I'm sure many of you have heard the news about the neutrinos that supposedly traveled faster than light through rocky material (though this is all still slower than light through a vacuum, which is still the ultimate speed limit). Given that I'm taking a class on relativity right now, this has made our class even more interesting than before. Our professor sent us all an email a few days ago echoing what I thought before: it would be really cool and interesting if these superluminal neutrinos weren't just an experimental error but were the real deal, but in all probability it was an experimental error that probably won't be able to be replicated, given that it also conflicts with previous neutrino data from supernovas, and in any case it should be taken with a large grain of salt.
This also got me thinking, though, about public reaction. Though admittedly I haven't been following mainstream news outlets very much since returning to college, as far as I can tell, the mainstream news media have basically hailed this as a revolution without stopping to think critically about things like systematic error and stuff like that. Along the lines of the discussion I had along with Michael Nielsen and other members of the Society of Physics Students at lunch last Friday, I think the public is basically going to say, "Look at how sure scientists were about the speed of light being the ultimate speed limit, and look now! These scientists don't know anything!" If, somehow, the result is replicated, that opinion probably won't change. If it isn't (and that is my prediction), people will probably say, "See? Look at what a big mistake scientists made with that neutrino thingy so many months ago! Can they get anything right? Why should we listen to them and their so-called 'expertise'?" It's a sad side effect of public ignorance about how the scientific process works; as a friend of mine aptly said at dinner, scientists have been persecuted for many centuries now, and that doesn't seem to be stopping anytime soon.
This also got me thinking, though, about public reaction. Though admittedly I haven't been following mainstream news outlets very much since returning to college, as far as I can tell, the mainstream news media have basically hailed this as a revolution without stopping to think critically about things like systematic error and stuff like that. Along the lines of the discussion I had along with Michael Nielsen and other members of the Society of Physics Students at lunch last Friday, I think the public is basically going to say, "Look at how sure scientists were about the speed of light being the ultimate speed limit, and look now! These scientists don't know anything!" If, somehow, the result is replicated, that opinion probably won't change. If it isn't (and that is my prediction), people will probably say, "See? Look at what a big mistake scientists made with that neutrino thingy so many months ago! Can they get anything right? Why should we listen to them and their so-called 'expertise'?" It's a sad side effect of public ignorance about how the scientific process works; as a friend of mine aptly said at dinner, scientists have been persecuted for many centuries now, and that doesn't seem to be stopping anytime soon.