Faster than light?

[Jak Nazryth]

Interesting if true... ok, maybe a bit more than interesting if true...
Particles faster than light?
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-20110236.html

 

[barnest2]

The wonderful world of neutrino's.
Good-bye Einsteinian physics (perhaps)

 

[phavoc]

Makes you wonder how much schnapps those physicists put away before they run their tests...



Too bad the US gave up its leadership in physics when we abandoned our own super-particle accerlator. Though, now that I think about it, I'm wondering if its massive government cover-up for our first early somewhat-deep meson gun sites?

 

[Chumbly]

I would like to get an early jump on the crowd, so I am placing an order for that warp 9 personal star ship now, the aqua blue number with the leather seat option...yeah that one...

 

[zero]

They had to get rid of the particle accelerator because otherwise Earth would have been doomed, Series 4 of Lexx style! :lol:

 

[BP]

Uh - 'cbsnews' - no thanks, I'll wait till a reputable source of information is available :roll:

Bet CERN doesn't mention a thing on their web site. (Not even bothering to check.)

 

[SSWarlock]

How about the direct feed from AP News?
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_BREAKING_LIGHT_SPEED?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

EDIT: And here's a blog about the event from one of the scientists working at CERN. http://www.quantumdiaries.org/2011/09/22/almost-superluminal-physics-chatter/

 

[Prime_Evil]

Uh - 'cbsnews' - no thanks, I'll wait till a reputable source of information is available :roll:

Bet CERN doesn't mention a thing on their web site. (Not even bothering to check.)

The story is also carried by the BBC:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15017484

And by the ABC:

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/cern-claims-faster-light-particle-measured-14582841

You can also find it on Reuters:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/22/us-science-light-idUSTRE78L4FH20110922

The experiment was performed by the "Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus" (OPERA), which "was developed to study the phenomenon of neutrino transmutation (neutrinos changing from one type to another. The speed of the neutrinos, of course, was an entirely unexpected observation."

Their official OPERA website is here:

http://operaweb.lngs.infn.it/

It looks like they have repeated measurements of the speed of the neutrinos 15,000 times to rule out observational error as much as possible - they now want independent validation of the discovery by a third party.

If the discovery is confirmed, it won't overturn Special Relativity - there is plenty of observational evidence that Einstein's theory is correct. However, it will add to the general consensus that relativity is incomplete...especially when applied to the realm of subatomic particles. We already know that relativity doesn't play nice with quantum physics and have been looking for a way to harmonise the two theories for a couple of decades.

In any case, there is a lot of work that needs to be done before this discovery can be confirmed. And the researchers are being very cautious in their public statements on the subject - which is entirely appropriate.

This isn't the first time in recent years that neutrinos have given us a few surprises though - they are fascinating particles.

 

[Prime_Evil]

Here's a slightly more technical discussion about these claims from http://motls.blogspot.com/2011/09/italian-out-of-tune-superluminal.html:

They measured how much time it takes for the tau neutrinos to cause a reaction in Gran Sasso in central Italy. The (currently) tau neutrino ντ came together with a mostly muon-neutrino beam originally created by decays of pions π and kaons K into muons μ and muon neutrinos νμ at CERN, more precisely in SpS which is a pre-accelerator of the LHC.

They tried to be careful about the timing, measured the delay, calculated the speed. And their resulting speed of the neutrinos is

v=c+6σ.

It is greater than the speed of light – by an excess of speed that is six times larger than their total error margin. If this claim were true, the probability that this excess happens by chance is lower than one part in half a billion.

However, it is important to sound a note of caution:

Supernova observations are the most reliable source to tell us that neutrinos are moving slower than the speed of light – because their mass is actually positive. For high energy neutrinos, the deviation of the speed from the speed of light is smaller and the neutrinos arrive simultaneously with the light produced during the supernova explosion. But high-energy neutrinos that are faster than light seem to be incompatible with some observations of supernovae.

It is also worth noting that we should observe some causality violations if superluminal particles are being produced:

More importantly, superluminal neutrinos – or any other particles – contradict special relativity. If you could shoot superluminal neutrinos, they would move along spacelike paths in the spacetime and the Lorentz symmetry would allow you to boost the SpS a little bit so that the neutrinos would be moving backwards in time (there is no qualitative difference between spacelike paths going to the future and those going to the past). By boosting the SpS accelerator, you could create neutrinos that would move backwards in time...

And finally:

There are various reasons why I think that the claim will go away. They will review the accuracy with which they may determine the timing and the signal will no longer be six sigma (but I can't even tell you whether the wrong timing affects the decays at CERN or the detection in Gran Sasso). Superluminal particles are the ultimate extraordinary claim, it seems to contradict many other observations that have eliminated such a possibility, so some truly extraordinary evidence is surely necessary.

Statistically speaking, six standard deviations is a strong signal but it is still "of order one". For such a new experiment that is measuring something totally unusual, you must always wonder why the signal is just 6 times larger than their error margin. Why are they comparable? Why isn't the accuracy 50 times better than needed? Times that may be measured by clocks in Italy span many possible orders of magnitude. From this viewpoint, "6 sigma" is still too close to "1 sigma" and the big claim is likely to be due to an underestimate of some systematic errors.

 

[BP]

Thanks for the real sources guys! 8)

That means sans ABC and Reuters and CBS - if you don't know what I mean, compare headlines and the tone of the articles (I didn't bother with CBS, but I'd be betting they had some dramatic headline stating things as facts instead of possibilities - oh the drama!). Compare the slant in which the 'news' was reported between the BBC and the other popular 'news' corporations.

All the serious ones said exactly what most would expect... likely experimental error. FERMI ran into the same thing some time back (as mentioned in the better sources). 10 nanoseconds is quite questionable. Why? Because it is way too pat. Think about it - a nice even 10, not 11, not 13... when was the last time that happened? (Sure, there's a 10% chance, but that ain't good odds in my book).

Don't get me wrong - I actually hope it is true! But, what makes it even more unlikely to pan out is that it showed up on 'news' sites so quickly (and without notable mention on the official sites). That speaks to the credibility of the 'facts' because it indicates ego was someone's priority above verifiable confirmation.

Well, at least Science is getting some press... though I'm sure, even if it doesn't pan out, there will still be folks quoting how neutrinos go FTL for decades to come... :roll:

 

[rust]

In the end what the team at CERN published was not "we have
found that neutrinos move faster than light", it was "please ta-
ke a look at our data and help us find out where we made the
mistake that led to these bizarre results".

That the usual suspects among the media used this opportunity
for yet another "Einstein was wrong" article was to be expected,
to prove that Einstein (and a few thousand physicists after him)
got it wrong is almost a Holy Grail of the science editors of the
"yellow" media.

 

[Prime_Evil]

It is most likely the result of experimental error, but there is always the (very) small chance that they have observed a new phenomenon. Based upon what I have read, it sounds like the CERN scientists have tried very hard to eliminate the possibility of errors in their methodology and have repeated the measurement many times to check the results. So far, they have been unable to definitively locate the cause of the bizarre results and are now asking outsiders to review their experimental methods.

It bears repeating that even if CERN has discovered something entirely new, it certainly doesn't invalidate Special Relativity at macroscopic scales. It's very interesting though.

 

[BFalcon]

In the end what the team at CERN published was not "we have
found that neutrinos move faster than light", it was "please ta-
ke a look at our data and help us find out where we made the
mistake that led to these bizarre results".

That the usual suspects among the media used this opportunity
for yet another "Einstein was wrong" article was to be expected,
to prove that Einstein (and a few thousand physicists after him)
got it wrong is almost a Holy Grail of the science editors of the
"yellow" media.

Actually, I read it more as good scientific practice - "we've observed this phenomenon and we need independant confirmation." No more, no less. They believe their timing errors are within the margins of their experiment so, if true, could well be significant.

And is it so unbelievable that a scientist (an ex patent clerk, no less), that was operating prior to most of the scientific tools we use today, might actually have gotten things wrong? "Experts" in their own era predicted that we'd never be able to breath going at 60mph on a train, that we'd never break the sound barrier... that the earth was flat, come to that... or that the planets and sun had weird orbits around the Earth...

The thing that a LOT of people forget with science is that it is all theories trying to explain observed behaviour... and theories, as anyone who's tried to work out problems will know, need to be revised regularly as new evidence comes to light...

I really dispair of the "Eisenstein can't be wrong" crowd as much as I do the "we want to show him up at any cost" crowd... part of being a scientist is keeping an open mind...

 

[rust]

And is it so unbelievable that a scientist (an ex patent clerk, no less), that was operating prior to most of the scientific tools we use today, might actually have gotten things wrong?

Not at all, but in the end it is completely unimportant whether
Einstein got it wrong or right, the entire fixation on Einstein is
ridiculous in the extreme. What science is about is to find out
the truth, not which historical personality was right or not.

That said, our current standard model is not only based upon
the work of some 20th century patent clerk (although the ma-
jority of the media seems to believe that), it is the result of the
work of thousands of scientists with the most advanced equip-
ment and methods of their time.

The standard model may well be wrong, it most probably is at
least not complete (see relativity and quantum theory or the
debate about the nature of gravity), but it is "hard" enough to
make a discovery like superluminal neutrinos very unlikely -
this would mean that lots of scientists made serious mistakes
when evaluating the data of the thousands of experiments that
demonstrated that mass and superluminal movement do not go
together well.

 

[BFalcon]

Sorry Rust, didn't mean for it to sound like I was venting at you - I've just had to deal with people who, I think, worship Eisenstein's name...

Yes, it could be significant, if true... I think the trouble is, if light isn't the fastest medium in the galaxy, it could lead to some interesting problems for measuring FTL phenomena... to the point where it could explain some of the observations. Maybe, for example, neutrons are slowed more than light over longer distances, possibly by gravitational influences, leading to the majority of neutrons we've observed being slower than they are closer to their origins? Maybe only certain high-powered sources can propel them FTL... who knows?

All I do know is that science is dealing with a very small data sample and hasn't been doing it very long (a few hundred years) - I suspect that they have a very long way to go before knowing everything for certain about the physics of the universe... what would REALLY screw them up is if it turns out that the physics in our neighbourhood isn't actually consistant with the rest of it... if that happened, I think we'd need to start injecting our physicists with mind-altering substances (although I'm pretty sure the Quantum guys have already jumped the gun on that one).

 

[asciitraveller]

(although I'm pretty sure the Quantum guys have already jumped the gun on that one)

No, i think that would be the 13 dimensional string guys.

Faster than light travel would falsify either relativity or
causality. So let's say we loose relativity - because i really
like my causality. The interesting question in that case
would be: Whats the one and only right frame of reference?

Will we find Zaphod Beeblebrox at (0,0,0) ?

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

We may find that Relativity supercedes Newtonian Mechanics and in turn is superceded by something else.

In Fluid Dynamics, there are great equations for subsonic flow and supersonic flow, but both sets of equations tend towards infinity at the speed of sound. OBVIOUSLY, that isn't right, since it does not take infinite energy to pass the speed of sound.

We may find the Einstein's work is similar. Perfectly valid as sub-light speeds but "missing something" once you get very close to the speed of light (say 95% or above). Some factor that is negligible or hidden within experimental error values at low speeds, but grows to be a significant factor near light speed. That would allow FTL travel IN SOME SPECIAL CONDITIONS. That would not "throw out" Relativity, it would EXPAND it.

However, if you read through the article, you will find that the difference is something like 60 nanoseconds. And there method used to track the neutrinos has some error between when the neutrino formed and when it was first detected. Even the CERN scientist admit that there could be enough error there to account for the difference; they just haven't been able to find it yet.

As much as I would love to have this be the first discovery of FTL, it is much more likely that it is experimental error that hasn't been tracked down yet. Like Cold Fusion.

 

[phavoc]

Personally I'm leaning towards something that is probably more along the lines of "we've discovered something new that adds to our understanding of Einsteinien physics. One thing that's really annoyed me about science is that there is such a shock when people are - GASP - wrong about their omniscience!

Chandra postulated the existence of black holes waaay before they were discovered. Greeks (I think) came up with the concept of atoms before science could prove they existed. Now atomic structure has devolved at least, what, twice with leptons, muons, etc? We've seen the same thing within the last 10yrs when astonomers first estimated the mass of the universe, then they invented dark matter to account for the variance, now they are saying its hydrogen between the stars (which is supposed to be quite sparse).

IF the CERN researchers turn out to be correct, then all we've done is once again prove that we don't know everything... AND that the models we create may be accurate for some things, but as we add knowledge and engineering to it, we discover even more things underlying the theory.

Einstein was a brilliant physicist, but he wasn't infallible.

 

[BFalcon]

phavoc: agreed - as I said earlier, science is theories to explain the currently known phenomena... if you see something new, you need to go back and investigate further.

 

[Joebeast]

I wonder what Sheldon has to say?