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
Is it possible that the neutrinos passed through Berlusconi’s bedroom on its way from CERN to Gran Sasso, Italy?
If so then it wouldn’t be the only objects in the universe to pass through faster than light speed.
The entire experiment was conducted in an accelerated frame (gravity well), rather than in interstellar space.
My math suggests that 1/40,000 is actually less than the dilation effects due to gravity. That still doesn’t sound right to me.
If Neutrinoes were less affected by local gravity, they might still be sub-luminal. They would just be covering a shorter distance than even photons going in a straight line.
Some people, myself among them, based on Rieman Geometry, believe that since space is not simply connected, particles which don’t strongly interact in space time, spend part of their time in “Elsewhen”. See a book on special relativity for additional information – Taylor/Wheeler “Spacetime Physics” is a good one.
The math of multiply connected universes, although based on complex geometry, may lead to understanding of dark matter and other current issues in Physics. Not that this is in any way generally supported by APS or other societies.
Pablo Barham says:
September 22, 2011 at 1:14 pm
”It doesn’t take 100 scientists to prove me wrong, it takes a single fact.” -Albert Einstein
There is the fact…
That doesn’t prove Einstein “wrong”, any more thean Einstein proved Newton “wrong”.
In additon to Newtonian Physics and Einsteinian Physics, it appears we may be on the verge of developing a third Physics.
I agree with Jeremy.
I am also an engineer and I would double and triple check the exact position of both ends of the link.
I am trying to visualize how you would exactly locate a point 1,400 M under a mountain. Would you bounce light and measure the time it took to return ? You would have to bounce it from 3 absolutely known points.
Does anyone have experience with this problem ? I don’t know the answer but I have grave doubts.
GPS sure wouldn’t work.
It would shock me if this experiment proved that Neutrinos can travel at 60 nanoseconds faster than the speed of light, and I hope it does. I think I know what the numbers add up to and what they mean if this is confirmed. And it is mind blowing.
Does anyone recognize these numbers?
186.282 3.1047 189.3867
186.282 3.14159265 189.42359265
Any physicist or engineer should recognize these, Although these numbers above may not appear relevant, they are if this is confirmed.
Looking forward to seeing how this turns out. At the quantum level verifying the “spooky action” at a distance (Bell’s theorem I believe) has been done up to 2 Km between the particle streams and when one polarity is changed the other is as well. So if you scaled that experiment up to a distance that light would travel you would see if there was any delay. So far no delay at 2Km so faster than light does seem to happen. The math is way over my head but fascinating to read about.
If the neutrino arrived significantly faster than light, then that would point to a new understanding of physics. That it arrived just very very slightly faster than light points to a measurement error, which may include an error in adjusting for external influences on the path and on measuring tools as others have mentioned.
This measurement needs to be investigated, and it will be because physics is not climate science. However, if I were a betting man I’d bet on a measurement error.
Although Dr Motl is pretty down on this, I might point out that it is consistent with the Scharnhorst Effect, where light goes slightly faster than c between Casimir plates due to quantisation of vaccuum energy. Poor neutrino interaction with virtual particles could do likewise.
Big deal. Carbon dioxide can take the earth out of an ice age 800 years before it enters the atmosphere. Top that, neutrinos! 🙂
“The readings have so astounded researchers that they are asking others to independently verify the measurements before claiming an actual discovery.”
Well, OK then….. I’ll get right on it!
Great Scott! Where did I leave my 1.21 jigawatt flux capacitor power supply for my atom smasher….??
Science is settled, model ensemble average is slower than light, no need for checking experimentally.
It’s a new particle–the travestino!
Looks like time travel back to the past is possible !
Let’s send someone back to cut down that tree on the Yamal Peninsula !!
While I agree with some of these two posts, for those interested in the velocity of propagation of a gravitational “field” may I recommend the following url:
http://metaresearch.org/cosmology/speed_of_gravity.asp
An excerpt from the paper:
Enjoy!
“”There are more things in heaven and earth than are drempt of in your philosophy Horatio.”
SØREN BUNDGAARD:
I’ve never meant TL;DR quite so strongly before.
Graeme:
Shotgun? No, the way defending against interdimensional invaders works, is that you start out with a crowbar and work your way up.
Actually particles travel faster than light quite routinely. It is (c) that they can’t exceed in a vaccuum but in some other medium they can travel faster than c/n, where n is the refractive index of the medium. If you accelerate a particle to 0.999999 c and let it crash into a block of glass of index say 1.5, then it will be going 50% faster than light in the glass. Of course it will radiate like crazy while it is slowing down to less than c/n, and during that wild deceleration, it must radiate EM waves, according to Maxwell’s equations. I can’t remember whether that is Cerenkov Radiation or Bremsstrahlung; but anna v would know.
It is the group velocity of EM waves which can’t exceed (c). The phase velocity can, but it carries no information or energy.
Some people now think the electron may have a non-zero Electric Dipole Moment, and they are currently trying to measure it; but it is in the noise if true. dunno why the electron would, since it supposedly has no internal structure; but a neutron or proton with three quarks each with non-integer charges might; but supposedly, neither one has a non . Go Figure. I’ll have to ask Richard Taylor the next time I see him (he’s the Quark guru Nobellist at SLAC)
But I’ll wait to hear the results on this neutrino gig.
Scott Covert says:
September 22, 2011 at 1:59 pm
I am sad to read the Cern quote ““We wanted to find a mistake – trivial mistakes, more complicated mistakes, or nasty effects – and we didn’t,”. That’s just confirmation bias, you have to break through that if you are going to discover anything.
No no no, its not confirmation bias, its real scientists faced with a surprising result using Occams razor to try to find any possible, non revolutionary explanation. The old saw about extraordinary claims and extraordinary evidence surely applies here, and the first step in obtaining very strong evidence is eliminating all possible error sources. This is something climate scientists frequently fail to do – if the graph looks “nice”, thats a wrap – so its great to see how real scientists behave sometimes.
Personally I am very doubtful about this, we’ve measured a lot of neutrinos at lightspeed before now, but if it is true its very exciting.
I second Richard S. Courtney:
Geez…if your comment is going to be an article all in itself…please…submit it as an article.
Scrolled right past it – and it took quite awhile – it was actually irritating how long it took.
=8-(
I for one hope this pans out. Perhaps the rewriting of the “Laws” of physics with a new understanding about speed limits will eliminate the ideas of dark matter and dark energy.
Just like the missing heat, these have only been found in a computer model.
>>
Dan Santo says:
September 22, 2011 at 1:37 pm
One of the more famous is the supernova back in 1987 (I think) – the light and neutrinos showed up at the same time. Considering its distance, even the tiny difference that they think they’ve found here would have come out to be huge. We would have seen a neutrino surge long before the light showed up.
<<
I think you’re talking about supernova 1987A (SN 1987A). It was an unusual type II supernova. Type II supernovae are massive stars (greater than 8 solar masses–the SN 1987A progenitor was about 20 solar masses) whose cores undergo gravitation collapse. The neutrinos leave the star when the core collapses–in a fraction of a second. The visible explosion occurs hours later when the shockwave from the rebounding core reaches the surface.
That neutrino surge was about 24 events (significant, but hardly breathtaking). The neutrinos remained ahead of the visible explosion all the way to the Earth (about 51.4 kiloparsecs or 168,000 light-years). That placed the upper limit on neutrino mass at about 20 electron volts–later refined to a maximum of 16 electron volts. For a comparison, the rest mass of an electron is about 511,000 electron volts or about 32,000 times larger.
Jim
The neutrinos in question are traveling a little east of South East.
That means a component of their direction is with the rotation of the earth.
I wonder what their assumptions were about the frame of reference and the possibility of gravitational “frame-drag.”
500 _____D______km of eastward travel
300,000__c______km/sec
0.001666_ T=D/c __sec travel travel time
2.2______Ve______km/sec = Earth rotational speed eastward
0.0036667__Dt = Ve*T__km frame moves in travel time T
1.22222E-08 ___Tf = Dt/c __ sec from possible frame drag.
Shoot. I only can account for 12 nsec.
Still, wouldn’t be interesting if a gravitational frame of reference is involved in determining the speed of light.
They have been doing this experiments for thousands of times for the last couple of years. Theses are some of the smartest physicist in the world. Fermilab and Japans Accelerater will begin experimenting on this immediately and will end up with very similar results.
I read that the distance was 730 km and the neutrinos arrived 60 nanoseconds earlier. The speed of light quoted as 299792 km/s. If I divide the speed of light by the distance, I get about 0.00243502 seconds or the time to travel that 730 km. Then I subtracted 60 nanoseconds from the time and divided the distance of 730 km by that reduced time. The results shows a speed of 299799 km/s or 7 km/s faster.
That’s how I read the report. I might have misinterpreted the article.
The aether is real, and since it was heading in that direction, it was dragging the neutrinos along with it.
I always liked the aether, a space medium, and was very sad when they said it did not exist.