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
Maybe the neutrino arrives at the true speed of light and a light source [had it been available and travelled the same distance] arrives that same fraction slower?
Heisenberg said that the product of position and momentum is limited by a (his) constant. If the mass of the neutrino is vanishingly small, then does it not follow that its position is ill definied? Averaged over thousands of events statistically, is that what we are observing?
Mark Andrew Shuttleworth says: (September 30, 2011 at 4:06 pm)
“An impenetrable boundary at which time stops.”
Time only stops as viewed by a remote observer.
According to General Relativity, there is a radius around a black hole, known as the Schwarzschild radius where this happens. Technically, a black hole must have all of its mass contained at, or inside its Schwarzschild radius. This radius has no significance if the mass extends beyond that radius because the gravitational field begins to decline as soon as we penetrate the outer radius of the object and thus the apparent Schwarzschild radius would also decrease. It is hypothetically possible that there might be an incommunicable region of ‘normal’ space at the center of every black hole.
The Schwarzschild radius is nominally equal to two times the gravitational constant, G, times the object mass divided by C squared.
Gravitational time dilation has been measured by comparing the minute difference between the the time kept on the surface of the Earth and the time kept in high-flying aircraft by precision time standards.
It is interesting to note that the time dilation formula can be written in a form that this effect is proportional to the square root of the altitude above the Schwarzschild radius divided by the distance from the center of the object. This seems to indicate that a photon approaching a Schwarzschild radius would run out of distance to go at a faster rate than it would appear to lose speed from gravitational time dilation. Note that the integral (the complete summation of a series of infinitesimal function values over a specified range) of:
1/sqrt(x) is:
2*sqrt(x) + a constant
and this integral is finite at x=0 even though the function being integrated is infinite at x=0. Thus I assume a photon may arrive at this radius and possibly be reflected in a finite time, as perceived from a remote perspective.
Gravitational time dilation
From The Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_time_dilation
>>
Spector says:
October 1, 2011 at 10:39 am
The Schwarzschild radius is nominally equal to two times the gravitational constant, G, times the object mass divided by C squared.
<<
The derivation of escape velocity is straightforward. The equation is:
v-escape = sqrt(2*G*m/r)
If we set v-escape = c and solve for r, we get your Schwarzschild radius formula. Two things are apparent: (1) the derivation of escape velocity uses classical Newtonian physics, and (2) the event horizon is slightly smaller than the Schwarzschild radius because light can just barely escape from the Schwarzschild radius distance (it’s where v-escape = c).
It’s intriguing that you can get a General Relativity result from Classical Physics. I thought that maybe the Schwarzschild radius computed using GR would give different results, but apparently not.
Jim
I wonder if anyone has ever tried to determine how Maxwell’s electromagnetic equations behave with a Schwarzschild surface being one of their boundary conditions… Sounds like a good exercise for the student.
I note that the 60 ns early arrival cited in the CERN experiment is equivalent to a distance of about 59 feet over a nominal distance of 2,460,630 feet. For this to be significant, I would say that last distance should be known with an error less than 20 feet or about 8 parts per million.
http://www.cosmicsignals.wordpress.com, post 12.
RE: martenvandijk: (October 4, 2011 at 1:51 am)
It may be that the only way to satisfy that boundary condition is with an opposite polarity reflected field. If both fields cancel at zero altitude above the Schwarzschild radius, then the paradoxes with time flow dilated to zero and locally perceived infinite frequency signals would be avoided. What is needed is a rational for saying the electromagnetic impedance of free space drops to zero at that radius.
Zero impedance does not exist (see also Heisenberg). .
If the electromagnetic impedance of free space dropped to zero at the Schwartzschild radius, would not the speed of light become infinite?
RE: Roger Longstaff: (October 5, 2011 at 12:34 am)
“If the electromagnetic impedance of free space dropped to zero at the Schwartzschild radius, would not the speed of light become infinite?”
My comment was a passing thought. One can argue that the remotely observable speed of light should go to zero at the Schwarzschild radius because time appears to come to a stop at that point. The impedance is another issue. As time dilation should appear remotely to reduce the rate of electric current flow (coulombs per second=Amps) when the same voltage is applied; any remotely perceived impedance near a Schwarzschild boundary should appear to increase, unless some other time related factor also applies. Finding a class of functions that solve the EM wave equation in this region may be no simple task.
Spector – I was very interested in your “passing thought”. In a hazy way I tried to imagine conditions exactly at the Swartzschild radius – zero impedance as the vacuum field had been “ripped apart” and consequently an infinite speed of light, in contrast to a zero speed of light observed from anywhere outside. But, if this is not complete nonsense, like you I have no idea how to solve Maxwell’s equations over such a discontinuity.
It is a shame that this thread has just about expired, as a mathematician might have jumped in and put us straight.
Time cannot be zero (flow of time infinite fast) because the speed of light is a constant and a maximum according to Einstein. Moreover time also cannot be infinite (flow of time infinite slow) because there must be some fluctuation everywhere at all times according to Heisenberg. At the Schwarzschild boundary space-time is curved by the gravitation of of the Black Hole to such an extent that f.i. light must follow paths along the boundary. QM implicates that time can be infinite fast. There are more contradictions/incompatibities between the various theories like predictability vs uncertainty, determinism vs indeterminism, the Big Bang theory predicting far less matter/energy than measured etc. As far as i am concerned the speed of light is not constant,space-time not curved as indicated on october 4th.
Two nice quotes: “Maybe there are waves only” (Hawking); “A curvature of rays of light can only take place when the velocity of propagation of light varies with position” (Einstein).
Einstein Can Relax
“Technology Review has a post about work done by a physicist, Ronald van Elburg, at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Simply put, the 60 nanosecond difference can be explained by the relativistic motion of the GPS satellites used to time the event.”
RE: martenvandijk says: (October 8, 2011 at 3:05 am)
“Time cannot be zero (flow of time infinite fast) because the speed of light is a constant and a maximum according to Einstein.”
I believe this applies only to the speed of light that you measure in your own local space-time.
The remotely perceived speed of light must slow down in direct proportion to gravitational time dilation unless there were also an equivalent remote space dilation that would make every black hole appear to have a Schwarzschild radius of zero.
As photons escape from a gravitational well, they lose energy by losing frequency and thus may be perceived as being generated by the known process producing them running at a slower rate of time. I think the reverse situation would apply to those photons that gain energy as increasing frequency when they penetrate a gravitational well. Time dilation would cause an increasing red shift of the yellow radiation characteristic of sodium. If the apparent size of the remote sodium atom is not getting progressively larger, we must assume that the remote flow of time appears to be slowing down relative to our own time frame.
@Spector
http://www.cosmicsignals.wordpress.com, post 12 in particular.