From Yahoo News:
CERN claims faster-than-light particle measured
GENEVA (AP) — Scientists at the world’s largest physics lab say they have clocked subatomic particles traveling faster than light, a feat that — if true — would break a fundamental pillar of science.
The readings have so astounded researchers that they are asking others to independently verify the measurements before claiming an actual discovery.
“This would be such a sensational discovery if it were true that one has to treat it extremely carefully,” said John Ellis, a theoretical physicist at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, who was not involved in the experiment.
Nothing is supposed to move faster than light, at least according to Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity: The famous E (equals) mc2 equation. That stands for energy equals mass times the speed of light squared.
But neutrinos — one of the strangest well-known particles in physics — have now been observed smashing past this cosmic speed barrier of 186,282 miles per second (299,792 kilometers).
Full story here: http://news.yahoo.com/cern-claims-faster-light-particle-measured-180644818.html
From the BBC:
Neutrinos sent through the ground from Cern toward the Gran Sasso laboratory 732km away seemed to show up a tiny fraction of a second early.
The result – which threatens to upend a century of physics – will be put online for scrutiny by other scientists.
In the meantime, the group says it is being very cautious about its claims.
“We tried to find all possible explanations for this,” said report author Antonio Ereditato of the Opera collaboration.
“We wanted to find a mistake – trivial mistakes, more complicated mistakes, or nasty effects – and we didn’t,” he told BBC News.
“When you don’t find anything, then you say ‘Well, now I’m forced to go out and ask the community to scrutinise this.’
Full story here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15017484
h/t’s to WUWT readers Peter Hodges and pearlandaggie
As information is not supposed to be transmissible beyond the speed of light, it may only be possible to detect super-luminary particles, tachyons, if you knew, in advance, when they were due to arrive.
I find it amazing that one may question probably the most fundamental constant in physics, and yet if one dare question any part of the dogma of cAGW (even a part, which, according to the Revealed Truth of the IPCC is poorly understood’) one is excoriated as ‘a fossil fuel industry shill, an evil denier of Science’, &c.
Jim Masterson says:
Once one has Maxwell’s Equations, the speed of electromagnetic waves in free space follows from them…and specifically from the values of epsilon_0 (“the (electrical) permitivity of free space”) and mu_0 (“the (magnetic) permeability of free space”). Of course, this admittedly then raises the question of what determines epsilon_0 and mu_0, so it is just moving the question up a level…But, it is important to recognize that the value for the speed of light in vacuum does follow from these equations and, specifically, the constants therein.
In fact, when Maxwell first completed the formulation of the equations that bear his name and realized that they led to wave-like solutions, he noticed that the derived speed of these waves was, within the uncertainty with which it was known, the same as the speed of light and he then conjectured that light was an electromagnetic wave.
Evil Denier says:
That is not really a correct characterization of what is objected to. It is okay to question such things but what is not particularly useful is when one questions them using the rather bogus or discredited arguments that one sees from people like Monckton, Postma, the Slayers, etc….and the more subtly problematic arguments / data analysis of people like Lindzen and Spencer.
My betting is that the folks at CERN are going to be shown to be wrong, but one has to respect that they have released a very detailed paper describing their methods and have been very careful to say that they know their result flies in the face of a lot of scientific knowledge and that it must be treated with caution, but that they have not as of yet been able to find anything wrong with the data and analysis despite quite exhaustive attempts to do so.
If they had simply issued a press release that bluntly said that they had proven Einstein wrong, I think you would be seeing a much less charitable reaction from the scientific community.
Jim Masterson says:
Hmmm…An interesting idea, but I have to say that I don’t see how one follows from the other. I’d need a bit more of an argument to see any such connection.
As I said, the fact that the conversion factor between mass and energy involves velocity-squared is a simple consequence of the units. I suppose one could ask why energy has the units that it does…e.g., why doesn’t kinetic energy itself depend on an object’s velocity-cubed, but trying to imagine a universe with such different dependences just makes my head hurt!
(Reminds me of a quote from one of my undergraduate math professors when we asked him his opinion of a talk that someone had given where he tried to re-derive most of mathematics using somewhat different starting axioms. He said, “Doing non-standard mathematics is like being in the Bahamas; it’s a nice place to visit, but none of your friends are there.” Okay, I am not sure how this is connected to the above either but I still chuckle at that line.)
Those darn minus signs. In my post above, the Lorentz transformations would be correct if you swapped the primed variables with the unprimed variables. In that case we’d get the inverse Lorentz transformations. Otherwise, if you add the missing minus signs, then we get the correct formulas:
x = (x’ – v*t’)/sqrt(1 – v²/c²)
y = y’
z = z’
t = (t’ – v*x’/c²)/sqrt(1 – v²/c²)
Jim
Thanks Guys
Also neutrinos are subjected to gravitation. Gravitation changes all the time to a certain extent. Therefore it implies that to a certain extent time measurement is subjected to uncertainty. Think about the Pioneer anomaly. CERN should be concerned about not being regarded as a concern selling tickets promising you an opera but all you get is an operette. ..
Just think about the possibilities if it’s proven right. But chances are slim.
RE: Tim Minchin: (September 23, 2011 at 5:38 pm)
“I’ve always wondered why the speed of light is the figure it is. Why not faster?”
Of course, the gravitational time dilation of General Relativity could make the speed of light appear to be faster or slower *somewhere else* depending on whether you were closer or farther from some huge massive object than the somewhere else. The standard formula for a non-rotating massive object is:
Td=Tf*sqrt(1-s/r)
This could be rewritten:
Tf*sqrt((r-s)/r)=Tf*sqrt(a/r) where
Td=dilated time.
Tf=time far away from any massive object.
s=the Schwarzschild radius of the massive object (event horizon if it were a black hole)
s=two times the gravitational constant, G, times the object mass divided by C squared.
r=center-to-center distance in Schwarzschild radii.
a=equivalent altitude above the Schwarzschild radius of the massive object in Schwarzschild radii.
Remote time dilation without an equivalent remote space dilation implies that the perceived *remote* speed of light would also be dilated. If we see their clocks ticking at a slower rate, then it must take a longer time for their local photons to go between two points of reference as measured by our clocks.
Note that the square root factor of the standard time dilation formula makes it appear that a photon approaching the event horizon of a black hole would run out of altitude more rapidly than it ‘dilated’ out of speed; thus it would reach zero altitude in a finite time.
“Nothing is supposed to move faster than light, at least according to Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity: The famous E (equals) mc2 equation. That stands for energy equals mass times the speed of light squared.”
I suppose that if something COULD go faster than light then the correct equation would be:
E = ms2
where ‘s’ is the actual speed rather than the speed of light.
What would be the implications of that ?
I notice that there is some doubt about the amount of mass contained in a photon as compared to that contained in a neutrino. Since photons can be blocked and absorbed by matter much more easily than can neutrinos that seems to suggest more mass in photons than in neutrinos.
If it be the case that neutrinos have less mass than photons then it may be that the speed of a particle increases as the mass decreases which would be consistent with the proposal that E = ms2 which would then be a more complete description of reality than E + mc2.
Einstein would still be correct but not fully correct. His equation would only relate to particles with a mass equivalent to that of light or less.
Sorry, I meant to say:
Einstein would still be correct but not fully correct. His equation would only relate to particles with a mass equivalent to that of light or MORE.
So the fastest speed achievable by anything would be the speed of expansion of the universe and any component of the universe that acquired any mass at all would move slower than that speed of expansion and the reduction of speed would be proportionate to the accumulation of mass.
Thus even photons would be unable to move as fast as the rate of expansion of the universe. Nor would neutrinos but they would presumably get closer to that speed than would photons.
The concept then would be a universe of pure massless energy expanding at whatever speed massless energy can achieve and over time matter precipitates out with each particle of matter slowing down proportionately to the mass acquired.
Particles gradually clumping together to form stars and everything else we observe.
Oh, dear, a further correction. I should have said:
“Einstein would still be correct but not fully correct. His equation would only relate to particles with a mass equivalent to that of light.”
Clearly the Energy content of a particle relates to its own speed and not that of light because if c+ is possible then c is no longer a universal constant.
To get the correct figure for energy content would be to say E = ms2 where ‘s’ is the speed of the particular particle of matter relative to the speed of expansion of the universe.
The then defunct constant of the speed of light would need to be replaced by the speed of the expansion of the universe. That is the ‘true’ constant.
Particles do travel faster than light but not relative to the speed of light or energy leaving the particle, this is why we have the complexities of the wave, particle duality (did I explain this right?) What can be explained by this is either (A) a spreadsheet error or (B) a simplistic way of explaining upper weakly interacting particle acceleration mathematically. either way it’s all relative to c, and Hubble’s law is not a constant as it uses c/H to describe the distance between galaxies traveling apart.
Perhaps it should just be E = ms2 where ‘s’ is simply the rate of expansion of the universe ?
Mangled. From the book “One, Two, Three, Infinity”, George Gamow:
There once was a young lady named Bright
Who could travel much faster than light;
She left home one day
In a relative way
And arrived on the previous night!
Checking further, the original is from 1923:
Don Santo;
Interesting note about the supernova neutrino wave front. I agree that seems pretty conclusive. A much longer “run” for any discrepancy to show up!
But you blew your speed ratio: “0.9999999999999%” is almost 1%. What you meant, I think, was “99.99999999999%”.
😉
I have taken the time and read the CERN paper, which is very detailed on what they checked and how.
However, the information I didn’t find is whether they checked the accuracy of the GPS they used and guarded against possible fluctuations due to external events which could lead to inaccurate GPS information, possibly influencing the result of their measurements:
http://en.zeropointfield.ch/2011/09/the-cern-neutrinos-faster-than-light/
The Lorentz transformations have what is called a ‘pole’ right at the speed of light. It takes progressively more energy to accelerate a particle as it approaches the speed of light. For tachyons, this should be true in reverse. It might be much more likely to find true tachyons traveling at speeds much greater than the speed of light than finding them moving just a hair over the speed of light.
>>
Spector says:
September 28, 2011 at 5:50 pm
It might be much more likely to find true tachyons traveling at speeds much greater than the speed of light than finding them moving just a hair over the speed of light.
<<
The Lorentz transformations may not be valid for speeds greater than c. One view treats the three space dimensions as real and the time dimension as imaginary. At speeds greater than c, this arrangement swaps–the three space dimensions become imaginary and the time dimension becomes real. So, what is the interpretation of that?
Jim
Yes, well put. This is exactly the stance a scientific skeptic ought to take. STR has withstood a lot of scrutiny over the past 100 years. This is a bit like the claims of Pons and Fleischmann.
RE: Jim Masterson: (September 28, 2011 at 6:28 pm)
“The Lorentz transformations may not be valid for speeds greater than c.”
Yes, that may be true and the issue becomes moot if tachyons do not exist either. I may be looking at this from an oversimplified point of view. I would assume that if tachyons do exist, they would be some sort of mirror image of normal particles (tardyons) which would obey a modified set of Lorentz transformations with an extra minus sign in the square root term. I believe that would eliminate the time-travel paradox associated with going faster than the speed of light. I am just speculating, as I have not tried to work out all the consequences of having a special class of objects where:
1-(v^2/c^2) is replaced by
(v^2/c^2)-1 in the square-root denominators.
Of course, these hypothetical tachyon particles could never go *slower* than the speed of light and there would still be a pole at v=c.
The existence of tachyons would open up the possibility of FTL communications unless, for some strange reason, they could only be detected if we knew when they were coming.
RE: Spector: (September 28, 2011 at 8:38 pm)
“… unless, for some strange reason, they could only be detected if we knew when they were coming.”
Some have claimed there is a fundamental principle that information cannot be transmitted faster than the speed of light. However, if tachyons exist, this principle is probably void.
Here is a suggestion – Entanglement has an horizon and has a shape.
What if entanglement explained the apparent anomaly. (20 meters of entanglement and the rest is classical). What if:-
1. The generating device and or detecting device are emitting / detecting the neutrinos at a combined distance / radius of 20 meters or more, from their physical locations.
2. Conceptually the neutrinos cover the start and or end distances (together totaling 20 meters or more) instantaneously and then travel at or well below the speed of light.
3. Re-test at half or double the distance or some order of magnitude change, to see if the neutrinos arrive nearly 20 meters ahead of schedule or a proportion relative to the delta.
4. This would be very coool, with possible way-out implications like
a) entanglement then operates instantaneously or much faster than light, and at greater distances in alignment with the vector of velocity depending on speed. This would be visualized like a sort of horizon of entanglement that has a long jellybean longitudinally in direction of motion..
b) particles don’t go anywhere unless they have somewhere to go and entangle with
c) the maximum speed of stuff could be governed by the way in which entanglement and de-tanglement occur. Entanglement up in forward direction is balanced by de-entanglement from behind, and so we have momentum. (and possible entanglement friction i.e. friction in a vacuum due to mismatches in the process).
d) re-fraction could possible be re-framed in terms of the radius of entanglement horizons depending on the substance or environment
e) a boundary of the universe would exist by virtue of phenomena at the margin whereby all movement outward is limited because the entanglement horizons are shaped like Hersheys kisses. Recovered momentum entanglement behind being radiated sideways to other particles in the same predicament. An impenetrable boundary at which time stops.