Here's my two cents on the story.
Even if this is verified, does it mean that "Einstein was wrong", as the papers have taken great joy in saying? No, not at all.
Special relativity is built up from very basic foundations, all you have to do is think about how to make a change of reference frame in a world in which the speed of light is the same for all observers. Yes, you also have to assume some things about the isotropy and homogeneity of space, but if they didn't hold, we wouldn't know how to do physics at all.
That, along with the fact that relativity has been borne out by almost 100 years of experiment means it can't just be discarded.
Perhaps relativity isn't applicable to these neutrinos? Well, that would certainly be strange. Our way of describing neutrinos is built up from the Dirac equation, which explicitly takes account of special relativity.
Perhaps it has to do with the nature of the neutrino mass? All the more mundane particles we know about (electrons, protons etc) have a Dirac mass, whereas it might turn out that neutrinos have a Majorana mass (which would certainly help explain why they're so light). That doesn't make much sense either, the spinors that describe Majorana fermions also obey the Dirac equation.
At this point, any explanation involving extra dimensions should be regarded as no more than science fiction.
The most plausible explanation currently is that there's an error somewhere in the method of calculating the neutrino speed. I wouldn't be at all surprised if this goes the way of cold fusion. An exciting result, that ultimately turns out to be irreproducable.
a photon, by definition, always travels at the speed of light. If you want to claim that the Lorentz transformations allow for v>c, could you please explain how to correctly interpret an imaginary velocity?
Even if this is verified, does it mean that "Einstein was wrong", as the papers have taken great joy in saying? No, not at all.
Special relativity is built up from very basic foundations, all you have to do is think about how to make a change of reference frame in a world in which the speed of light is the same for all observers. Yes, you also have to assume some things about the isotropy and homogeneity of space, but if they didn't hold, we wouldn't know how to do physics at all.
That, along with the fact that relativity has been borne out by almost 100 years of experiment means it can't just be discarded.
Perhaps relativity isn't applicable to these neutrinos? Well, that would certainly be strange. Our way of describing neutrinos is built up from the Dirac equation, which explicitly takes account of special relativity.
Perhaps it has to do with the nature of the neutrino mass? All the more mundane particles we know about (electrons, protons etc) have a Dirac mass, whereas it might turn out that neutrinos have a Majorana mass (which would certainly help explain why they're so light). That doesn't make much sense either, the spinors that describe Majorana fermions also obey the Dirac equation.
At this point, any explanation involving extra dimensions should be regarded as no more than science fiction.
The most plausible explanation currently is that there's an error somewhere in the method of calculating the neutrino speed. I wouldn't be at all surprised if this goes the way of cold fusion. An exciting result, that ultimately turns out to be irreproducable.
(September 24, 2011 at 9:26 pm)IATIA Wrote: Then according to you, a photon cannot achieve the speed of light?
a photon, by definition, always travels at the speed of light. If you want to claim that the Lorentz transformations allow for v>c, could you please explain how to correctly interpret an imaginary velocity?
Galileo was a man of science oppressed by the irrational and superstitious. Today, he is used by the irrational and superstitious who claim they are being oppressed by science - Mark Crislip
