5 ms·

Question from someone who has no physics background - they mention the neutrino can go "faster than speed of light" - how is that possible?

• jameskilton 6y ago
  I think you're talking about "the electron is accelerated at a speed greater than the speed of light in water"? The "in water" is the important bit. Light travels [as measured in a straight line] slower in water due to bouncing off of the water molecules. It's not that light itself is slow it just takes light longer to make it through the water because it takes a longer path.
  • lopmotr 6y ago
    It's not taking a zig-zag path like you imply. That would be scattering and it would end up in a random direction.
• w1 6y ago
  It goes faster than the speed of light _in water_. While the speed of light in a vacuum is fixed, light will pass slower through different mediums (i.e. it goes slower in water than air, which is how you get refraction).
• deleted 6y ago
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• lekanwang 6y ago
  You can't go faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. But, you can definitely go faster than light in a medium. Speed of light in water, for example, is around 0.75c.
• deleted 6y ago
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• deleted 6y ago
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• mhh__ 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation ("The Cherenkov Effect, completely normal phenomenon" if you've seen Chernobyl - if you haven't, it's very good)
  • perl4ever 6y ago
    I got sidetracked reading about Oliver Heaviside, and noticed that it is claimed his theories allowed a 10x increase in transatlantic telegraph bandwidth...from 0.1 characters per minute to 1 character per minute. I wonder how much more feasible it is to send information via neutrinos if 0.000000013 Mbps were considered reasonable speed.
• stevebmark 6y ago
  I wondered the same thing, it’s just bad writing