• Question: Hi What is the fastest thing ever apart from the speed of light??? tanks x

    Asked by dancebuddi4evs to Akram, David, Gill, Jack, laurenceharwood on 16 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Akram Alomainy

      Akram Alomainy answered on 16 Mar 2012:

      I heard that an Italian team used some kind of acceleration experiment and they proved (well no one else managed to verify it) that they can produce a signal that is faster than light … SO there could be something faster than speed of light 🙂

    • Photo: Jack Snape

      Jack Snape answered on 16 Mar 2012:

      Hi 🙂

      Actually, since the Italian team published their results, they found a mistake in their experiment. There was a wobbly cable

      http://www.theweek.co.uk/health-science/speed-light/45538/light-speed-busting-neutrinos-was-it-just-loose-cable

      So it looks like their measurement might have been wrong.

      The next fastest thing is definitely neutrinos … they can go pretty close to the speed of light! 🙂

    • Photo: Laurence Harwood

      Laurence Harwood answered on 18 Mar 2012:

      As far as I know, nothing can go faster than the speed of light, despite some recent claims of neutrinos doing just that. It turns out there was an error in the measurements.

      I think I am right that, as a consequence of Einstein’s theory of relativity, the mass of an object increases as it gets faster (we don’t notice this at the speeds at which we can travel as it only starts to be important at very very fast speeds) and, as an object approaches the speed of light, its mass approaches infinity – so it would need an infinite amount of energy to make it go faster.

    • Photo: Gill Menzies

      Gill Menzies answered on 18 Mar 2012:

      Wow – I like Laurence’s answer. I think my brain may have to go faster than the speed of light in some of the chat rooms – your questions are great and very challenging – keep it up 🙂

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