measured.

[little_monkey]

Unfortunately, there are numerous assumptions about reality, intuitive judgements, which must simply be discarded, because some of our common sense notions become incoherent or downright invalid in QFT. This is very hard to do coming at it from a "PBS Nova" science popularization type angle, as it takes you out of a lazy Aristotlo-Newtonian consciousness into a world where these "funky notions" aren't just frill at the edges, they are the meat of the matter. Not sure how that can be approached from a pedagogical or popularization angle. The world, in a nutshell, simply does not work the way most people think it does. I wonder if it's a matter of not having evolved cognitions which can wrap around these ideas, or simply unlearning bad habits; I suspect more of the former than the latter.

It turns out that classical physics is just an approximation of QM. But our brain is not hard-wired for quantum mechanics, it evolved to understand classical physics -- forces, momentum, position, etc. -- and that's what we discovered first historically. To get any grap at QM, you need to do it with its mathematical formulation. Words just fail. Therefore explaining it to the average person, sans math, has too many pitfalls. I steer away from these as much as possible.

---

Nobody 'understands' quantum physics. There is math that describes actions, interactions and possibilities, but no one actually understands the particles and waves because they are what we measure. It cannot be a wave and a particle, but when we attempt to 'look' at a wave, we 'see' a particle. This wave/particle duality means there is a 'form' that we have yet to grasp or describe.Then there is "spooky action at a distance", which has yet to be explained within the confines of relativity. Any 'consensus' on QM relates to observations and predictions of results, but not to 'what' is actually being observed or measured.

There are three aspects of QM to bear in mind: 1) there's the data, 2) there's the theory to explain the data, and 3) there's the interpretations of the theory. Pretty much every physicist agrees on 1) and 2). It is in the interpretations that you will find great differences among physicists. But note that the great advancements in the field after the 1930's were done by those who steered clear of number 3.

EDIT: I'm going to get flack from the people in quantum computing/information.

[Anomalocaris]

We didn't understand classical physics first because classical physics was what our brain was evolved to be more able to understand. We understood classical physics first simply because our technology evolved to specify the effects of classical physics first.

As to no one really understanding quantum mechanics, there is a great deal of element of truth to it. String theory might be viewed as a way to guess an understanding of what has been discovered beyond the edge of classical physics and hope one could twist that presumed understanding to fit observation without losing too much of its simplicity. Religion is to guess a simple understanding of what has been discoverbandits the boundary of bronze age shamanism, and then twist all subsequent observation to fit its simplicity.

[Pete]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15791236

The team which found that neutrinos may travel faster than light has carried out an improved version of their experiment - and confirmed the result.

If confirmed by other experiments, the find could undermine one of the basic principles of modern physics.

I guess the critics of CERN's handling of the experiment just got silenced.

If so then netrinos would be classified as a tachyons!