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[Eagleon]

You're misunderstanding I think. Both transmitter and receiver are sending their signals greater than c. Half a light minute away, the receiver gets the signal .5 minutes faster than it should have and sends it back again. Another half light minute away at the origin, it receives the signal a full minute before it should have.

Normal time:
0>.5
*bounce*
.5>1

Superluminal time
0>-.5
*bounce*
-.5>0

To the perspective of both sides, the transmission is being both sent and received at the same time. The sending of the transmission would still appear to be .5, but only if you sent it back normally.

Does that make more sense?

[Aqizzar]

A wrong theory is a theory that is incapable of predicting anything correctly, or one that invokes demonstratively false phenomena (think phloggistons). An incomplete theory is a theory that only does valid predictions in a limited number of cases (think Newtonian dynamics). A non-theory is a theory that predicts proper behavior but cannot be used to predict or extrapolate anything (such as intelligent design). A worthless theory is a theory that, while being able to predict, is neither simpler nor broader then another theory (for a long time, the matrix explanation of quantum mechanics was this, though I think recently it has gotten some more attention).
Claiming a theory is wrong is claiming that it makes false predictions all of the time, which is obviously not true for relativity.

If this is directed at, and thank you for the detail, yes I shouldn't say "Relativity is wrong", I should say it's incomplete.  What I keep hearing is a refusal to acknowledge that it might be so, that Relativity is inherently perfect and everything must be understood to fit within it, even if it really doesn't.

I know this is going to sound stupid, but as long as someone else is bringing up sci-fi short story collections, I'm reminded of one that's always shaped my understanding of Relativity.  For an object of non-zero mass to accelerate to the speed of light requires infinite energy.  If energy does indeed translate into mass (as would certainly seem to be true), then an object with infinite energy would have infinite mass, and infinite mass would mean infinite gravity.  If an object of non-zero mass achieved full c, the universe would be destroyed.

Because no object pops into existence already traveling at lightspeed, and there's virtually infinite particles traveling at lightspeed already, either every particle that travels that fast has no actual mass (in which case, E=mc² can't be right, because energy has to be mass), or the theory itself is wrong.  Whatever the case, it just can't be that simple.

[Virex]

A wrong theory is a theory that is incapable of predicting anything correctly, or one that invokes demonstratively false phenomena (think phloggistons). An incomplete theory is a theory that only does valid predictions in a limited number of cases (think Newtonian dynamics). A non-theory is a theory that predicts proper behavior but cannot be used to predict or extrapolate anything (such as intelligent design). A worthless theory is a theory that, while being able to predict, is neither simpler nor broader then another theory (for a long time, the matrix explanation of quantum mechanics was this, though I think recently it has gotten some more attention).
Claiming a theory is wrong is claiming that it makes false predictions all of the time, which is obviously not true for relativity.

If this is directed at, and thank you for the detail, yes I shouldn't say "Relativity is wrong", I should say it's incomplete.  What I keep hearing is a refusal to acknowledge that it might be so, that Relativity is inherently perfect and everything must be understood to fit within it, even if it really doesn't.

I know this is going to sound stupid, but as long as someone else is bringing up sci-fi short story collections, I'm reminded of one that's always shaped my understanding of Relativity.  For an object of non-zero mass to accelerate to the speed of light requires infinite energy.  If energy does indeed translate into mass (as would certainly seem to be true), then an object with infinite energy would have infinite mass, and infinite mass would mean infinite gravity.  If an object of non-zero mass achieved full c, the universe would be destroyed.

Because no object pops into existence already traveling at lightspeed, and there's virtually infinite particles traveling at lightspeed already, either every particle that travels that fast has no actual mass (in which case, E=mc² can't be right, because energy has to be mass), or the theory itself is wrong.  Whatever the case, it just can't be that simple.

That explanation is too simple for sure. I can't give an in-depth explanation to all your questions, mostly because I do not know all that much about relativity in the first case. However, one question, namely the question why people keep hanging on to relativity I can easily answer. The point is that up to now, the assumption that something can be explained using relativity, or actually a combination of the theories we have, has been a very powerful tool. It has given us a lot of insight in processes that, while they are in line with relativity, we would not have come up with ourself had we not tried to explain them within our current framework. There is of course always the possibility that doing so is not possible, but that should not be one's starting point, because using that as a starting point would be saying "we're dealing with something that we cannot understand with our current methods" and guess what, if that is what you assume, then that is what you'll get. Instead it is better to assume that reality does play by the rules because if it doesn't it's much easier to spot. To that it should be added that there are a lot of ways to explain phenomena that, at first glance are completely novel and outside of science as we know it. Only a lengthy investigation, which can easily take many years would show that they are actually very obscure ways of saying what we already know.

[ECrownofFire]

Relativity isn't necessarily broken. We could have just discovered tachyons. And they might have turned into tachyons mid-journey, which would explain the rather small amount of time that they arrived before the others.

Or there's just some kind of measuring error. But tachyons are cooler.

[Heron TSG]

Tachyons. How the fuck do they work?

[Urist Imiknorris]

Tachyons. How the fuck do they work?

Magic magnets.

[Bauglir]

You can have magic squares? My mind, it is blown. Like a leaf.

[ECrownofFire]

Also, has nobody considered the possibility that some random-ass tachyons were just wandering through time when they popped into the detector? Or maybe this experiment will be/is done 4.2 years into the future.

[MonkeyHead]

Also, has nobody considered the possibility that some random-ass tachyons were just wandering through time when they popped into the detector? Or maybe this experiment will be/is done 4.2 years into the future.

Not 16000 times in a row. And the transit time is a billionth of a second lower than it should be - no crazy information from future millenia yet.

[ECrownofFire]

Also, has nobody considered the possibility that some random-ass tachyons were just wandering through time when they popped into the detector? Or maybe this experiment will be/is done 4.2 years into the future.

Not 16000 times in a row. And the transit time is a billionth of a second lower than it should be - no crazy information from future millenia yet.

According to some scientists somewhere, if the tachyons did arrive with the speed they did, they should have gone back in time approximately 4.2 years. Therefore, it is possible that somebody will do/did this experiment 4.2 years from now (fucking time travel tenses).

[MonkeyHead]

Source? Would like to see thier explanation of that one.

Of course, in 4.2 years I am sure some crackpot will do a similar experiment 16000 times and say "See? Told you so!"

[ECrownofFire]

Oh never mind, I misread something. That was referring to neutrinos from a supernova (SN 1987A).

[MonkeyHead]

That makes a bit more sense...

[Kogan Loloklam]

...Why are people so eager to call science wrong anyway?

Wait, did you really ask that? We aren't talking about Religion here, we are talking about Science, whose fundamental process involves questioning EVERYTHING.
If someone is eager to call science wrong, it is likely because they are questioning things being "right". Seems to me that is keeping within the spirit of what science is all about. Sure this can be taken to extremes, but as long as the scientific method is used it's still science. I'm more concerned about people who are claiming that this doesn't need to be tested because "This can't be wrong, too much hard science proves it was right for too long!"

I'm not saying it is right, I'm just saying that you can't expect things not to be questioned.

[MonkeyHead]

Yea, this result is simply a high profile example of the Scietific method in action - it seems lay people and the media dont really get this idea very well.