News Speed of light broken?

[orb]

Universe Today: Astronomy Without A Telescope – FTL Neutrinos (Or Not)

 

[N_Molson]

Yep, as they say in the article, a neutrino target on the Moon surface would be a good idea. Would it be possible to fire neutrinos to a satellite orbiting the Moon ? Seems it would require an insane accuracy. :hmm:

 

[RisingFury]

It would have been a different story if the neutrinos had been clocked at 1.5% or 2% light speed, but this is more like 1.0025% light speed.

:facepalm::facepalm::facepalm:
God damn it, people...

 

[Cras]

:facepalm::facepalm::facepalm:
God damn it, people...

Why so upset? :shrug:

 

[T.Neo]

Why so upset? :shrug:

At 1.5-2% c, those sure seem to be some... slow neutrinos... :shifty:

 

[Urwumpe]

Why so upset? :shrug:

Well, if a Ferrari is caught overspeeding with 70 km/h, it doesn't really matter much. You would rather get curious if it is caught at 0.5 Mach.

 

[Turbinator]

 

[Cras]

Well, if a Ferrari is caught overspeeding with 70 km/h, it doesn't really matter much. You would rather get curious if it is caught at 0.5 Mach.

If the neutrinos were measured at 2C, well outside the margin of error, then horray, we have conclusive evidence. But we have instead a little margin over C, which some claim to still lay outside the margin of error, albeit by just a bit, and others who say otherwise.

Still, it is going to be an interesting time to see what exactly this result is from CERN, and what it means if proved true.

 

[MaverickSawyer]

:rofl::rofl::rofl:
LOVE IT!

 

[Linguofreak]

Why so upset? :shrug:

Because the neutrinos were clocked at 100.0025% lightspeed, (or 1.000025 c). The article makes it sound like they were clocked going 99% of lightspeed slower than that (1.0025% c).

 

[Cairan]

Thinking of neutrino oscillations, would it be just plain possible that some flavours are slower than light, and other faster than light, which averages to the normal speed of light in regards of galactic scales (ie. why wasn't there a neutrino flash much more earlier in the case of SN1987A), but under close proximity of the labs, by some stroke of luck, they were just at the right distance to measure neutrinos just after they had switched flavour from a slightly FTL flavour to a slightly STL one...

One of the problems with neutrinos has always been the difficulty of detecting them and this experiment makes me wonder if this hypothetic FTL state might be the culprit... ie. while a neutrino is at a FTL state (or flavour) it -cannot- be observed and does not interact with normal matter in spacetime.

Imagine you are driving a car... The speed limit is of 100 km/h. You oscillate between 99 km/h and 101 km/h, which averages out to precisely 100 km/h. A traffic copter is clocking cars on the highway and have an absolute zero-tolerance policy, they start clocking your car right before you go over 100 km/h and again, lucky for them, clocking you a few hundred meters down the road right after you go back down below 100 km/h. The average speed on your GPS and cruise control is 100 km/h, but they insist when you get pulled over that you were clocked at 100.0025 km/h.

IF, and that's A BIG BIG BIG IF, the experiment holds true, my feeling is that the explanation for the lack of long-distance FTL travel of neutrinos lies in some form along those lines.

No, I will not research this, am not competent enough in particle physics to do so, and will not claim a Nobel if this turns out to be the case! :tiphat:

 

[Urwumpe]

If the neutrinos were measured at 2C, well outside the margin of error, then horray, we have conclusive evidence. But we have instead a little margin over C, which some claim to still lay outside the margin of error, albeit by just a bit, and others who say otherwise.

They had been already at the margin of error in previous experiments and are currently slightly outside the known margin of error. There is a reason why they call for people to investigate their experiment set-up first, and then look at the neutrinos. As long as there is no reference beam, there can be lots of errors. Even unknown ones.

Also, your cops already have conclusive evidence that you had been over-speeding, when you are just slightly above the reference margin of errors as defined for ancient radar gear. There is no "You have to be twice as fast" to save you.

Still, if you look at the experiment set-up, even a small bit of ionosphere activity could increase the GPS pseudo-length from satellite to the CERN enough compared to the southern station, to give you a time error that could explain the findings. The question is had they been able to minimize the ionosphere impact and will other experiments have similar results with different ionosphere activity for example.

And Cairan: Even a Planck second at more than light-speed would be revolutionary anyway.

 

[RisingFury]

And Cairan: Even a Planck second at more than light-speed would be revolutionary anyway.

If we say for certain that it is FTL. Currently we can't do that.

 

[Cras]

They had been already at the margin of error in previous experiments and are currently slightly outside the known margin of error. There is a reason why they call for people to investigate their experiment set-up first, and then look at the neutrinos. As long as there is no reference beam, there can be lots of errors. Even unknown ones.

Also, your cops already have conclusive evidence that you had been over-speeding, when you are just slightly above the reference margin of errors as defined for ancient radar gear. There is no "You have to be twice as fast" to save you.

I understand all that. My point wasn't really having the neutrino needing to break the speed limit a time over for its own sake. I was just saying that had it been clocked going that much faster than light, it would just make things easier for us in terms of figuring out if the measurment is accurate or not. I know this is not the first time a neutrino has been clocked at faster than light speed.

My point was more based on a reactionary standpoint rather than the actual science of it all.

 

[Urwumpe]

Well, I think the important thing for me is: Relativity currently means that ANY event can't be faster than the vacuum speed of light. What if we find out that there are ways to exceed the speed of light for a short distance? Can this distance be increased, or multiple such distances traveled in a rapid series of FTL micro-jumps?

 

[PennyBlack]

I truely believe in faster than light stuff.

 

[Urwumpe]

I truely believe in faster than light stuff.

I truly

 

[jedidia]

These measurement methods strike me as a bit odd, being the layman that I am. Should it not be more precise to have synchronized atomic clocks at the release point and at the ending point and then just time the experiment, instead of signaling the release time through a gps system to tell the receiving end that the neutrinos are now underway? Or can the release not be timed exactly for some reason?

 

[Artlav]

Should it not be more precise to have synchronized atomic clocks at the release point and at the ending point and then just time the experiment

As far as i understood, that's exactly what they did, and GPS was used for determining the distance between the sites.
The clocks were re-synchronized with one in the middle, the distance was re-checked by a commercial construction company, and still everything checks out.

I truely believe in faster than light stuff.

I find it more likely that somewhere among the million technologies and theories that underlie this experiment there is one thing that we understood poorly.

Think how much stuff is in it - from satellites and space between them an earth, to nuclear physics and particle detection, to signal processing and programming - pretty much every bit of knowledge we have combined into this one result.

Anything can be wrong.

 

[RisingFury]

I truely believe in faster than light stuff.

A lot of people truly believe they can walk on water. Doesn't make it true.