Faster-Than-Light

If tau neutrinos could travel faster than light, then we should be able to regularly measure them doing that from a constant source of tau neutrinos - like the Sun. Except, we never have.

The news quickly latched onto this finding with claims "interstellar hyperspeed travel is once again a possibility." Oh please. A neutrino has almost zero mass, so the energy required (E = mC^2) is relatively minor, in fact neutrinos traveling much slower than light speed is pretty weird.

A little background on neutrinos: they're pretty poorly understood. The mass has never been measured, but it was previously assumed they had zero mass which would mean they would only travel at the speed of light and no slower. However they've been found to wobble between "flavors" blah blah blah they're really damn light but still have a tiny mass. Interestingly, if neutrino mass is higher than about 1.5 eV, then Dark Matter cannot exist.

But going back to the idea that neutrinos can zip along at a speed faster than light seems doubtful to me. Nevertheless, let's pretend its true. It changes nothing for massive humans and their monstrously heavy starships. The energy required to send an essentially-massless particle at or above the speed of light compared to the energy required to get Luke Skywalker to the Degoba System is like the size of a single atom compared to the size of the Universe. Literally.


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