faster than light?

Re: Speed of Light Broken

Don't confuse 'they' the scientists reporting the experimental result with 'they' the "journalists" whose reason for being is to attract readership, not to accurately inform those readers.

I read up at:
Neutrinos seen to fly faster than light
Particles Found to Travel Faster than Speed of Light
Superluminal muon-neutrinos? Don’t get your hopes up.

New Data Put Cosmic Speed Limit To The Test

 

Re: Speed of Light Broken

Much worse than that, more like 25 ppm or 25,000 ppb.

The 1 ppb number comes from a different observation, of supernova SN1987A.

 

I'm an equal opportunity misanthrope. Instead of Italian technology we can talk about English cooking :_>

 

Re: Speed of Light Broken

I'm not confused, the lead article I cited in my thread and all but one of the articles you cited seem to come to the same conclusion. The scientist, who confirmed the results over ten thousand times are confident in the results. The one article I mentioned above didn't say anything about confidence or the thoughts of other scientist but was just a reference to the test with many other cites of reports regarding the same event.

It seems plain to be that the scientist involved in this test are not skeptical about their results and have almost certain confidence in them. Other's may be but Evan stated that the scientist involved were skeptical, I'd like to know why he said that and where he got that information. I'd just liked to know.

 

A couple of things to note:

1) The experimental setup was designed to measure neutrino "oscillations" (shifting between the three kinds of neutrinos - electron, muon, tau - while in flight). The speed of flight is a secondary measurement. It will take quite some time to build a setup with the primary design goal for making accurate velocity measurements. The good news is that there is now a very good reason for building this type of detector. The work done by CERN and others is first rate. Now the issue is to determine how to transition from first-rate into iron-clad.

2) The difference is well within what could be a systematic error. It also turns out that a great many quantum mechanical advances occurred when high precision measurements showed a constant is off by a very small amount. Dirac's 1928 equation showed that the "g" factor of the electron was 2.0000. Lamb's precision measurement showed that nature set the "g" factor to 2.002319. That measurement took place in 1950. From that discrepancy, modern quantum mechanics was born.

 

This stuff is way, way beyond my understanding of physics which is
for the most part Newtonian, and based in day to day applications.
Still, it is a fun "mental experiment" to try to understand.

By any chance, does a neutrino loose any mass or change its angular
momentum during the shifts from electron to muon to tau?

 

Re: Speed of Light Broken

... and I'm still seeing the skepticism, highlighted by Evan, in the bulk of the many articles I've read about it.

 

Definitely no change in angular momentum/spin. The change in mass is still an active question given the extremely small mass values involved. The best theories require a mass change for the oscillations to occur. Still an area where experimental results drive the theory, not the usual progression in particle physics over the last few decades.

 

Thanks.

I'm going to continue along my plodding path of discovery:

If the neutrino sheds mass, that would suggest an acceleration,
granted very small. Yes?

Given: acceleration is a change in speed or direction.
Given: the neutrino oscillates along some or all of its path.

In that there are constant changes in direction during oscillations,
isn't that a clear indication of continuous acceleration(s)?

Is a neutrino's speed measured along the straight or curved path
(average?) or along the presumably ever so slightly sinusoidal path
(I'd guess) as it oscillates?

 

That's one possibility. Keep in mind that present theories would have it get closer to "c", not exceed it. The number of particles could change as well, or conversion to undetected particles may be involved.

The shorthand word "oscillation" can be misleading. In neutrino propagation, it means transitions between the types of neutrinos, not a wiggling of any sort. More conventionally, all particles have a wavelength which implies a oscillation frequency. Neutrinos, as well as all other particles have this property. However this property is "internal" to the particle, not a variation in path.

Ha. The questions your are asking drove Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg, etc. nuts during the early years of Quantum Mechanics. It would be a "clear indication" if you could directly measure these at the particle dimensions involved. But this is what lead to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.....you can only see the results of experimental measurements, not the internal mechanisms (paths) of individual particles. Of course Einstein left this world not believing that this was the final answer.

Straight path propagation assumed. No sinusoidal path aspects assumed. However, assumptions should always be questioned....especially when a experiment shows results that don't agree with the assumptions.

 

Oscillations suggest that neutrinos have mass. However, having mass would normally prevent a particle from approaching the speed of light: as particle speed approaches C, mass approaches infinity. Accelerating an infinite amount of mass takes an infinite amount of energy, so it can't happen given standard theory. There are some possibilities where massless neutrinos could oscillate, so it's not a sure thing that they have mass.

A recent addition to theory is the standard model extension. If that proves out, then neutrinos at high energy could experience Lorentz violating oscillations, which would allow them to travel faster than light.

Interesting times.

Tom

 

Ummmm... I thought photons had a small bit of mass... and they always travel at C.

 

No.....Yes. E=mc^2 has photons on the left and mass on the right

 

Photons have energy and momentum, but that doesn't require they have a rest mass.

 

Re: Speed of Light Broken

and yet, evan posts one from Huff which is not a direct quote and which has a decided "they" flavor about it, which you warned me to be careful of misconstruing. Additionally, you've posted nothing to back your claims of bulk affirmations. Now many scientist may express doubt but that wasn't evan's claim, now was it? Asking for other's to check their results is hardly the say as stating that they were skeptical of their own data, especially after repeating it some 16,000 times, IIRC. I'll take another look around but I've only seen this skepticism in the HuffPost cite evan provided.

 

I just find it necessary to bump FPD's post since it has the most relevance. Too many times we follow a few headlines spun by non-scientists...when conclusive science takes continued evaluation and revised experiments for any related implications (which the Cern scientists are asking in regards to speed of flight).

 

Re: Speed of Light Broken

Sorry, I don't read Huff.

Here's a few I find right away tonight:

NPR: They found no glaring, fatal flaw, but Jenny Thomas from the University College London, says that's not to say anyone — including Autiero himself — believes that they really have dealt a serious blow to the theory of relativity.

NYT: Alvaro de Rujula, a theorist at CERN, called the claim “flabbergasting.†“If it is true, then we truly haven’t understood anything about anything,†he said, adding: “It looks too big to be true. The correct attitude is to ask oneself what went wrong.â€
The group that is reporting the results is known as Opera, for Oscillation Project with Emulsion-Tracking Apparatus. Antonio Ereditato, the physicist at the University of Bern who leads the group, agreed with Dr. de Rujula and others who expressed shock. He told the BBC that Opera — after much internal discussion — had decided to put its results out there in order to get them scrutinized.[emphasis added].

At the moment, I can't find another particular article quoting Autiero on this.

 

Electron to muon to tau...

What are the distinguishing features of the
neutrino's three states?

Is a neutrino's transition strictly one way?

Does the sequence mean a diminishment or decay?

Hmm... electron to muon to tau. Reminds me of:



"Ruthlessly pricking our golfalon bubble"
Also the fate of the CERN researchers?

Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble,
"Electron to Muon to Tau?"

 

Realize your questions are exactly the ones being argued among physicists everywhere. Neutrino Theory was "solved" some time ago except that experimental results have never quite agreed with the theory. Presently, the only agreement not questioned is that there are three types. These are "defined" by the interactions that are made, or not made, with other leptons (electron, muon, tau). They have a tiger by the tail here since uncovering the "systematic error" could result in a very major discovery instead of the speed of light being exceeded.

Also note that "dark energy" and "dark matter" are mechanisms used to explain major cosmological departures from mainline theory.....details to be figured out someday.