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
Ray says:
I studied the equations of general relativity once to understand this. The problem: According to relativity the laws of physics in all reference frames are the same.
So consider: we see the earth attracted to the ((more or less) stationary) sun. So how about a traveller passing through the solar system from north to south? Does he see the earth attracted (A) to where the sun currently is, or (B) to where it was eight minutes earlier (the time for light to travel from sun to earth)?
If the answer is (B), then he should also see the earth careen off orbit towards the north pole of the solar system, since eight minutes ago the sun was, in his reference frame, north of where the earth is now. Since he doesn’t, because he has to see the same actual events that we see, the correct answer must be (A). But doesn’t that mean that knowledge of the sun’s location has been passed to the earth in zero time?
Not necessarily. In fact the equations tell us something truly (IMHO) amazing: that the earth is attracted to the point to which it predicts, from information available prior to eight minutes ago, where the sun must be now if the only force acting upon it is gravity.
So nothing goes amiss with regard to the orbits of any of the planets influencing each other – all goes like clockwork. But if one body were to be influenced by a non-gravitational force, such as pushing it by rocket power, or a star exploding due to going supernova, then other bodies would behave normally until the normal speed of light communication tells them that something drastic has happened. Then they would suddenly readjust their behaviour to the new prediction of the locations of other bodies now, assuming only gravitational effects from the time of the disturbance onwards.
That is what the equations, to my understanding, mean. That doesn’t mean the equations are correct. I believe that this really odd quality of the relativistic equations is why they predict gravitational waves. Last time I checked, they had not ever been detected.
Thank God – they are finally waking up to the facts.
I was always sure that – once properly considered – the scientists’ mantra that nothing could travel faster than the speed of light, was nothing but a modern version of one of Zenon’s paradoxes which is known as The Paradox of Motion, or “Achilles and the tortoise”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno%27s_paradoxes#Achilles_and_the_tortoise
Having come thus far, science may – just MAY – one day also understand that, particles traveling faster than the speed of light exist, in fact, not only in traces, but in abundance in the Universe – because they are what Astronomy, for a a lack of better understanding, today calls “Dark Matter” – interacting only via it’s gravity with sub-light-matter.
Factor in faster-than-light particles into classic astronomy, and you will finally adjust astronomical calculations to the measured facts.
“Boy, do I love being right all the time!”
(Transcended from the golden words of Dr. Ian Malcolm, aka Jeff Goldblum, in “Jurassic Park”)
Of course neutrinos travel a bit faster then photons and electrons. I thought these people already knew that.
Why is it educated people are always “discovering” things that are already known? pg
German professor Gunther Nimtz – Univiersities of Cologne and Bonn, Germany – conducted a large-scale reasearch culminating in the theory, that particles, as well as electromagnetic waves, can travel faster than light.
He calls the effect he uses for making matter and electromagnetic signals going faster than light “tunnelling”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BCnter_Nimtz
And, by the way, his results are a much LESS “highly debated topic” than Wikipedia wants you to make believe – while “which only a minority of researchers considers as correct”, according to my understanding, does in no way disqualify his findings as wrong, anyway – for Galileo Galilei’s findings on the Heliocentric Solar System also were defamed as a theory, “”which only a minority of researchers considers as correct” in his days…
So, is the science settled in this area? Hell, no, it isn’t!
But it’s fascinating – isn’t it?
As I understand it, neutrinos are particles with no mass that travel at the speed of light and do not react with matter or magnetic fields. Billions of them pass through every square metre of the earth every second. The following might be simplistic, but could it be that the rest of the particles travelled in the constraints of the CERN magnetic field but the neutrinos went in a straight line so took a short cut and arrived before the other particles because they did not have as far to travel?
To quote myself:
“Having come thus far, science may – just MAY – one day also understand that, particles traveling faster than the speed of light exist, in fact, not only in traces, but in abundance in the Universe – because they are what Astronomy, for a a lack of better understanding, today calls “Dark Matter” – interacting only via it’s gravity with sub-light-matter.”
Addendum:
Dark Energy is nothing but Dark-(faster-than-light)-Matter to, which only is arranged in a huge, Universe-wide halo, PULLING sub-light-matter outwards with it’s humonous gravity, thus giving an observer from the inside the impression, there exists an equal force PUSHING sub-light-matter to the edges of the Universe. That way, Redshift is caused by faster-than-light particles, too.
Einstein -‘Damn, I think I left my electron at CERN’
Heisenberg – ‘Are you sure ?’
Einstein -‘I’m positive’
@ur momisugly SØREN BUNDGAARD
September 22, 2011 at 3:07 pm
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“F”
create a blog yourself, please.
SRT probably says (but not very clearly) that you cannot measure speeds greater than c from one reference frame to another. That is an effect of c being not unlimited. The Lorenz transformation is probably only valid below c, who knows applies beyond.
You only need less than a year at 1g to reach c if in a rocket. I find it hard to believe the acceleration would cease just like that at or near c. And in reference to what?
Einstein himself hoped his theories would be the foundation of other, more advanced theories. I think he would have been most interested in the CERN-results, if confirmed.
DocMartyn, you contradict yourself. Why, in your universe, is the light hitting the train at LS? Say, two trains are heading on each other with a mirror at their front… go ahead.
All our measurements of the speed of light showed it to be constant at any speed difference.
Amusing as it might be, some of the displays of scientific ignorance on this thread just give more ammo to the warmists that we are a bunch of loons.
The good news is that they are being skeptical of their findings!
And now for the rebuttal paper from Hansen Mann and the fairytale team members proving the science is settled
What will it be? That this is yet more proof the the world is warming up …. it’s just we didn’t realise it was making the whole of space time swell up?
More proof of climate “weirding” as even time is getting weird?
… and no doubt a graph showing the correlation between “neutrino weirding” and manmade CO2, proving yet again how mankind is affecting not just the weather but the whole of space time …. is that a black hole I see before …. sucking in all kind of nonsense … no it’s a climate journal!
Andrew Harding says:September 22, 2011 at 11:40 pm
“The following might be simplistic, but could it be that the rest of the particles travelled in the constraints of the CERN magnetic field but the neutrinos went in a straight line so took a short cut and arrived before the other particles because they did not have as far to travel?”
They must have gone through the climategate team’s fast rebuttal process?
Rabe:
The speed of light will always be c, as distance is measured in lightseconds nowadays. It has become a definition.
RoHa says:
September 22, 2011 at 10:14 pm
“neutrinos — one of the strangest well-known particles in physics”
Neutrinos are well-known?
Some of my best friends are neutrinos.
It has to be true as speed is relative!
XKCD are quick off the mark http://xkcd.com/955/
Dan says:
September 23, 2011 at 12:22 am
You only need less than a year at 1g to reach c if in a rocket. I find it hard to believe the acceleration would cease just like that at or near c. And in reference to what?
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Well said. That’s the result of my own calculations, too. In an empty, dark space without reference points, a given force will always and ever result in an equal counterforce – here: rocket-engine-thrust and accelleration – and will change the speed of the spaceship you are in accordingly. Anyway, you will only be able to measure accelleration – let’s say 1 g – over time – let’s say 1 year. But you will NEVER, EVER be able to truly calculate the exact speed resulting for said spaceship by measuring accelleration and time, due to the uncertainty about your initial speed and direction your spaceship was traveling prior to firing the rocket (aka: no reference points). So, yes, you might as well go way faster than the speed of light then – without even noticing.
Again, this “C-Thing” equates to yet-another of Zenon’s paradoxes to me. But, while in Zenon’s paradox about Herakles and the turtle it was distance – aka: SPACE – he was mistaking for being absolute, Einstein in his calculation is mistaking TIME for absolute – due to a simple, mathematical error:
Math states that, if, in a calculation, the divisor is “0”, the divident will per defnition turn infinite.
But in physics, when you reduce the time the given mass of an object needs to travel a certain distance to”0″, the mass of said object, in fact, remains just like it always was, while only the time it needs to travel will be reduced to “0”, or even becomes negative.
The infinite increase of mass you get by calculating Energy = Mass times Velocity square – may be mathematically sound – yet, it doesn’t match reality.
Oh, yes, I know, I will get a good beat-up for that statement now. But I stand to it. And no – Nukes are NOT disproving my point. I rather suppose that, in nuclear fusion, fission and decay, a mechanism plays out which, by sheer coincidence, happens to work at sub-atomar levels according to Einstein’s famous equation. But in the atomar and molecular world, things are different from it.
(Sorry, I am German and have to translate mathematical terms into english to my best knowledge. Please, correct me, where I am wrong.)
I’ve been noting that 60 nanoseconds can represent a distance measurement error between the emiter and receptor of approx 18 meters at the speed of light. If they used the GPS with its relative error of 10 meters to measure positions, they’re in! 😉
I’m singularly unimpressed that it is reported that the experiment has been done 15,000 times and yielded the same results. If there is something wrong with the underlying assumptions or data you can do it an infinite number of times and obtain a false result on every occasion. The patth length isn’t being checked 15,000 times, is it? So if that is wrong then the results will always be wrong.
As I mentioned before, I consider it most likely that the path length has been wrongly calculated with 18 metre/60 ft error. Of course, the other possibility is that the ultimate ‘speed barrier’ is just a tiny fraction higher than what has previously been thought, i.e. 299,799,850 metres per second rather than 299,792,458 metres per second for light, with photons travelling at just below this speed barrier. OK, so photons have been consistently measured at 299,792,458 metres per second. So what? Has anyone considered that maybe photons don’t go at the ultimate speed, and that all the measurements of contraction, time dilation, mass increase for particles with rest mass etc as one approaches the speed of light would be very similar if it was referenced to 299,799,850 metres per second instead. Would tiny discrepancies between these have even been noticed?
Since 1983 the speed of light has been ‘defined’ as 299,792,458 m/s, so if it is measured differently from the definition then this affects the length of the metre. I’m a bit uncomfortable with defining the speed of light as an absolute fixed constant, because it begs the question about the speed of light being a universal and invariant constant. The speed of propagation of photons in vacuo can be calculated by electrostatic and magnetostatic measurements of the properties of the vacuum, i.e. the permittivity and permeability of the vacuum, without doing any measurements of speed at all – this just falls out of classical physics (Maxwell’s equations) – it can all be predicted from static measurements. But of course, measurements of permeability and permittivity are inherently tied to electromagnetism and photons (and ‘virtual photons’) and so determine the velocity of electromagnetic radiation – the speed of ‘light’. Neutrinos are not photons and, unlike photons, appear to have a tiny rest mass, which according to the Standard Model they shouldn’t have. So little is understood about neutrinos, and what we do know seems to challenge the Standard Model so we are likely to be in for an overhaul of physics some time soon.
I read somewhere that the effect of gravity could maybe be traveling faster than the speed of light. They will need to make a special-special theory of relativity.
This special-special theory of relativity has existed for one century and is called general relativity.
According to the general relativity mass/energy defines space-time metrics.
In other words what some call “gravity effects” is actually the space-time metrics which is curved by mass/energy.
From that follows that in strongly variable fields (f.ex binary pulsars), their effect is to provoke “ripples” in space-time (imagine rotating fast a spoon in the middle of a large bowl filled with viscous liquid) . These “ripples” are called gravitational waves and propagate.
Their speed is c – e.g the speed of light.
The gravitational waves being extremely weak, they have not yet been detected but it is a work in progress (http://astro.berkeley.edu/~imaran/cosmology1.html).
As for the neutrinos going faster than c, there are 3 possible interpretations:
1) The effect is a fluke. Distances and/or times have been incorrectly measured. The result can’t be reproduced in controlled environnement. For me the most probable interpretation.
2) Something special happens with neutrinos and neutrinos only. Sofar we only know the upper limit of the neutrino rest mass which is very small. This is unfortunate but this doesn’t exclude the possibility that the neutrino’s mass is exactly zero. A less probable interpretation would then mean that some exotic special neutrino property had been discovered.
3) The Lorentz invariance (special relativity) is wrong and it is possible that particles with real (e.g non complex) non zero rest mass cross the c limit. While this can’t be excluded with absolute certainty, I consider that this interpretation has an extremely low almost zero probability.
Whatever the outcome, after the scrutiny of the community of physicists – the simple fact that the CERN researchers have put this out to the public and ask for scrutiny is a lesson the climate scientists ought to learn a.s.a.p.
This report shows to all and sundry how proper science should be done.
Applause!
What if something was travelling at the speed of light on earth, and the earth is travelling at 885,139 kilometres per second through space, then if the direction of travel of what is travelling at the speed of light is the same direction as the earth is moving through space, then that item will be travelling faster than the speed of light relative to the bit of space that the earth is travelling through.