Relativity.

So, this morning I was sitting at the table, eating my oatmeal, and reading my Discovery News app on my iPhone. Typical morning. Discovery News is much better than real news, because it's only related to science and technology. Why would I want to know about politics and people when I could read about the dinosaur skeleton found in Washington, the fact that male sea squids are bisexual, or that the relationship between galaxies and black holes is still confusing to scientists? If you don't have this app, I recommend you download it.

So this morning, I see a new story. Apparently, scientists have found that neutrinos can travel faster than the speed of light.

My first question was this: who is paying someone to spend six months blasting subatomic particles in a 70 km tunnel under Europe and measure their speeds to the nanosecond? I guess some rich Europeans. Secondly, how accurate can that machinery be to see that a particle that is so small that we originally didn't believe it even had mass? And then be measured to ridiculous specifications of speed?

Anyways, apparently this messes up Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity. Not that it's completely wrong now, just that he said the speed of light in a vacuum was the fasting anything could ever move. And now we have these tricky neutrinos making him wrong. I wish I had taken some science besides Astronomy and Physics and Technology for Future Presidents in college. The first class was wonderful, but not in depth, and the second wasn't really physics. It was more of a seventh grade science class. Now, I am unfortunately a college graduate with no idea of relativity of theories of Einstein, and when I try to read the Wikipedia article it is most unfortunately over my head.

What's going to happen to the science of our time? We always thought of Einstein as a genius, but will future generations think of him as an interesting guy who was wrong? Like Ptolemy? Or just an interesting guy who discovered something useful, with a few kinks, that led us to more important discoveries? More like Galileo or Newton. I'm more familiar with famous mathematicians than scientists. But what will future children be learning? What have I learned about the universe that is false? What exactly is relativity??

It is too early in the morning for me to be pondering all of this. It's making my head spin.

On another note, according to my news app, Neil Armstrong thinks it's disgraceful that we aren't going to the moon or local space anymore. News flash, Armstrong: we went there, didn't find anything helpful or interesting, and are currently just putting billions of taxpayers dollars into an industry that honestly isn't promoting the bettering of humanity. All the space program did, at this point, was give select few individuals the opportunity to hang out in a gravity free environment and chill out on the moon. We weren't learning anything, we weren't accomplishing anything, and we already stuck the US flag on the moon and stole a bunch of rocks. What else do we need? Besides, we're now planning on visiting asteroids and Mars instead. At least that's new and exciting. Another app, however, said that extended time in space causes serious eye troubles.

I'm mostly interested in the articles about space. I definitely don't want to go to space; I'd be too claustrophobic.