Theory of Relativity - Wrong?

[wil3ur]

Here, watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAivtXJOsiI


Light doesn't slow down, the more dense the medium the more light bends to make it through that medium...its speed is still the same

...and if the Earth is not as dense in an area as we think it is... that would cause the light to arrive faster than we planned on it getting there. 

Again, If there are two particles of light traveling, and one goes through earth's gravity-well, to an outside observer, one particle is going slower than the other.  If I look at them from the side, the one who's going through Earth's gravity appears to 'bend' `~._,~' vs ------.  These particles of light are traveling the same distance, however to the outside observer one is 'slower' than the other.  This has to do with a Mass' effect on Time, and speed is a function of time.

Therefor, if there is less mass than we believe, it's effect on time is going to be different than we think.  Since speed is a function of time, and time is 'relative' (HEY THAT'S WHERE THAT THEORY'S NAME COMES FROM!!!), depending on where the observer/observation is taking place, your results could look 'interesting' especially if you're basing your numbers off of an educated guess, and not exact measurements.

...Also, since CERN is the only place capable of producing the energies needed to create this experiment, it cannot be peer reviewed, and thus would be a bogus claim scientifically.

[Flipperk]

...and if the Earth is not as dense in an area as we think it is... that would cause the light to arrive faster than we planned on it getting there. 

Again, If there are two particles of light traveling, and one goes through earth's gravity-well, to an outside observer, one particle is going slower than the other.  If I look at them from the side, the one who's going through Earth's gravity appears to 'bend' `~._,~' vs ------.  These particles of light are traveling the same distance, however to the outside observer one is 'slower' than the other.  This has to do with a Mass' effect on Time, and speed is a function of time.

Therefor, if there is less mass than we believe, it's effect on time is going to be different than we think.  Since speed is a function of time, and time is 'relative' (HEY THAT'S WHERE THAT THEORY'S NAME COMES FROM!!!), depending on where the observer/observation is taking place, your results could look 'interesting' especially if you're basing your numbers off of an educated guess, and not exact measurements.

...Also, since CERN is the only place capable of producing the energies needed to create this experiment, it cannot be peer reviewed, and thus would be a bogus claim scientifically.

AH! But the two are not traveling the same distance...please reference my edit in the previous post.

[wil3ur]

Sure they are.  Mass is distorting time, not space...

Think of a bowling ball on a trampoline.  The trampoline is spacetime, the mass of the ball effects the precived size 'distance'.  What you're actually seeing is a distortion of time, not distance.  The trampoline didn't grow any.  Adding the bowling ball to it did not make it larger or longer, nor does it make the distance from one side to the other any greater...  unless you're traveling through the distorted area of spacetime.  Space itself has not increased in distance, time has slowed in the area effected by mass as it twists spacetime.

[Jenks]

I don't think it's a matter of general relativity being wrong, it's just incomplete. It breaks down when it tries to explain the very small and  the actions of electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces.  Einstein knew that and spent the rest of his life trying to come up with a universal theory.  Quantum Mechanics is incomplete in that it works stunningly well on the actions of small bits of matter (quanta) but is useless for the big stuff.  Now comes string theory, which some of the QM guys like to describe as a philosophy rather than a theory, and its eleven dimensional universe and what seems to be an infinite number of universes, to bridge the gap.  

Entanglement and spooky action at a distance seems impossible but its been proven to be right. Which, in a way is FTL travel of information, so........

[wil3ur]

Decent vid on time dilation:

http://youtu.be/xvZfx7iwq94

[Angus]

Since it is well possible to slow down light, even down to some 38 mph (!!!), I ponder on if your light is travelling at full speed at all? Maybe the correct light speed as a max is the speed of the particle?

[bozon]

Light doesn't slow down, the more dense the medium the more light bends to make it through that medium...its speed is still the same.

No, light still slows down even if it travels in a straight line. The light travels as a wave, even in quantum physics - it only interacts as a particle. When traveling though a medium it is just a magnetic field and electric fields that fluctuate as it goes by. Electromagnetic fields in matter affect matter (polarize it, magnetize it, etc.) and this results in a slower propagation of the electromagnetic signal. For example, in what Angus brought up:

Since it is well possible to slow down light, even down to some 38 mph (!!!), I ponder on if your light is travelling at full speed at all? Maybe the correct light speed as a max is the speed of the particle?

I will not go into the description of what happens in such a case, but "slowing" light means that one signal goes in one side of a box, then the exact signal (electro magnetic wave with a coherent phase) comes out the other side with a significant delay from what one might expect. In the middle, photons "disappear" into excited stated of the atoms/lattice and reappear as photons after a delay.

The measurement in the neutrino speed are extremely tricky. There are a ton of effects to take into account on top of the problematics of working with neutrinos - their interaction is incredibly weak. The vast majority of them will go through the earth without hitting anything. Heck, they come out of the core of the sun without hitting anything. The reason one needs a big experiment like in CERN is not that neutrinos are hard to make, quite the opposite, but the problem is that a huge flux is needed in order for a handful to actually hit something in the detector and produce a signal. This is why it is not as easy as "shoot one, see how long till it hits the detector 750 km away".