Speed-of-light experiments give baffling result at Cern

[Anomalocaris]

I don't know if gravity effects neutrino speed, but Gravity well subtracts energy from the photon and redshifts the light but does not change its observed speed. If neutrino and light were to get going at the same time and travel at the same speed, they would both cover the same distance in the same amount of time regardless of the gravitational well at the source, is that not so?

I was referring to the fact that energy propagation by means other than neutrinos would take its time to work its way up through the dense gaseous envelope of the star through shockwave propagation, and repeated photo emission and absorption by the material of the star's mantle. So it takes a few hours between when the core collapse, and when the visible surface of the star shows any optical indications of the calamity within. Thus visible brightening of the supernova would always occur sometime after the initial neutrino flux.

The report indicates CERN found neutrino to have covered 732 km 60 nano seconds, or 0.00000006 seconds faster than light. At accepted c of 299792.458 km/sec, light should have covered the said distance in 2441692 nano seconds or 0,00244 seconds. THis indicates neutrino traveled at 1+(60/2441692) speed of light, or 1 part in 40694 faster than light, which is a massive discrepancy unmissable if amplified over many light years.

Now perhaps some types of neutrino can travel faster than light and some can not, perhaps neutrinos speed oscillate about c so that it averages out to c over long distances. But I these are all ad hoc explanations whose weight can't be very high compared to the cumulative weight of the all the validation specific relativity has undergone in the last 90 years.

[IATIA]

From what law do you make that assertion?

Then according to you, a photon cannot achieve the speed of light?

[Cyberman]

Bad Astronomer Phil Plait's take on this:

Faster-than-light travel discovered? Slow down, folks

My own view is pretty similar to what has been expressed by others, inasmuch that, in science, one anomalous result becomes the focus of further research instead of the conclusion. Whatever remains afterwards will then be assessed on its own merits. Experimental error is obviously going to be part of the investigation, and as Phil Plait puts it in the above article:

Also, as pointed out in a Science Magazine article, knowing the exact moment the neutrinos are created isn’t easy either. Mind you, 60 nanoseconds is 0.00000006 seconds, so they need a pretty good clock here. That page also says they used GPS to determine the distance, which could be off a bit.

Whichever way the evidence leads, the fundy preachers will think they have a bit more ammunition to use against the demon god of 'Scientism'. If the new results are right, then Einstein and his colleagues were wrong and you can't trust anything those scientists say. If wrong, then clearly science has been proved wrong and you can't trust anything those scientists say.

Not that I personally give a neutrino's toss what a bunch of shitheads think as long as they keep it to themselves, but it will surely mean a whole new pile of what I propose to coin 'fundiarrhoea' to have to clean up again and again.

[lilphil1989]

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.

---

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?

[little_monkey]

I don't know if gravity effects neutrino speed, but Gravity well subtracts energy from the photon and redshifts the light but does not change its observed speed. If neutrino and light were to get going at the same time and travel at the same speed, they would both cover the same distance in the same amount of time regardless of the gravitational well at the source, is that not so?

I was referring to the fact that energy propagation by means other than neutrinos would take its time to work its way up through the dense gaseous envelope of the star through shockwave propagation, and repeated photo emission and absorption by the material of the star's mantle. So it takes a few hours between when the core collapse, and when the visible surface of the star shows any optical indications of the calamity within. Thus visible brightening of the supernova would always occur sometime after the initial neutrino flux.

You are correct. My poor wording gave the impression that the speed of photons depended on gravity, which is not what I had in mind. Emission and absorption of photons would account for the gap between the arrival of neutrinos ahead of the photons. At least, that's what was the thinking when the supernova was discovered. Perhaps we might have to revise that too, who knows.

The report indicates CERN found neutrino to have covered 732 km 60 nano seconds, or 0.00000006 seconds faster than light. At accepted c of 299792.458 km/sec, light should have covered the said distance in 2441692 nano seconds or 0,00244 seconds. THis indicates neutrino traveled at 1+(60/2441692) speed of light, or 1 part in 40694 faster than light, which is a massive discrepancy unmissable if amplified over many light years.

That's correct, and that's why the Opera team is seeking other teams to verify their findings. The discrepancy is too large to be ignored.

Now perhaps some types of neutrino can travel faster than light and some can not, perhaps neutrinos speed oscillate about c so that it averages out to c over long distances. But I these are all ad hoc explanations whose weight can't be very high compared to the cumulative weight of the all the validation specific relativity has undergone in the last 90 years.

Should the findings be confirmed, some explanations will have to come forward and perhaps neutrino oscillation might be one of those factors that would play a key role. But right now, all that is speculation. We really don't know much about the weak force, or how would neutrino interact with quantum fluctuations, or even with gravity. This would open a whole can of worms.

---

From what law do you make that assertion?

Then according to you, a photon cannot achieve the speed of light?

In post #13, I explained that massless particles like the photons can only travel at the speed of light.

---

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.

That's my position too.

[lanceromega]

I don't know if gravity effects neutrino speed, but Gravity well subtracts energy from the photon and redshifts the light but does not change its observed speed. If neutrino and light were to get going at the same time and travel at the same speed, they would both cover the same distance in the same amount of time regardless of the gravitational well at the source, is that not so?

I was referring to the fact that energy propagation by means other than neutrinos would take its time to work its way up through the dense gaseous envelope of the star through shockwave propagation, and repeated photo emission and absorption by the material of the star's mantle. So it takes a few hours between when the core collapse, and when the visible surface of the star shows any optical indications of the calamity within. Thus visible brightening of the supernova would always occur sometime after the initial neutrino flux.

You are correct. My poor wording gave the impression that the speed of photons depended on gravity, which is not what I had in mind. Emission and absorption of photons would account for the gap between the arrival of neutrinos ahead of the photons. At least, that's what was the thinking when the supernova was discovered. Perhaps we might have to revise that too, who knows.

The report indicates CERN found neutrino to have covered 732 km 60 nano seconds, or 0.00000006 seconds faster than light. At accepted c of 299792.458 km/sec, light should have covered the said distance in 2441692 nano seconds or 0,00244 seconds. THis indicates neutrino traveled at 1+(60/2441692) speed of light, or 1 part in 40694 faster than light, which is a massive discrepancy unmissable if amplified over many light years.

That's correct, and that's why the Opera team is seeking other teams to verify their findings. The discrepancy is too large to be ignored.

Now perhaps some types of neutrino can travel faster than light and some can not, perhaps neutrinos speed oscillate about c so that it averages out to c over long distances. But I these are all ad hoc explanations whose weight can't be very high compared to the cumulative weight of the all the validation specific relativity has undergone in the last 90 years.

Should the findings be confirmed, some explanations will have to come forward and perhaps neutrino oscillation might be one of those factors that would play a key role. But right now, all that is speculation. We really don't know much about the weak force, or how would neutrino interact with quantum fluctuations, or even with gravity. This would open a whole can of worms.

---

From what law do you make that assertion?

Then according to you, a photon cannot achieve the speed of light?

In post #13, I explained that massless particles like the photons can only travel at the speed of light.

---

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.

That's my position too.

Or it can be that Neutrinos are in fact tachyons, back in the 90's several attempts to measure the mass of neutrinos yielded results that point toward the fact that they may have possess imaginary mass, which is the same mass Tachyon possess.

Any normal particle possessing a real mass would have varying velocities depending on momentum and kinetic energy, no experiment to date has have clocked a slow Neutrino. As a matter of fact the universe at large should have layer of Neutrino condensate occupying large potion of space due to the large outburst of neutrinos from the big bang, this layer of condensate should be detectable via gravitational effects yet no observation of this has occured.

If the Neutrinos are tachyons they could never be at rest, this would match all observation to date, Neutrinos from big bang would be the source of Dark energy that is causing the speeding up of inflation. Tachyons gain speed as they lose energy, which would occur as the cloud of neutrinos travel outward from from the intial singularty. The pressure from the accelerating neutrinos would cause universe to expand.

This same effect would explain why supernova neutrino are slower as they would actually be at a higher energy then those produce in the experiment, there velocity would be very close to that of a photon and almost appear to be traveling at speed of light and not faster.

[little_monkey]

Or it can be that Neutrinos are in fact tachyons, back in the 90's several attempts to measure the mass of neutrinos yielded results that point toward the fact that they may have possess imaginary mass, which is the same mass Tachyon possess.

Any normal particle possessing a real mass would have varying velocities depending on momentum and kinetic energy, no experiment to date has have clocked a slow Neutrino. As a matter of fact the universe at large should have layer of Neutrino condensate occupying large potion of space due to the large outburst of neutrinos from the big bang, this layer of condensate should be detectable via gravitational effects yet no observation of this has occured.

If the Neutrinos are tachyons they could never be at rest, this would match all observation to date, Neutrinos from big bang would be the source of Dark energy that is causing the speeding up of inflation. Tachyons gain speed as they lose energy, which would occur as the cloud of neutrinos travel outward from from the intial singularty. The pressure from the accelerating neutrinos would cause universe to expand.

This same effect would explain why supernova neutrino are slower as they would actually be at a higher energy then those produce in the experiment, there velocity would be very close to that of a photon and almost appear to be traveling at speed of light and not faster.

The bartender says: we don't serve tachyons in this bar.

A tachyon walks into a a bar.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

On a more serious note, if the neutrinos were tachyonic, their velocity would be energy dependent. This is not what the OPERA team have found:

At 13.9 GeV: (v-c)/c = (2.16 ± 0.76 ± 0.30) x 10-5

At 42.9 GeV: (v-c)/c = (2.74 ± 0.74 ± 0.30) x 10-5

These can be compared with the independent result from MINOS, a similar experiment in the US with a baseline of almost exactly the same length but lower energy beams.

At 3 GeV: (v-c)/c = (5.1 ± 2.9) x 10-5

[lilphil1989]

Or it can be that Neutrinos are in fact tachyons, back in the 90's several attempts to measure the mass of neutrinos yielded results that point toward the fact that they may have possess imaginary mass, which is the same mass Tachyon possess.

Which experiments are you referring to?
"What is the mass of a neutrino?" is not even a well-defined question, since the flavour eigenstates are not mass eigenstates.

Any normal particle possessing a real mass would have varying velocities depending on momentum and kinetic energy, no experiment to date has have clocked a slow Neutrino.

If the squared mass splittings from the KamLAND and MINOS experiments are taken as indicative of the absolute scale of the neutrino mass eigenstate masses, given that we know of no processes that produce sub-keV neutrinos and that the cross-section varies inversely with energy, it's hardly a surprise that we don't see "slow" neutrinos.

[little_monkey]

The major flaw will be most likely found in how the the time of departure and time of arrival of the neutrinos were determined. The OPERA team compared distribution of neutrinos as in the attachment, and not individual neutrinos. Two distributions are illustrated in the picture. You can see that determining ti = time of departure and tf = time of arrival is a tricky guessing game.

[The Grand Nudger]

So no updates on this yet?