Faster than lightspeed achieved?

[toastywombel]

I cannot help but compare the attitude of CERN. "Here is our data, etc. Please examine it and see what might be wrong" with the immortal words from climate science "Why should I show you my data? You only want to find something wrong with it."

 

And people wonder why there are sceptics....

 

And I cannot but help to notice that this have been a Right-wing talking point for some time now. Wall Street Journal paraphrased pretty much exactly what you just said. Not only in an article but also on twitter. Now since the article was posted after you made your post you obviously didn't just paraphrase them, but its just curious.

 

 

 

Btw, this is probably one of the best more recent articles I have read on the issue and it briefly addresses the above talking point.

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/10/07/8211350-neutrinos-spark-wild-scientific-leaps

[swansont]

I cannot help but compare the attitude of CERN. "Here is our data, etc. Please examine it and see what might be wrong" with the immortal words from climate science "Why should I show you my data? You only want to find something wrong with it."

 

And people wonder why there are sceptics....

 

There's a huge difference, though. The scientists are reaching out to other scientists. If it were amateurs or crackpots bugging them for details so they could advance some alternative to relativity, it would probably be quite different. The data are in conflict with a well-established theory, not some preconceived notion of what someone wants the data to tell them.

[Brainteaserfan]

http://physorg.com/news/2011-10-theories-emerge-opera-faster-than-light-neutrinos.html

[michel123456]

What was the purpose of this OPERA experiment?

[alpha2cen]

How to detect the neutrinos at the CERN?

How about changing the start detection point?

 

generate neutrino ->----------||-----------------------------------------------------------------------------||-------->---

 

======CERN===start detection point===========================end detection point(Gran Sasso)

Is this method difficult to carry out for money and time?

I also think they deeply think the experiment over .

Edited October 9, 2011 by alpha2cen

[swansont]

You detect the neutrinos when they interact. That happens inside of a nucleus. The start detection and end detection point is the same.

[alpha2cen]

Theoretically the two points detection results are the same. But the two point detecting methods are different . How about making a new start detection point far from the CERN about 1km away?

[md65536]

Theoretically the two points detection results are the same. But the two point detecting methods are different . How about making a new start detection point far from the CERN about 1km away?

The goal in doing this would I suppose be better control and measurement of the distance to reduce any errors. The distance would be 1/733 of that for OPERA. If the same c+v speed of neutrinos was detected, they would no longer arrive 60ns earlier, but 1/733 that... less than 0.1ns expected discrepancy. This is less than the error in the timing systems; the error would completely dominate the measurements.

 

If anything you'd want the difference in timing between these neutrinos and c to be as significant or large as possible, which means as large a distance as possible.

 

 

Also it's not very practical: neutrino detectors are huge underground things (http://scienceblogs....o_fun_facts.php has pictures of Gran Sasso and Super Kamiokande-III).

 

ALSO if you're suggesting that they use two detectors (one to mark the start and one to mark the end), that is not so. The way neutrinos are detected is through interaction with normal matter, in the form of a collision that destroys the neutrino (its energy converted). Neutrinos are mostly (nearly all) not detected at all, but when they are detected it is only at the end of their journey.

 

BUT, yes, repeating the experiment using different locations is a good idea and should happen (I think someone mentioned such plans, earlier in this thread), especially if OPERA's results remain unexplained.

 

 

 

Edit: I suppose if you did the experiment with as short a travel time as possible, that might tell you some useful things about the system besides travel time of neutrinos. For example if they found a similar 60ns difference in timing in a 1km distance, it would suggest that it's not due to the travel time (and speed) of the neutrinos. I guess, such an experiment would be useful then, only if it gave extremely unexpected results. The expected result is that error would dominate the measurements.

Edited October 9, 2011 by md65536

[Guest scepticmale1985]

This is a milestone in Science, does that mean that time travel will be possible soon?

[michel123456]

I made this thought: maybe the problem is not in the result but in methodology.

The measurements are based on absolute simultaneity between CERN & OPERA: does this artificial simultaneity come into contradiction with Relativity?

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

Or:

In a Spacetime diagram (Minkowski diagram), events are placed upon a diagonal. These events are "observations in reality in spacetime". When scientists create simultaneity between observer at the generator and at the receiver, they create the horizontal projection of the event upon the time axis. And following the experiment, it seems that the vertical projection upon the space axis is not what we expected. IOW there is a difference between distance measured by geographic means (in reality) and 'distance' as the result of the Theory of Relativity.

Edited October 10, 2011 by michel123456

[imatfaal]

What was the purpose of this OPERA experiment?

 

CERN/OPERA Gran Sasso was set up to look at the oscillations of neutrinos between the three flavours of neutrino; the electron neutrino ν_e the mu neutrino ν_μ and the tau neutrino ν_τ. CERN was able to use a proton beam striking a graphite wall to produce a beam of mesons that with a little filtering and magnetic channelling would end up decaying and producing a beam (not sure if it was a beam or a burst) of almost solely ν_μ. This beam of ν_μ was directed at Gran Sasso ~730km away. Gran Sasso was set up to detect ν_τ however - and it was hoped that accurate measurements of the number ν_τ could give insight into the probabilities of oscillation. I haven't read up on the Gran Sasso detectors (lotsa lead and photo-multipliers) so I cannot say if they were only detecting ν_τ - but I presume they must have been able to either measure only ν_τ or differentiate ν_τ from ν_μ and ν_e for their experiment to work

[swansont]

I made this thought: maybe the problem is not in the result but in methodology.

The measurements are based on absolute simultaneity between CERN & OPERA: does this artificial simultaneity come into contradiction with Relativity?

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

Or:

In a Spacetime diagram (Minkowski diagram), events are placed upon a diagonal. These events are "observations in reality in spacetime". When scientists create simultaneity between observer at the generator and at the receiver, they create the horizontal projection of the event upon the time axis. And following the experiment, it seems that the vertical projection upon the space axis is not what we expected. IOW there is a difference between distance measured by geographic means (in reality) and 'distance' as the result of the Theory of Relativity.

The clocks can, in principle, be synchronized. Whether they were is another matter.

[Moontanman]

"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

 

 

Great song, you should hear it on my Infinity 1.5's at 150 watts per channel..... I thought I was one of maybe 12 people on the planet who knew who Klaatu was and or listened to them

 

I really don't think it'll be something "easy and obvious". This is a "large group" of physicists working for a few years on this. They're not idiots. They didn't spend an hour thinking about it only to say "Well I'm stumped. Maybe the internet will know!"

 

 

I hope you are correct md but I keep thinking about that Mars probe, that buried it's self in the surface of Mars because some one saw meters per second but used feet per second...

Edited October 10, 2011 by Moontanman

[pantheory]

What was the purpose of this OPERA experiment?

The primary purpose of this experiment was to observe the extent that muon neutrinos will change into Tau neutrinos. Of the 16,000 thousand neutrinos they recorded, one accordingly changed from a muon to a Tau neutrino. I think that they were hoping to see a lot more conversions. The solar neutrino problem some think has been resolved in that neutrinos change flavors. But experiments have shown little to confirm a significant portion of such changes. Only between 1/3 and 1/2 of the theoretical neutrinos are being produced by the sun. This is proven by observation but experiments explain relatively nothing concerning resolving the solar neutrino problem, that appears to still be unresolved.

//

Edited October 12, 2011 by pantheory

[michel123456]

I made this thought: maybe the problem is not in the result but in methodology.

The measurements are based on absolute simultaneity between CERN & OPERA: does this artificial simultaneity come into contradiction with Relativity?

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

Or:

In a Spacetime diagram (Minkowski diagram), events are placed upon a diagonal. These events are "observations in reality in spacetime". When scientists create simultaneity between observer at the generator and at the receiver, they create the horizontal projection of the event upon the time axis. And following the experiment, it seems that the vertical projection upon the space axis is not what we expected. IOW there is a difference between distance measured by geographic means (in reality) and 'distance' as the result of the Theory of Relativity.

 

Reiterating:

 

 

Keeping the premises that the experimental results are correct and that Relativity is correct too:

since everything that we observe consists of a reality in a spacetime continuum, it is probable that what we believe measuring by geographical survey as distance between 2 objects is not a real distance "in space only" but a distance "in spacetime". Remember that in this experiment distance is not the result of speed by time operation, but the result of geometric on the spot measurement.

So maybe in this case, the geographic distance must be set upon the diagonal in a spacetime diagram and not upon the horizontal. The real "relativistic distance" should be then the projection upon the space axis.

 

Of course there is a unit problem, since this last one cannot have units of meters, but something else ("virtual meters"?)

And if all the above is right, the experiment actually measured the angle of the diagonal.

Edited October 12, 2011 by michel123456

[pantheory]

You are correct Michel,

 

GR calcs could create a greater "error" if it were used. I saw a listing of their calcs and saw nothing relating to GR. In Reimann geometry space supposedly curves. This might increase the distance calculated which seemingly would add to the "error' rather than explaining it. As mentioned before a "distance error" would be the lowest hanging fruit. To explain an error of 60 nano-seconds for a 450+ mile span, they would need to have overestimated the distance by about 20 meters. But if they did use GR I think it could have added no more than maybe 10% to the "error."

Edited October 12, 2011 by pantheory

[Mystery111]

http://www.stardrive...ience&Itemid=82

 

 

I hope this is not the cause. It is also such an elementary error if it is the cause.

 

Just found out some information which has made me very happy indeed!

 

They never made an error for the clocks in the GPS because they never used GPS clocks alone. Looking through the OPERA work, they use clocks based on the ground, that are periodically sycronized to the GPS clocks so the clocks are ALWAYS in the same time dilation state as the experiment itself. The paper I linked wouldn't make sense any more.

Edited October 15, 2011 by Mystery111

[michel123456]

From the source article

So from the point of view of a clock on board a GPS satellite, the positions of the neutrino source and detector are 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.

 

By this he means shorter than the distance measured in the reference frame on the ground.

 

The OPERA team overlooks this because it thinks of the clocks as on the ground not in orbit.

 

How big is this effect? 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.

 

Emphasis mine.

When I proposed a similar explanation in another thread on the same subject, Swansont's estimation was much smaller. See post #70 in page 4.

 

Note: I propose merging the threads.

Edited October 15, 2011 by michel123456

[swansont]

http://www.stardrive...ience&Itemid=82

 

 

I hope this is not the cause. It is also such an elementary error if it is the cause.

 

Just found out some information which has made me very happy indeed!

 

They never made an error for the clocks in the GPS because they never used GPS clocks alone. Looking through the OPERA work, they use clocks based on the ground, that are periodically sycronized to the GPS clocks so the clocks are ALWAYS in the same time dilation state as the experiment itself. The paper I linked wouldn't make sense any more.

 

The effect of the motion of the satellites is already programmed in to the receiver to give timing and positioning. The signals would be useless without this correction. There's also the issue of equating the 55 degree inclination of the orbit with the satellites traveling along the beam path, which is a bad assumption for the problem; it's not generally true.

[questionposter]

!

Moderator Note

Merged with existing thread

Some collider, I think the Fermi Lab or the Hadron in Switzerland said they found neutrinos going faster than the speed of light, but couldn't an explanation be that because the neutrinos were at such a high energy level that their wave function where the highest probability to be found was in the macroscopic realm? As in, a neutrino could "appear" past the point where it would appear as if it were just any old classical object? Edited October 18, 2011 by swansont
add modnote

[timo]

I'm not sure if I understand you correctly. But just because I have the newspaper of tomorrow lying on my doorsteps every day that does not tell me by what mechanism it came there, either. Admittedly, in that case it may be easier to trace back the origin and the mechanism because I need less sophisticated equipment and I deal with objects (newspapers) that I know quite a lot about (contrary to neutrinos for which even the mass is not fully understood). Sidenote: It's tempting to call it a CERN measurement because CERN does have to do with it and is a name everyone knows (and it sells good in newspapers if you put that name in the headline). The result is actually from a joint research program with the neutrino source being at CERN and the detector (the heart of such an experiment) being at an underground detector facility in Italy.

[ajb]

I think it would be ok to suggest we do not properly understand the neutrino sector of the standard model. They are inherently light and interact with matter extremely weakly. Any experiments are going to be very difficult.

 

It was not very long ago that neutrinos were thought to be massless. So we may be in for more surprises, but faster than light, I am very cautious .

[timo]

It was not very long ago that neutrinos were thought to be massless. So we may be in for more surprises, but faster than light, I am very cautious.

There are in fact interesting results from supernovas, where neutrinos arrive 18 hours before the visual signal [1] (the optical signal is delayed because it takes time for the repeatedly-interacting photons to leave the reaction region whereas the neutrinos just go through). This puts rather severe constraints on the speed of neutrinos (of that energy) in vacuum that are incompatible with the OPAL results, at least according to the explanation I was given (I never bothered to check the numbers even though it would be rather trivial). However, I do acknowledge that the OPAL result is a reproducible one (a similar experiment already measured v>c some time ago, just with larger error bars) and not a "in one of our tens of thousands results we found a peak that, were it a random peak, would only show with a chance of 1:10000, therefore we might have found evidence for new physics"-one.

 

[1] http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v58/i14/p1494_1

Edited October 18, 2011 by timo

[edwardreed]

Was that real?? I have read the news from BBC. Neutrinos Faster than lightspeed..!! Then what about the Eisten Law. Once this invention is true, I think that law will be changed.

[imatfaal]

I was a bit surprised by the reaction of Lawrence Krauss on the latest BBC Material World (http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/material) talking about the way the Opera results were handled. Most of the correspondents elsewhere and writers here have been largely complimentary about the handling of this anomaly. Prof Krauss was fairly swingeing in his criticism (even though they had really only asked for other scientists to find the error) that Opera should have followed a more recognized approach of publishing in a peer-reviewed journal rather than using a press announcement/seminar/arxiv. He was highly entertaining in his other comments but was clearly not happy with the way this strange result had been handled.

 

Would going through the process of publishing in a peer-review been a good idea? Could any individual referees have found problems (let's face no one has so far) with the methodology or practice?