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speed of light
http://www.lifein19x19.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=4725		 Page 1 of 4
Author:  cyclops [ Mon Sep 26, 2011 3:49 am ]
Post subject:  speed of light
I thought we are smart guys and girls. Then why didn't we solve the neutrino problem yet? :scratch: It is detected to have surpassed the absolute speed limit. :shock: This should be impossible according to Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity.

Here is my naive theory. :study: I think that in this speed experiment there are at least 3 events. The departure, the arrival and one synchronisation event. We can consider the experiment as a verification of the triangulation laws in space time. The impossible speed can also be interpreted as a falsification of these triangulation theorems. That might mean that space time is curved different than derived from Einstein General Theory of Relativity. The General Theory is much les sacral than the Special Theory and much less, more indirectly verified. It is not fully compatible with Quantum Mechanics, another milestone of Physics. Maybe GT fails with particles traveling through dense matter because there are some unknown gravitational effects. After all I don't know of experiments verifying the space time triangulation theorems in curved space time that involve massy particles travelling through dense matter.
Author:  hyperpape [ Mon Sep 26, 2011 4:51 am ]
Post subject:  Re: speed of light
http://xkcd.com/955/
Author:  gaius [ Mon Sep 26, 2011 6:53 am ]
Post subject:  Re: speed of light
For the Dutch:
http://foksuk.nl/nl?cm=79&ctime=1316728800&cid=5684
and
http://foksuk.nl/nl?cm=79&ctime=1316815200
Author:  Joaz Banbeck [ Mon Sep 26, 2011 8:08 am ]
Post subject:  Re: speed of light
Here's my theory: if those physicists played go, they would be bad at counting.
Author:  Redbeard [ Mon Sep 26, 2011 11:39 am ]
Post subject:  Re: speed of light
It looks like Fermilab is picking up the gauntlet and will re-run the experiments this year.
Author:  BobC [ Mon Sep 26, 2011 11:55 am ]
Post subject:  Re: speed of light
Having spent a good part of my life as a physicist, I looked at these experiments with care and a critical eye. I was in awe of the possibilities that this discovery could unfold...and then I saw that the measurements were made by Italians... when has an Italian done anything other than exaggerate how fast his car or sub-atomic particles goes... :shock:
Author:  TMark [ Mon Sep 26, 2011 2:09 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: speed of light
"We don't serve faster than light particles in here" said the bartender.
A neutrino walks into a bar.

Best wishes.
Author:  Javaness2 [ Mon Sep 26, 2011 3:23 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: speed of light
It's a very interesting result. I wondered initially if Mach's principle was relevant to the science

cyclops wrote:
I thought we are smart guys and girls. Then why didn't we solve the neutrino problem yet? :scratch: It is detected to have surpassed the absolute speed limit. :shock: This should be impossible according to Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity.

Here is my naive theory. :study: I think that in this speed experiment there are at least 3 events. The departure, the arrival and one synchronisation event. We can consider the experiment as a verification of the triangulation laws in space time. The impossible speed can also be interpreted as a falsification of these triangulation theorems. That might mean that space time is curved different than derived from Einstein General Theory of Relativity. The General Theory is much les sacral than the Special Theory and much less, more indirectly verified. It is not fully compatible with Quantum Mechanics, another milestone of Physics. Maybe GT fails with particles traveling through dense matter because there are some unknown gravitational effects. After all I don't know of experiments verifying the space time triangulation theorems in curved space time that involve massy particles travelling through dense matter.
Author:  CSamurai [ Mon Sep 26, 2011 4:30 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: speed of light
hyperpape wrote:
http://xkcd.com/955/


So, 200 dollars says this may be an inaccurate result...
Author:  EdLee [ Mon Sep 26, 2011 5:50 pm ]
Post subject: 
BobC wrote:
when has an Italian done anything other than exaggerate how fast his car or sub-atomic particles goes...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrico_Fermi
Author:  jts [ Mon Sep 26, 2011 6:07 pm ]
Post subject:  Re:
EdLee wrote:
BobC wrote:
when has an Italian done anything other than exaggerate how fast his car or sub-atomic particles goes...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrico_Fermi

I think you missed the joke here, Ed. You see, the wogs start at Calais, so Italians are really quite funny.
Author:  Suji [ Mon Sep 26, 2011 6:11 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: speed of light
IF confirmed, this is huge. One of the articles said something about an energy pulse out in front of the neutrinos activating the sensors before the particle ever got there. Also, the lab isn't claiming they discovered anything yet, they've asked Fermilab and a lab in Tokyo if they would confirm the results.

In 2007, though, Fermilab apparently saw hints of neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light, but the margin of error kind of killed the whole idea.

I personally think that the experiment is correct. Einstein was a genius, but not even he could have predicted this.
Author:  daniel_the_smith [ Mon Sep 26, 2011 6:29 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: speed of light
I think the discrepancy almost certainly is not caused by the neutrinos going faster than light, definitely not by a percentage. There was a supernova observed a few years ago. If neutrinos go faster than light by the percent claimed, they would have arrived ~4 years before the light. Instead, they arrived 3 hours before the light, which is the amount of time it was expected for the light to take to get through the outer layers of the star. The new scientist article goes into more detail.
Author:  jts [ Mon Sep 26, 2011 6:51 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: speed of light
daniel_the_smith wrote:
If neutrinos go faster than light by the percent claimed, they would have arrived ~4 years before the light. Instead, they arrived 3 hours before the light, which is the amount of time it was expected for the light to take to get through the outer layers of the star. The new scientist article goes into more detail.


I don't think anyone is claiming that all neutrinos travel faster than light, though... the most that this experiment could possibly show is that some do.

CSamurai wrote:
hyperpape wrote:
http://xkcd.com/955/


So, 200 dollars says this may be an inaccurate result...


What, are you expecting OPERA to retract? Or just that Fermilab and JParc won't be able to replicate the experiment?
Author:  CSamurai [ Mon Sep 26, 2011 6:59 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: speed of light
jts wrote:
daniel_the_smith wrote:
If neutrinos go faster than light by the percent claimed, they would have arrived ~4 years before the light. Instead, they arrived 3 hours before the light, which is the amount of time it was expected for the light to take to get through the outer layers of the star. The new scientist article goes into more detail.


I don't think anyone is claiming that all neutrinos travel faster than light, though... the most that this experiment could possibly show is that some do.

CSamurai wrote:
hyperpape wrote:
http://xkcd.com/955/


So, 200 dollars says this may be an inaccurate result...


What, are you expecting OPERA to retract? Or just that Fermilab and JParc won't be able to replicate the experiment?



I'm expecting this to be an explanable result which does not obviate all of physics. What that explanation is, I do not know. I lack [edit] the hard science background [/edit] to truly analyze the study. But I feel pretty confident that the science behind my stuff will not fail to work tomorrow. :)
Author:  Redundant [ Mon Sep 26, 2011 7:06 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: speed of light
daniel_the_smith wrote:
I think the discrepancy almost certainly is not caused by the neutrinos going faster than light, definitely not by a percentage. There was a supernova observed a few years ago. If neutrinos go faster than light by the percent claimed, they would have arrived ~4 years before the light. Instead, they arrived 3 hours before the light, which is the amount of time it was expected for the light to take to get through the outer layers of the star. The new scientist article goes into more detail.


IIRC the neutrinos in the CERN experiment are orders of magnitude more energetic, so the comparison is not entirely convincing.
Author:  aconley [ Mon Sep 26, 2011 7:10 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: speed of light
I (and most other physicists) think it's extremely unlikely this result is correct. I would estimate that you could probably get 100 to 1 odds in most physics departments that this won't hold up. But it's the kind of result that is potentially so important it needs to be checked by somebody else with a different experimental setup. The odds-on likely explanation is that OPERA doesn't understand something about their own experimental setup or some gory detail of GPS. In fact, I bet that very few of the people on OPERA believe this result themselves.

The argument from the SN1987A neutrinos is a very strong one, but there are some ways around it. The obvious one is that the SN neutrinos were very much lower energy than the OPERA ones, so it could be an energy dependent effect.

It's important to point out that OPERA are behaving very responsibly here,
and doing -exactly- what you are supposed to do with a result like this. You try to figure out what is going on, and if you can't find anything wrong, you publish a paper so that others can look over your analysis and try to replicate it. Note they waited to put out the press release until they had a paper available, rather than doing 'science by press-release' like, say, the cold-fusion cranks.

Even if it does turn out their result is wrong, they aren't likely to retract the paper. At least in high-energy physics, retracting a paper is more a sign of either fraud or a really boneheaded mistake, both of which are incredibly unlikely here. It's probably a much more subtle, interesting mistake, and so hence worth preserving in the literature.

MINOS (the Fermilab experiment) is already rushing to check this.
Unfortunately, we will have to wait a while for T2K to check this (the neutrino experiment in Japan, which is in Tokai, not Tokyo) because they were damaged by the earthquake and aren't back online yet.
Author:  Fedya [ Mon Sep 26, 2011 7:42 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: speed of light
We all know the speed of light is c.

We just don't know the value of c. :D
Author:  cyclops [ Tue Sep 27, 2011 4:41 am ]
Post subject:  Re: speed of light
@Bobc & Edlee: Probably it makes a difference whether the Italian scientist is educated before or under the present Italian minister of Education. In the link you find her claiming that Italians built a 700 km neutrino tunnel.

@Daniel: Maybe in vacuum the neutrino's cannot travel faster than c. But maybe in matter they arrive earlier than expected, maybe because they travel faster, maybe because spacetime is affected in a yet unknow way. The results you mentioned don't exclude this possibility.

@aconley: In a previous MINOS experiment ( USA ) they detected the same phenomenon but the accuracy was less so they didn't consider it significant. Here v exceeded c by 1.8 standard deviation. To me this is still a respectable result that makes the Opera result much more believable. edit: Well, I admit I expressed myself a bit too strongly here.
Author:  aconley [ Tue Sep 27, 2011 6:40 am ]
Post subject:  Re: speed of light
1.8 sigma is not considered evidence for anything in physics -- especially an a posteri 1.8 sigma! If you test 100 things in your experiment, looking for something odd, then you will probably find at least one 3 sigma result that isn't real. MINOS was checking all sorts of things, and found one 1.8 sigma discrepancy, which is hardly surprising. So no scientist would regard the MINOS result as significant in any way. The usual standard for a posteri significance is more like 5 sigma -- which OPERA satisfies. That's why you probably never heard about the MINOS result until now.
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