Warp Speed

Warping space and time ain’t hard to do. You’re doing it right now, in fact. Einstein’s theory of general relativity says that everything – you, me, even the Earth itself – warps space and time, simply by existing. This astonishing idea turns 100 years old today, and to celebrate, I recorded a short video with the BBC explaining how Einstein discovered general relativity. I hope you enjoy it!

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Neutrinos and Flux Capacitors

Apparently, a team of scientists working at CERN have found evidence suggesting that neutrinos can travel faster than the speed of light. While this has turned a few heads, the wide consensus is that this will probably turn out to be some kind of systematic error and not a real effect. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and this evidence has to pass a hell of a lot more tests — and be reproduced by a lot more people — before anyone, including the team who produced the results, will feel comfortable saying that they’ve found a way around the ultimate speed limit. But why would this be such an extraordinary claim? The speed of light is a hard limit in Einstein’s relativity, but why?…

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