What Happens When Things Go Near the Speed of Light?

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We've left the window with your graph behind this window so you can refer to it while you continue your analysis. You can go back and forth between this page and your graph by using the window menu of your browser or if that doesn't work, try your graph. Click Done next to your graph to return to this page.

Does your graph of the computer-simulated data (red) and the values you calculated look like this one? (A note about the computer-simulated data) Our calculations (purple) were based on D = vt. The data show that as velocity increases the decay length increases, but the increase is larger than we expected! Obviously, our calculated points do match the Fermilab data. In addition, the red data points do not fit any obvious curve. They form neither a line nor a parabola nor an inverse.

Disagreements this far from expectation and this uniform in appearance bear further investigation. Why do faster moving particles go even farther than you expect? Do particles live longer if they are moving very fast?

What's going on?

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Project team
Program Contact: Tom Jordan - jordant@fnal.gov
Web Maintainer: ed-webmaster@fnal.gov

Last Updated: February 9, 2000
/data/phy_sci/relativity/resultsleft.shtml