Faster than lightspeed achieved?

[ajb]

We deliberately do not attempt any theoretical or phenomenological interpretation of the results.

page 24 of the preprint.

 

Just about everybody thinks there is some problem with the experiment or error in the data analysis. I am sure there will be some nice explanation of what is going on in the near future.

 

One requires some independent verification before getting too excited.

[hawksmere]

page 24 of the preprint.

 

Just about everybody thinks there is some problem with the experiment or error in the data analysis. I am sure there will be some nice explanation of what is going on in the near future.

 

One requires some independent verification before getting too excited.

 

 

Totally with you there. Could it be nothing more than a publicity stunt to hype activity at CERN? Not suggesting it never happened but they are lot more controlled with what they make publc then one will think. The statement must have been approved by a lot of people! Certainly got the world talking...

 

scratching the desk preparing for the "standard model part 2"

[TonyMcC]

If you can detect them sooner than a light pulse, then they're transmitting the information faster than light. You could use Morse code, for example, and the pulses would reach the detector faster than light would.

 

Unfortunately pulses of rf fed into the waveguide usually emerge at the other end having travelled at the group velocity which is less than the speed of light. Although there is a pattern in the waveguide which can to be shown to travel above the speed of light it has no substance and cannot be used.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Unfortunately pulses of rf fed into the waveguide usually emerge at the other end having travelled at the group velocity which is less than the speed of light. Although there is a pattern in the waveguide which can to be shown to travel above the speed of light it has no substance and cannot be used.

Right. I was just pointing out the difference with these neutrinos, which were detectable at higher than c.

 

Totally with you there. Could it be nothing more than a publicity stunt to hype activity at CERN? Not suggesting it never happened but they are lot more controlled with what they make publc then one will think. The statement must have been approved by a lot of people! Certainly got the world talking...

 

scratching the desk preparing for the "standard model part 2"

If CERN tried a publicity stunt like this, they'd lose all credibility in the scientific community. I doubt they'd risk that.

[Hendrix]

From the press release:

 

 

 

There are a number of blog posts that point out that if the numbers are correct, the neutrino burst from SN1987A should have arrived years before the light arrived, but that was not seen. The neutrino burst led by a few hours, as expected.

 

That's interesting. Link?

[louis wu]

That's interesting. Link?

http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?bibcode=1987ApJ...319..136A&db_key=AST&page_ind=0&data_type=GIF&type=SCREEN_VIEW&classic=YES

Here is a paper from soon after 1987a, which confirms that the neutrino burst arrived 3 hours before the visible light detection. That is good synchronisation after a travel time of ~165000 years.

[DrRocket]

This archive article was just put on today the 22nd. If I were them I'd publish their findings giving all the details of the experiment so that they won't be inundated by inquiries concerning as much of the details of the experiment as possible.

 

This is a potentially earth-shaking finding, or just a mistake. Before the work is published in a refereed journal it will be VERY thoroughly vetted by experts. That process started today with a presentation to experts in live web cast.

 

The purpose of ArXiv is to put pre-prints of papers into circulation to the scientific community for review and comment on a timely basis, and this e-print has done exactly that. The researchers have acted extremely responsibly. They have established priority and have presented the data and methodology to experts for comment and possible rebuttal. The science community is quite vfamiliar with the archive, and the experiment and its results are now readily available.

 

They have solicited critique, and they will receive it from experts. I also anticipate that the junk filter for their e-mail will be very busy.

[md65536]

The abstract says, "The measurement is based on high-statistics data taken by OPERA in the years 2009, 2010 and 2011."

 

My guess is that they didn't measure any individual neutrinos traveling at v > c, but can infer that they did from a distribution of a large number of neutrino measurements.

 

Unless it turns out to be measurement error, I speculate that this is some kind of "entanglement" effect between the neutrinos.

If so, this would NOT violate SR, for the same reasons that the results of Delayed choice quantum eraser experiments do not violate SR.

 

In the quantum eraser experiment, results collected after a large number of photon events show an interference pattern, which indicates information having traveled faster than light.

However, the information is only available in the form of the interference pattern, which cannot be determined by any single photon event. The information is only extractable after the fact. There is no useful information that can possibly be transmitted faster than light. Causality is not violated. SR survives.

 

I'm willing to bet that similar results will be found (because "measurement errors" is boring and I'm an optimist! )...

- The explanation will be "quantum weirdness".

- It'll be proven that there is no way to use it to send information faster than light and thus causality remains intact.

- News stories will explain it like "The scientists say that this is allowed in relativity and Einstein's theory remains on solid ground... for now."

[Jason Chapman]

Gene Rodenberry, HG Wells, and many other authors, directors, movie producers, have always held the dream of faster than light travel. Now science has caught up with scifi perhaps we can get on with real science and design the first warp drive.

 

I no I'm doing this backwards, but hi guys, new kid on the block

[dragonstar57]

the caution of the scientists make this even more interesting... but hasn't it been well know that neutrinos can move at S>C for decades?

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

the caution of the scientists make this even more interesting... but hasn't it been well know that neutrinos can move at S>C for decades?

No, previous measurements have not given this result before:

 

http://arxiv.org/abs/0706.0437

 

Seeing a particle moving over c is a new experience. Hence the alarm and caution.

[toastywombel]

No, previous measurements have not given this result before:

 

http://arxiv.org/abs/0706.0437

 

Seeing a particle moving over c is a new experience. Hence the alarm and caution.

 

 

What about this I posted earlier, would it apply to this?

 

Even though supernova observations indicate that neutrinos propagate at the speed of light, it is not clear whether this result holds at higher energies. In particular, in the context of the Standard-Model Extension,[28][29][30] a realistic effective theory that includes Lorentz invariance violations, neutrinos experience Lorentz-violating oscillations and can travel faster than light at high energies.

Edited September 23, 2011 by toastywombel

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

I don't know much about extensions to the standard model and other proposed new theories. I'm sure that if the results are confirmed, there'll be a rush of theorists determining whose ideas best match the data. It'll be interesting.

[toastywombel]

I found this which might apply if it turns out to be neutrinos undergoing Lorentz violating oscillations. What is strange, and I underlined this, is that the conditions needed to make such oscillations would not effect the neutrino unless the source distance was greater than the diameter of the earth. Which would most certainly not be the case with the CERN tests.

 

Conventional neutrino oscillations depend only on R/E, the ratio of the flight-length

of the neutrino to its energy. If Lorentz symmetry is violated, the dependence on these

parameters is more complicated. Nonetheless, neutrino experiments performed at a variety

of energies can severely constrain the Lorentz-violating parameters. Let’s give a simple

example related to accelerator searches for νμ–νe oscillations. The strongest current limit

on δm2 (with sin2 2θm ∼ 1), δm2 < 0.09 eV2, follows from a relatively low energy experiment

[21]. Higher energy neutrino experiments, such as [22], offer less stringent constraints

on δm2 but are better suited to search for Lorentz-violating velocity oscillations. From

that experiment, and assuming sin2 θm ∼ 1, we find for the difference of the maximal

velocities of the two velocity eigenstates:

 

Finally, we note that stringent constraints on the CPT-violating parameters that affect

neutrino oscillations have been obtained from altogether different laboratory experiments.

According to one of its collaborators [23], the spectroscopic test of Lorentz invariance

described in [3] constrains the parameter b3 (as defined by Colladay and Kostaleck´y [5]).

They obtain |b3| < 7× 10−19 eV for electrons and |b3| < 1.2×10−21 eV for nucleons. The

former result, expressed in our model and in the preferred frame, corresponds loosely9 to

the constraint |bee| < 3 × 10−16 eV. This result suggests that CPT-violating effects are

too small to affect neutrino oscillations, except when the source distance far exceeds the

diameter of the Earth (as in the case of solar or extra-solar neutrinos).

 

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/hep-ph/pdf/9812/9812418v3.pdf (3.17)

 

In fact, I just found a French News Article, which I translated that speaks to the above,

 

Already a few days ago, the physicist Tommaso Dorigo was the source of a rumor in the blogosphere science. According to him, the physicists of the collaboration Opera, studying neutrino oscillations , were about to make public a bomb in the field of theoretical physics. Of muon neutrinos produced at CERN and forming a particle beam sent through the earth toward a detector buried under the Gran Sasso, more than 730 km from Geneva, were timed at a speed exceeding that of light in the empty ...

 

Neutrinos that travel faster than light, it usually results in what physicists call a violation of Lorentz invariance, one of the pillars of theoretical physics. This is not the first time that we consider such a violation. It seeks the same, because it could be an effect of quantum gravity . Unfortunately, recent observations of gamma Fermi and Integral does not seem compatible with such a violation.

 

http://www.futura-sciences.com/fr/news/t/physique-1/d/des-neutrinos-franchiraient-le-mur-de-la-lumiere_33583/

Edited September 23, 2011 by toastywombel

[pantheory]

Anyone who would be able to do anything useful with that information will know to look on arxiv, or ask someone who would know where to look for the article.

 

I looked on archive and didn't see much. I hope there is an expanded version of it. I did find what I was looking for concerning the design of the experiment which was pretty helpful. This info is unrelated to this particular "finding."

 

Based upon the design of experiment it is apparent that two major things might be wrong with the set-up. The first is the timing devices concerning the production of muon neutrinos, and the other concerns the distance which was not measured by lasar shot, which I think could have been done, but instead distance was calculated based upon the GPS system and the difference in altitude, which was about 8,300 ft. We are only talking about a distance error of 20 meters in more than 450 miles. If the distance was determined to be ~20 meters shorter, then the calcs. seemingly would have come out right. My best bet presently is that at their location and the way the satellites interact there for the GPS system, that such calcs could be off by this amount. The accuracy of the GPS system is supposed to be within 3 meters. There are other possible theoretical problems that I think the GPS system might have that I will not mention here since they are more speculative.

Edited September 24, 2011 by pantheory

[Sharapovaphan]

Speed of light beaten? Think again...Neutrino oscillations means neutrino velocity must be related to mass. Einstein’s theory of relativity suggests neutrinos are massless particles just like photons. However, if they carry a mass, they cannot reach the speed of light. The muon neutrino has a mass of 50 MeV so according to e=mcsq it must have either negative mass or non-zero mass meaning it cannot adhere to the standard model of physics. As the model doesn’t relate correctly to the selected lepton flavor (muon, electron or tau) eigenstates with different masses propagate at different speeds

 

Imaginary mass.

[michel123456]

(...) If the distance was determined to be ~20 meters shorter,(...)

 

In their arxiv file, they talk about 20 cm precision, not 20 meters.

 

Shouldn't they take into account the rotation of the Earth?

----------------

 

edit

 

There is a change in latitude between CERN & OPERA. The rotational speed at CERN is thus different from OPERA's. And since neutrinos have mass, they must be treated like massive objects, I guess.

Edited September 24, 2011 by michel123456

[Peron]

The scientists aren't claiming to have toppled relativity and are calling for independent confirmation. Just as one would expect of responsible physicists.

 

But this wouldn't topple relativity, would it? Haven't physicists been predicting faster than light particles based on Special relativity?

[md65536]

There's some interesting info on the story here: http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2011/09/this_extraordinary_claim_requi.php

[swansont]

But this wouldn't topple relativity, would it? Haven't physicists been predicting faster than light particles based on Special relativity?

 

They're called tachyons (which gets discussed from time to time — you can search for threads). They would have different properties than neutrinos.

[StringJunky]

As I've only been on these boards a couple of years and something like this has not come up since then it will be interesting to see how the conventional scientific community, as a whole, conducts itself as it plays out over time whatever the outcome. I hope the experts will keep us posted and interpret the developments for us.

[Iggy]

If confirmed this would be an amazing discovery.

 

Aside from general "It would upset relativity" may I request one of our physics expert put together a piece outlining the possible implications?

 

I'm sure those of us without the relevent knowledge would be intensely interested.

 

I would be inadequate to the task, but I know of a paper on the topic:

 

Faster-than-c signals, special relativity, and causality

 

Motivated by the recent attention on superluminal phenomena, we investigate the compatibility between faster-than-c propagation and the fundamental principles of relativity and causality. We first argue that special relativity can easily accommodate — indeed, does not exclude — faster-than-c signalling at the kinematical level. As far as causality is concerned, it is impossible to make statements of general validity, without specifying at least some features of the tachyonic propagation. We thus focus on the Scharnhorst effect (faster-than-c photon propagation in the Casimir vacuum), which is perhaps the most plausible candidate for a physically sound realization of these phenomena. We demonstrate that in this case the faster-than-c aspects are “benign” and constrained in such a manner as to not automatically lead to causality violations.

 

arxiv Feb 14, 2002

[Pincho Paxton]

If there is an error, there are 15000 errors. Somebody will get a red face!

[Eelpie]

In their arxiv file, they talk about 20 cm precision, not 20 meters.

 

Shouldn't they take into account the rotation of the Earth?

----------------

 

edit

 

There is a change in latitude between CERN & OPERA. The rotational speed at CERN is thus different from OPERA's. And since neutrinos have mass, they must be treated like massive objects, I guess.

 

how do you measure to 20 cm precision?

 

has any one checked the speed of light recently? maybe its changed?

[Sharapovaphan]

"Little Neutrino" By Klaatu. Kinda' appropriate I thought...

 

 

Little Neutrino lyrics

Across your open mind

I trace erratic lines

In motion and in time

 

I fought a battle won

To the surface of the sun

Through fires on and on

 

It's only you

It can't be me

For I myself refuse to be

I am someone you'll never know

I am the little neutrino

 

Solus is not far away

It's face is brighter than a day

[From: http://www.elyrics.net/read/k/klaatu-lyrics/little-neutrino-lyrics.html ]

So don't turn me away

 

It's only you

It can't be me

For I myself refuse to be

I am someone you'll never know

I am the little neutrino

 

And now I'm passing through

The one who's known as you

And yet you'll never know I do

Edited September 24, 2011 by Sharapovaphan