News Speed of light broken?

[agentgonzo]

Slow down guys.

Yes, once again the media has done a fantastic job in reporting and inflated the facts.

The CERN release is NOT a statement of "we have detected Neutrinos travelling faster than c". It is more a case of "we have these results that seem to suggest that we have had neutrinos travelling faster than c, but we are very cagey about jumping to that conclusion. We have ruled out as many of the errors and variables as we can and taken into account everything* that we can think of that would affect the result but still get neutrinos travelling slightly faster than c. We are releasing the results to the wider scientific community so that others can analyse them and maybe spot something that we missed before jumping to radical conclusions".

Also, Einstein's theory of Relativity does not state that nothing can travel faster than light. It says that nothing of non-zero rest mass can attain the speed of light (and thus by corollary nothing of non-zero rest-mass that is initially travelling sub-luminal can travel faster than c). It does not rule out the possibility of particles travelling faster than c (tachyons) but does rule out the fact that if these super-luminal particles exist, then can never be slowed down to below c.


Edit:
*I was listening to Dr Karl's podcast (very good radio phone-in show about Science**) the other day and he was saying that they had even taken into account Earthquakes that had changed the distance over the Earth from CERN to Italy!!!

** Dr Karl on BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/drkarl
** Dr Karl on TrippleJ: http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/stn/podcast.htm

 

[PennyBlack]

Someone has mind melded the threads... WoW

 

[orb]

Discovery News: FTL Neutrino Research 'Almost Certainly Wrong':

{...}

Fermilab physicist Joseph Lykken told Jennifer that the OPERA results were "a pretty messy way to try to test a fundamental property. You have a proton beam at CERN that makes the neutrinos, but you don't know which proton made which neutrino. This makes it tough to claim nanosecond timing of the neutrinos."

Krauss agrees that the result is more likely comes from a systematic error:

The claim that neutrinos arrived at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy from CERN's Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland on average 60 billionths of a second before they would have if they were traveling at light speed relies on complicated statistical analysis. It must take into account the modeling of the detectors and how long their response time is, careful synchronization of clocks and a determination of the distance between the CERN accelerator and the Gran Sasso detector accurate to a distance of a few meters. Each of these factors has intrinsic uncertainties that, if misestimated, could lead to an erroneous conclusion.​

Although the neutrinos appeared to arrive at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy (some 730 kilometers from the LHC -- the source of the neutrinos) faster than light would have taken, it is much more likely that there is some unaccounted for error in the method rather than any unforeseen kink in the physical nature of our Universe.

Lykken and Krauss point to the "messy" way in which the neutrinos were generated and measured -- potentially accounting for the 60 nanosecond discrepancy between the speed of light and that of the measured neutrino beam.

{...}

 

[T.Neo]

Aww... how disappointing.

 

[orb]

Technology Review: Faster-than-Light Neutrino Puzzle Claimed Solved by Special Relativity

Universe Today: Special Relativity May Answer Faster-than-Light Neutrino Mystery:

{...}

To get a clearer picture, the distance the neutrinos traveled is straightforward. They began in CERN and were measured via global positioning systems. However, the Gran Sasso Laboratory is located beneath the Earth under a kilometre-high mountain. Regardless, the OPERA team took this into account and provided an accurate distance measurement of 730 km to within tolerances of 20 cm. The neutrino flight time is then measured by using clocks at the opposing ends, with the team knowing exactly when the particles left and when they landed.

But were the clocks perfectly synchronized?

Keeping time is again the domain of the GPS satellites which each broadcasting a highly accurate time signal from orbit some 20,000km overhead. But is it possible the team overlooked the amount of time it took for the satellite signals to return to Earth? In his statement, van Elburg says there is one effect that the OPERA team seems to have overlooked: the relativistic motion of the GPS clocks.

Sure, radio waves travel at the speed of light, so what difference does the satellite position make? The truth is, it doesn’t.. but the time of flight does. Here we have a scenario where one clock is on the ground while the other is orbiting. If they are moving relative to one another, this calculation needs to be included in the findings. The orbiting probes are positioned from West to East in a plane inclined at 55 degrees to the equator… almost directly in line with the neutrino flight path. This means the clock on the GPS is seeing the neutrino source and detector as changing.

“From the perspective of the clock, the detector is moving towards the source and consequently the distance travelled by the particles as observed from the clock is shorter,” says van Elburg.

According to the news source, he means shorter than the distance measured in the reference frame on the ground and the OPERA team overlooks this because it thinks of the clocks as on the ground not in orbit. Van Elburg calculates that it should cause the neutrinos to arrive 32 nanoseconds early. But this must be doubled because the same error occurs at each end of the experiment. So the total correction is 64 nanoseconds, almost exactly what the OPERA team observes.

Is this the final answer for traveling faster than the speed of light? No. It’s just another possible answer to explain a new riddle… and a confirmation of a new revelation.

{...}

 

[RisingFury]

I find it ironic, that relativity would save itself from the neutrinos, threatening relativity

 

[jedidia]

Technology Review: Faster-than-Light Neutrino Puzzle Claimed Solved by Special Relativity

If that is indeed the solution, then the accuracy of the measurements would have been out of this world...

 

[Notebook]

BBC 2 UK: Faster Than the Speed of Light?

A prog on BBC 2 tonight 21:00, could be fun.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b016bys2

Not sure how far it gets out.

N.

 

[PennyBlack]

I actually thought that those neutrinos crossed the alternate universe barrier... that almost explains everything :lol:

 

[_Designer_]

A prog on BBC 2 tonight 21:00, could be fun.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b016bys2

Not sure how far it gets out.

N.

not available in my area? BS I can go on youtube and see australia youtube wtf? lol

It'd be nice if they had a beta program for space, I'd volunteer if they trained me to fly and I'd know my son will have security for the rest of his life.

 

[SiberianTiger]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15471118

Faster-than-light neutrino experiment to be run again
By Paul Rincon Science editor, BBC News website

Scientists who announced that sub-atomic particles might be able to travel faster than light are to rerun their experiment in a different way.

This will address criticisms and allow the physicists to shore up their analysis as much as possible before submitting it for publication.

Dr Sergio Bertolucci said it was vital not to "fool around" given the staggering implications of the result.

So they are doing all they can to rule out more pedestrian explanations.

...

Dr Bertolucci, the director of research at Cern, told BBC News: "In the last few days we have started to send a different time structure of the beam to Gran Sasso.

"This will allow Opera to repeat the measurement, removing some of the possible systematics."

The neutrinos that emerge at Gran Sasso start off as a beam of proton particles at Cern. Through a series of complex interactions, neutrino particles are generated from this beam and stream through the Earth's crust to Italy.

 

[Moach]

sometimes i wonder... what if the speed of light is a more of a "barrier" than a "limit", wouldn't breaking it be like discovering the possibilities of supersonic flight?

i mean, it doesn't HAVE to change the known physics up to that point, but it'd rather introduce a "turning point" where the rules kinda just "change"....

my point is - supersonic flight doesn't make subsonic aerodynamics "wrong" - just puts it as a subset of a larger theory....

from a strictly historic point of view, this discovery is almost bound to happen (not saying that it did here, but maybe someday)....

if history repeats itself, as it has a way to - it would be like moving from newtonian physics to relativity... the former still applies for most "mundane" appliications - as the laws of aerodynamics can be held true invariantly if mach 1 isn't being broken

seems only natural that eventually, the speed of light could be one day discovered to be another "barrier"..... and yeah, i'm aware of how "sci-fi" this sounds....



of course - judging from how such discoveries came about in their time - mountains of skepticism are due here...

i'm just brain-farting... i don't really believe it much myself - but that shouldn't stop question from being asked, or where would we be?

 

[jedidia]

i mean, it doesn't HAVE to change the known physics up to that point, but it'd rather introduce a "turning point" where the rules kinda just "change"....

First problem is, according to current physics it's not only impossible to breach the speed of light. It is indeed impossible to REACH it. The equations converge to a point infinitly close to the speed of light with energy converging towards infinity, which means you can only get infinitly close to it, but never be quite there. As such, if it would indeed be possible to breach the speed of light, there HAS to be a flaw in the current model.

It is possible that our relativistic physics don't aply at speeds very close to c, like Newtonian physics didn't aply to any significant fractions of c (or the presence of strong gravity wells), but highly unlikely. Newtonian physics very openly showed their limits for all to see in the orbit of mercury, while any experiments with relativistic physics have not revealed any unexpected behaviour (and there were lots and lots of experiments). Appart from our neutrinos in CERN, of course, but they have yet to show wheather they or the measuring equipement behaved unexpected.

A comparison with the sound barrier is in so far inaccurate as there was never a question wheather or not something could breach it. The tips of wips have done so for milenia. It was therefore not a physical problem, but an engineering problem: Can we build something able to cope with the stress? That the stress would reduce after the barrier was breached was a very pleasant surprise, of course, but it's not the same. Breaking the sound barrier is more properly compared with building a fusion reactor: We know it's not impossible, but how the heck do we build it?
The speed of light, on the other hand, is a far more fundamental problem.

 

[fsci123]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15791236


Holy if this is true that would be ridiculous.

 

[orb]

Discovery News: Faster-Than-Light Neutrinos Re-Tested: Same Result

Science: Faster-Than-Light Neutrinos: OPERA Confirms and Submits Results, But Unease Remains

Science 2.0: OPERA Confirms: Neutrinos Travel Faster Than Light!!

NewScientist: New results show neutrinos still faster than light

Forbes: New Tests Appear To Confirm Claim That Neutrinos Traveled Faster Than Light

 

[Cras]

I am still going to hold out for independent confirmation on this one. But me in the "Unease remains" column for the time being.

 

[N_Molson]

Seems that we will have to get used to it

It would be an excellent new, meaning that even the speed light limit can be overcome one day. That day, stars will be at reach.

 

[RisingFury]

I'd still like to get confirmation from other experiments.

The results have been posted on Arxiv! Get 'em while they're hot:
http://inspirehep.net/record/928153/files/arXiv:1109.4897.pdf?version=2

 

[Jarvitä]

The new results certainly increase the probability of this being right, but I observe scepticism is still called for. Come on, it's not like there's only one neutrino detector on Earth. Can't we get an independent observation already?

 

[Cras]

There are two other facilities that are going to attempt this experiment, expect some response in three months or so, then we will be getting somewhere.

My point of contention has always been that with certain supernova observations, we have had a source of numerous neutrinos, traveling a great long way, and never has there seemed to be a case where one is traveling faster than light.

Granted, the neutrino is still a mysterious thing, which we still need to learn more about, but some sort of temporal tachyonic property is something I doubt we will find it actually has.

But, I am excited to learn the results either way. If this ends up being nonsense, then it shows that we do have a pretty firm grasp on the fundamental laws of nature.

If the result is confirmed, then I eagerly await the research that explains why neutrinos seem to be able to travel faster than any other object in the universe, for I think it is safe to say that finding out a neutrino can travel faster than C does not translate into thinking that any and all matter can do so likewise.