Faster than the speed of light?

[Aliantha]

Well Einstein said it couldn't happen, but apparently maybe it can!

The bartender says, “We don’t serve your kind in here”

A faster-than-light neutrino walks into a bar …

The media is champing at the bit to proclaim a discovery of faster-than-light travel by a subatomic particle, with some going as far as claiming “Einstein was wrong: relativity theory busted”.

The scientists responsible for the experiment and analysis let slip they have some preliminary data that suggests the particles travelled faster than light, but they seem to be the only ones not jumping to conclusions just yet.

More here

[ZenGum]

I saw that on the weekend but my internet was clogged again, so I couldn't post it.

We've known for over a decade that information can travel faster than llight (indeed, instantly) in situatoins of quantum entanglement.

This is the first time I've heard of particles with mass going faster than light.

As it is, C = 300,000 km/second, and these pesky neurinos were doing 300,006 km/s. You'd be pissed if a cop gave you a ticket for that.

[classicman]

Measurements of arrival times of photons and neutrinos from supernova SN1987a in 1987 provided a much better agreement with the speed of light, but those neutrinos were of a much lower energy. The possibility remains that velocity depends on energy.

Somewhat less rigid explanations include neutrinos taking “shortcuts” through extra dimensions. Undoubtedly, many more possible explanations will arise if all conventional sources of error are excluded.

The much more likely scenario is that the analysis has overlooked some seemingly insignificant but critical aspect, and that re-analysis will led to a very good agreement with the speed of light.

Fascinating nonetheless

[Aliantha]

well, before anyone gets too excited, I guess they'll have to set up a deliberate experiment to prove the theory and then be able to reproduce it at will before it can be considered a fact.

6 k's is 6 k's. Remember, every K over is a killer.

[ZenGum]

Details of the experiment fro New Scientist:


http://www.newscientist.com/article/...bolstered.html

Representatives from the OPERA collaboration spoke in a seminar at CERN today, supporting their astonishing claim that neutrinos can travel faster than the speed of light.

The result is conceptually simple: neutrinos travelling from a particle accelerator at CERN in Switzerland arrived 60 nanoseconds too early at a detector in the Gran Sasso cavern in Italy. And it relies on three conceptually simple measurements, explained Dario Autiero of the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Lyon: the distance between the labs, the time the neutrinos left Switzerland, and the time they arrived in Italy.

But actually measuring those times and distances to the accuracy needed to detect differences of billionths of a second (1 nanosecond = 1 billionth of a second) is no easy task.

Details, details
"These are experiments where the devil is in the details – the details of how each piece of equipment works, and how it all goes together," said Rob Plunkett of Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois.

The detector in the Gran Sasso cavern is located 1400 metres underground. At that depth Earth's crust shields OPERA (which stands for Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus) from noise-inducing cosmic rays, but also obscures its exact latitude and longitude. To pinpoint its position precisely, the researchers stopped traffic in one lane of a 10-kilometre long highway tunnel for a week to place GPS receivers on either side.

The GPS measurements, which were so accurate they could detect the crawling drift of the planet's tectonic plates, gave precise benchmarks for each side of the tunnel, allowing the researchers to triangulate the underground detector's position in the planet. Combining that with the known position of the neutrino source at CERN gave a distance of 730,534.61 metres, plus or minus 20 centimetres.

To determine exactly when the neutrinos left CERN and arrived at Gran Sasso, the team hooked both detectors to caesium clocks, which can measure time to an accuracy of one second in about 30 million years. That linked the labs' timekeepers to within one nanosecond.

"These kinds of techniques that we have been using are maybe unusual in high energy physics, but they are quite standard in metrology," Autiero said. Just to be sure, the collaboration had two independent metrology teams from Switzerland and Germany check their work. It all checked out.

The researchers also accounted for an odd feature of general relativity in which clocks at different heights keep different times.

Further discussion of what it might mean here: http://www.newscientist.com/article/...ght-speed.html

[DanaC]

Brian Cox was fascinating about this. One of the theories is that maybe the particle didn't travel faster than the speed of light, but rather took a short cut through another dimension.

[Happy Monkey]

. xkcd

.

[ZenGum]

Originally Posted by DanaC

Brian Cox was fascinating about this. One of the theories is that maybe the particle didn't travel faster than the speed of light, but rather took a short cut through another dimension.

I suspect XKCD is right, but I hope it is something like this.

This sort of shifting from our three spatial dimensions, into other mutually perpendicular dimensions, and then back into spatial dimensions in a different location, is the only way I can think of that interstellar travel would be viable on biological timescales.

Oh and apologies on the poor typing in my previous post, especially "neurinos".

[DanaC]

Here's Cox talking about it :

[footfootfoot]

The bartender says, “We don’t serve your kind in here”

A faster-than-light neutrino walks into a bar …

A funny joke, but shouldn't it be

The faster than light neutrino bartender says, "we don't serve your kind here."

A bum walks into a bar?

/joke nazi

[Sundae]

Originally Posted by DanaC

One of the theories is that maybe the particle didn't travel faster than the speed of light, but rather took a short cut through another dimension.

I wonder if it was the parallel universe where I get to ride him every night until he cries?

[DanaC]

Yeah. That one.

[Clodfobble]

I've seen him in interviews--he is rather cheeky and adorable for a hard science nerd, isn't he? I keep thinking surely he must be gay. Or else a front man, hired by the ugly science people for the good PR.

[DanaC]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

I've seen him in interviews--he is rather cheeky and adorable for a hard science nerd, isn't he? I keep thinking surely he must be gay. Or else a front man, hired by the ugly science people for the good PR.

In fairness he did have the decency to have a career as a rockstar first...

[Lamplighter]

He's much too polite to say it, but everyone knows that when Mussolini made the trains run on time, he did it by making the clocks run slower.