Speed-of-light experiments give baffling result at Cern

[Welsh cake]

I'm curious. Would Neutrinos travelling faster-than-light account for the odd emissions observed from the SN 1987A supernova where the subatomic particles reached Earth three hours before visible light did?

Particles in physics are so darn complicated to me...

[Autumnlicious]

I'm curious. Would Neutrinos travelling faster-than-light account for the odd emissions observed from the SN 1987A supernova where the subatomic particles reached Earth three hours before visible light did?

Particles in physics are so darn complicated to me...

I was under the impression that neutrinos passing through the solar mantle would encounter far less absorption and re-emission (read as 'none') than photons would, allowing for the apparent delay of detectable light with respect to detection of the neutrinos.

[5thHorseman]

That's what I thought......

[leo-rcc]

Yeah , me too.

[little_monkey]

Science tends to be a consensus verdict. That is achieved after a lot of behind-the-scenes work has smoothed out the rough edges and corrected mistakes. But by passing that filtering process and going public too soon as Opera has done in this case, it can lead to embarrassing reversals and give ammunition to the critics that science cannot be trusted.

[Welsh cake]

I'm curious. Would Neutrinos travelling faster-than-light account for the odd emissions observed from the SN 1987A supernova where the subatomic particles reached Earth three hours before visible light did?

Particles in physics are so darn complicated to me...

I was under the impression that neutrinos passing through the solar mantle would encounter far less absorption and re-emission (read as 'none') than photons would, allowing for the apparent delay of detectable light with respect to detection of the neutrinos.

So... because Neutrinos hardly interact with any other matter in the universe, they maintain a constant speed of light? Whereas Photons can't?

[Anomalocaris]

I'm curious. Would Neutrinos travelling faster-than-light account for the odd emissions observed from the SN 1987A supernova where the subatomic particles reached Earth three hours before visible light did?

Particles in physics are so darn complicated to me...

I was under the impression that neutrinos passing through the solar mantle would encounter far less absorption and re-emission (read as 'none') than photons would, allowing for the apparent delay of detectable light with respect to detection of the neutrinos.

So... because Neutrinos hardly interact with any other matter in the universe, they maintain a constant speed of light? Whereas Photons can't?

Let me clear up a couple of misconception.

1. When a supernove explodes, the first visible flash one sees from the outside do not consist of photons that travelled either directly or indirectly from the catalysm at the core center. Instead, the first flash are actually created on the outter surface of the star when shock waves from the core traveled outwards through the mantle and dumped their energy in the outter layer of the star. So the gap of few hours between when the core collapse occur - as signified by a burst of neutrinos - and when you see the brightening, is not the time it take for photons to travel through the star's mantle. It is the time taken by shockwaves that travel through the mantle.

2. The mantle of the star is opaque to photons. No photon can get created in the core, and travel all the way to the surface. Instead, it gets to travel only a fraction of a millimeter before it hits and gets absorbed by an atom. After a while, the atom reverts back to its original energy state and spits an comparable photon back out. It is this laborious process, repeated trillions of times, that gradually carries the photons emitted at the center of a star to the star's outside. This process literally takes MILLIONS of years, not several hours.


So. The photons that gets created in the core of the star does travel at speed of light, but only for tiny distances before it is stopped because photons interacts easily with anything that carries a electric charge, like electrons in all the atoms in the star.

Neutrons that gets created in the core of the star also travel at speed of light. But they interacts with comparative little, and therefore many of them do get to travel all the way through the mantle of the star without being stoped.

Incidentally, because photons created at the center of stars takes millions of years to get to the surface, the sun light shinning on you now actually owns its energy to nuclear fusion in the sun that occurred millions of years ago. Consequently, if the nuclear fusion in the center of the sun is to stop now (and somehow we prevent the core from collapsing and sending out a shock wave in response), the sun will happily shine on just the same for a few million more years, drawing on photons it created in the last few million years,