Two totally unrelated, but intriguing, news stories

The Large Hadron Collider, at CERN, is reporting that subatomic particles appear to have travelled faster than the speed of light. If that should prove to be true when the science is re-examined by peer groups, then it could have implications for many things, including time-travel. And that might shed new light on the idea that aliens have visited us, and that we might, one day, be able to travel the Universe. It would also, of course, call into question Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity, (E = mc2). Not only that, but it would also mean that all the textbooks would have to be rewritten. You can read the report about CERN here. And, if you’re interested in what such a finding might mean, here is an article entitled “Light speed: Flying into fantasy.”

However, this is not the first time that the speed of light has been called into question. Back in 2002 Australian physicists were suggesting that its speed may have slowed down over billions of years.

In the same year NASA was positing the idea that Einstein could be wrong. They were sending precise clocks into space, on board the ISS, to measure time more precisely than it can be measured on Earth. This was in order to try to prove whether relativity always applied as recent theories, at that time, suggested that might not be the case.

If you use Google to search for stories about Einstein’s idea being wrong, you’ll get about 100,000 results. Some are from scientific sites, and others are from non-scientific people.

The other story that caught my eye was entitled “First Irish case of death by spontaneous combustion.” It concerned a man who had burned to death in his home, with the coroner ruling that this was the cause. The coroner reached this conclusion as he said that no other credible explanation could be found! But, at the end of the article a retired professor of pathology gives his thoughts on the case, stating that there must be some explanation.

Usually, I don’t read stories about spontaneous human combustion as I find them too horrific, to say nothing of my very “delicate” stomach. On this occasion there were, thankfully, no grizzly details and the headline had peaked my curiosity because I really don’t believe there is such a thing as spontaneous human combustion. I’m sure there’s always an external cause of some kind, even if it isn’t found because it’s probably also been consumed by such a fire.

Together with all the other news stories that are around it’s been an interesting day.