Update: October 17 00:00 UTC: whether this supposed explanation out of at least 80+ different papers attempting to debunk the neutrino FTL results has a shred of truth will take a while for the physics community to sort out. Regardless, the point of this post was to show that the frontier science journalism/communication falls victim to “viral theories” that have not been adequately tested. In this day and age, anyone with access to a computer and the internet can engage a global audience with their cockamamie ideas on physics or perhaps climate change or medicine. The moral of the story is that with any new discovery which may challenge conventional wisdom is to be patient and keep an open mind. — Ryan Maue.
Not so fast little neutrinos. Turns out that the discovery of superluminal or faster-than-light (FTL) neutrinos at CERN has been “explained”. Before reading the explanation, here’s a tidbit of information that would have probably tipped off a lot of skeptics from the start: to measure the “speed” of the neutrinos from point A to point B, the scientists used our constellation of GPS satellites in earth orbit. Turns out Einstein’s theory of relativity comes in handy to explain those missing 60 nanoseconds over 730 km distance…
I won’t spoil the explanation any further: from an open source Physics journal: Faster-than-Light Neutrino Puzzle Claimed Solved by Special Relativity
— somehow I’m betting the real explanation is still out there…
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— somehow I’m betting the real explanation is still out there…
Here is another explanation out from there…
Sequel 1
The Truth About The Creation Or The Big Bang Theory Commonly Explained
For detailed explanation click on: http://www.visutech.net/peace365/index.asp?pageID=86
Autodynamics, anyone? The commentary at that site is getting bloody …
The article says “the radio waves carrying the time signal must travel at the speed of light”, but is this true, satalites using radio waves I mean?
Oh crap. There goes my Alpha Centauri dream vacation!
I wonder if I can get my deposit back?
Why are they using GPS? The clocks for this experiment are so key to what you find, why not have your own? In fact, why not simply synchronize a laser along with your neutrinos?
/the answer is probably funding.
If a superluminal neutrino was a car and it turned it’s headlights on would anything happen?
Y’know, if this is the right explanation, it’s major egg on lots of faces at CERN. But top scientists never goof up that big. Right? 😉
Only one science is settled?
Love your opening line.
It’s an interesting post but this will bring the Einstein cranks and conspiracy theorists out of the woodwork as usual.
Amazing the number of bloated egos out there who reckon that if they can’t/won’t understand something, thereby conclude that that something must be wrong and that the people who do understand it must be stupid.
Ahhhhh Einstein. Never fails to impress, even now. Kinda like a good wine.
Don’t GPS location systems already compensate for relativistic effects? The GPS system functions by very precisely finding the local time, and using that to compare the travel time of the GPS signals in order to find the position. I thought that compensating for relativistic effects was necessary in order for the system to function… although it has been years since I reviewed the algorithms.
Greg Cavanagh says:
October 15, 2011 at 5:32 pm
The article says “the radio waves carrying the time signal must travel at the speed of light”, but is this true, satalites using radio waves I mean?
Radio waves only travel at the speed of light in a vacuum. In the atmosphere, they are slower. How much depends on the water content. Now, the change is very small, but for very precise measurements, you need to take the speed difference into account.For example, military GPS units correct for it.
Forgetting to consider change in the frame of reference when inter-calibrating clocks would be a huge and moronic mistake, enough to fire a guy holding a research position.
The explanation seems perfect.
I wonder – were all the other objects being observed in the test slightly slower than expected?
Very interesting. I, like many of my nerdy friends, got really excited over this, thinking, “Trekkers are not believing in vain!” Ah, but we’re wrong. But you know what, it doesn’t matter, because the discovery that we may be wrong helps us improve. So, we are improving our ways of debunking Einstein’s Relativity. 🙂 Thank you for sharing this.
This is a possible explanation, not necessarily the correct one. Thet can test this relatively easily by timing a high powered laser across to GPS connected points. If this shows that light is faster than light, all well and good, if not, then this hypothesis is incorrect.
That is the way is should go, testable hypothesis, test hypothesis to destruction.
The thing is they had synchronized atomic clocks, that were used to take the actual measurements, and atomic clocks do not break sync. Once the clocks were synchronized, which would have factored in the effects of relativity because the satellites and the locator equipment take those effects into account which is how they can be accurate to 20cm on the distance.
Filipe says:
October 15, 2011 at 6:37 pm
Forgetting to consider change in the frame of reference when inter-calibrating clocks would be a huge and moronic mistake, enough to fire a guy holding a research position.
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I hope not, he’d be writing cli-sci the next day.
Re; radio waves and their speed. I didn’t realise radio waves was in fact electromagnetic radiation, longer than infrared light. My bad.
The original article says “The result has sent a ripple of excitement through the physics community. Since then, more than 80 papers have appeared on the arXiv attempting to debunk or explain the effect.”. So this isn’t the only valid explanation. Reading through the comments on the linked page is a fascinating read in itself.
We are measuring the motion of an object through a earth sphere travelling around a sun at 107,300 km/h using multiple satellites orbiting (or geosynchronous?) around the earth, while the sun orbits around the galaxy at 220km/s, while the galaxy is moving 630km/s relative to what I don’t know.
This only explains it if E=MC² , but if the OPERA experiment is right then maybe E≈MC².
OPERA used two Septentrio PolaRx2e GPS receivers in common-view mode. Timing accuracy is ~2 nanoseconds. There is no way that reference frame time drift was overlooked, IMO.
http://www.septentrio.com/sup/sites/default/files/NR_OPERA_final.pdf
Darn, I was kinda hoping for barycentrism or teleconnection.
I wouldn’t think they’d be using GPS satellites for anything other than synchronizing their atomic clocks on the ground. Too many variables need too much adjustment (sorta like GISSTemp).
The satellites orbit up around 12,500 miles, which means the radio waves travel through mostly vacuum at one speed, but a varying amount of air retardation depending on the elevation above the horizon. Besides relativistic compensation, GPS also has adjustment for the Sagnac effect, the non-constant value of c in a rotating frame.
The speed of the waves also depend on frequency. GPS uses two, but I don’t know if neutrinos have a frequency, or if they did would it make a difference since matter is transparent to them.
They can sync ground-based atomic clocks very precisely, and get much more measurement accuracy than they could with GPS satellites. We’ll need more info on how they measured to settle this science.
The GPS thing was debunked before it was even mentioned. In fact, the consensus is that the author of that article has no clue what he’s talking about.
How about Occam’s razor here. There is a compelling argument that part of Einsteins special relativity theory (and a basic one), was overlooked. Seems most likely to me.