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Insect or spider? A bad day for Einstein.

Six legs, not eight (see Of Mayflies and earwigs, previous blog) - I know, I know! Mayflies, or daddy-long-legs, are insects, therefore six-legged; I should have known better. Maybe, I could claim I was testing to see if anyone was paying attention ... sadly, no-one was.

But they do look a bit spiderish. And if you whack them with the fly swat, they drop so many legs all over the floor that the insect-leg-number-rule must be a myth - and rules, after all, aren't written in stone; if particles travelling round a magnetic donut deep within the Alps, can move faster than the speed of light, then how can we be certain about anything?

And, if physics is wrong, was the daddy-long-legs dead before I hit it as I direct result of the blow I was about to inflict upon it? And in the future could I step back in time and let the daddy-long-legs escape through an open window before hitting it?

Finally, if your brain hasn't imploded  trying to imagine the impact of very, very speedy particles (I wonder what the Italian scientists, who identified them, will call them - what about Houdini particles, ones that escaped from the normal binding constraints of current Physics?) - could moving faster than the speed of light finally fulfil that previously elusive dream of fitting more hours into the day?  If so, the four-legged-friends of the future would be guaranteed a daily walk!

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