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Neutrinos still travel faster than light
November 18, 2011 at 3:51 pm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15791236
Quote:The team which found that neutrinos may travel faster than light has carried out an improved version of their experiment - and confirmed the result.
If confirmed by other experiments, the find could undermine one of the basic principles of modern physics.
I guess the critics of CERN's handling of the experiment just got silenced.
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RE: Neutrinos still travel faster than light
November 18, 2011 at 4:27 pm
(This post was last modified: November 18, 2011 at 4:31 pm by Milky Tea.)
I disagree
The critics concerns were valid hence the further testing, there remains further issues which need to be addressed, the paper hasn't been peer reviewed and published, and there hasn't been any corroboration of the results by the wider scientific community. These findings are still very much up in the air which was stated by the CERN team.
Quote:"This additional test we made is confirming our original finding, but still we have to be very prudent, still we have to look forward to independent confirmation. But this is a positive result."
In this weeks New Scientists criticism was levelled at media claims that this represents a overturning to Einstein's special relativity because special relatively predicts that an object travelling less than the speed of light cannot be accelerated to the speed or life, and does not preclude an object existing that begins it's existence travelling faster than the speed of life. The analogy in New Scientist is that just because people people living on one side of a mountain felt it was impossible to cross does not mean that there isn't anyone living on the other side. Neutrino's, if these results are confirmed, may come into existance travelling faster than the speed of light.
Personally I'm going to let the scientific process run it's course and reserve judgement until these findings have been subject to the appropriate examination rather than pick sides now and argue for an untenable position.
Um...
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RE: Neutrinos still travel faster than light
November 18, 2011 at 5:00 pm
(This post was last modified: November 18, 2011 at 5:01 pm by IATIA.)
Quote:The idea that nothing can exceed the speed of light in a vacuum forms a cornerstone in physics - first laid out by James Clerk Maxwell and later incorporated into Albert Einstein's theory of special relativity.
Judgement is still being based on this fallacy. Stated is that nothing can go from sub-light speed to hyper-light speed.
I take issue with the measurement though. If you are standing in front of some one, your 'now' is different from their 'now'. Therefore, our ability to 'synchronize' two distant clocks and verify this synchronization is definitely in question. May perhaps the neutrinos are traveling at the speed of light and that is what could be used to synchronize the clocks.
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RE: Neutrinos still travel faster than light
November 19, 2011 at 11:28 am
In the earlier experiments, the neutrinos were sent in clusters that spanned 10 microseconds, much longer than the 60 nanoseconds time difference that signaled the faster-than-light effect, and thus the experimenters had to do some fancy statistical analyses to extract the time of flight of each neutrino. Some skeptics had suggested that those statistical analyses were flawed. The new experiment has clusters that last only 3 nanoseconds, thus ruling out that particular source of systematic error.
The other potential sources of error will take longer to check out. The only way to confirm this result is from other teams around the world who will use different equipment and procedures. If they get to have the same results, then we will be talking about major, major discovery. Until then, any interpretation of this result will be most likely just pure speculation.
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RE: Neutrinos still travel faster than light
November 19, 2011 at 11:37 am
Technically, if they are traveling faster than light, should not they be traveling backward in time and be at the other end before they leave?
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RE: Neutrinos still travel faster than light
November 19, 2011 at 11:40 am
(November 19, 2011 at 11:37 am)IATIA Wrote: Technically, if they are traveling faster than light, should not they be traveling backward in time and be at the other end before they leave?
No, not if they are travelling back in time relative to the time it 'should' take them.
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RE: Neutrinos still travel faster than light
November 19, 2011 at 11:53 am
(November 19, 2011 at 11:37 am)IATIA Wrote: Technically, if they are traveling faster than light, should not they be traveling backward in time and be at the other end before they leave?
That's a misconception. If the neutrinos were travelling faster than light, it would simply means that if neutrino and photons ( a light signal) were sent at the same time, the neutrinos would arrive before the photons. It would be weird: you'de get knocked off by neutrinos, then get a signal: HERE COMES THE NEUTRINOS. 
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RE: Neutrinos still travel faster than light
November 19, 2011 at 12:19 pm
Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer Wrote:If the neutrinos are actually going faster than light, though, it might be possible to use them to communicate with the past, Lloyd (Seth Lloyd, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) said. You could send off a faster-than-light message to someone moving at a rapid velocity with respect to you. They could then bounce the faster-than-light message back, and it would arrive before the signal you sent to them.
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RE: Neutrinos still travel faster than light
November 19, 2011 at 12:46 pm
(November 18, 2011 at 3:51 pm)Welsh cake Wrote: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15791236
Quote:The team which found that neutrinos may travel faster than light has carried out an improved version of their experiment - and confirmed the result.
If confirmed by other experiments, the find could undermine one of the basic principles of modern physics.
I guess the critics of CERN's handling of the experiment just got silenced.
Right now is the best time for this experiment to be very careful and critical. Those in charge of the experiment should be very careful on what they say publicly about it as well until more experiments have been accomplished.
It is starting to look more and more like Neutrinos are given a pass to violate the cosmic speed limit.
The first thought that comes to mind is:
Is there any way that information could be attached to this basic units? If so, it would be the most advanced communications medium known to mankind.
I also wonder, if communications could be attached to such a medium, if intelligent life forms outside of our planet are currently using them right now to contact other intelligence without being impeded by relativity and time.
BUT, I must also wonder if the machine is accurately measuring this data. That is why i really want this crew to be careful in what it posts publicly. If they cause a ruckus in the scientific community only to find out that the machinery had a glitch...well....you can see how bad it would make this team look.
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RE: Neutrinos still travel faster than light
November 19, 2011 at 2:11 pm
(This post was last modified: November 19, 2011 at 2:53 pm by little_monkey.)
(November 19, 2011 at 12:19 pm)IATIA Wrote: Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer Wrote:If the neutrinos are actually going faster than light, though, it might be possible to use them to communicate with the past, Lloyd (Seth Lloyd, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) said. You could send off a faster-than-light message to someone moving at a rapid velocity with respect to you. They could then bounce the faster-than-light message back, and it would arrive before the signal you sent to them.
Yes, that's correct, but it's not that you could travel to the past and change it as in the Grandfather_paradox.
As pointed out in another thread ( see: http://atheistforums.org/thread-8674-page-6.html), that van Elburg had pinpointed the error, here's another paper that reaffirms the van Elburg's finding:
Quote:Conclusion
Our calculation above is a corrected version of van Elburg’s idea and explains why there is an approximately 60 ns difference in the arrival time of neutrinos and what is expected based on the speed of light.The problem lies in the method used to synchronize and set the clocks – there is nothing specifically wrong with using GPS atomic clocks, even for synchronization, except that the clocks should not be set to follow the GPS clock after the point of synchronization. This is unfortunately what happens with the PolaRx2e receivers used as the time-bases in the set-up. If, instead, the Cs4000 clock were the only clocks used, this result would not appear.
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1111/1111.1922.pdf
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