Welcome to
Science a GoGo's
Discussion Forums
Please keep your postings on-topic or they will be moved to a galaxy far, far away.
Your use of this forum indicates your agreement to our terms of use.
So that we remain spam-free, please note that all posts by new users are moderated.


The Forums
General Science Talk        Not-Quite-Science        Climate Change Discussion        Physics Forum        Science Fiction

Who's Online Now
0 members (), 181 guests, and 2 robots.
Key: Admin, Global Mod, Mod
Latest Posts
Top Posters(30 Days)
Previous Thread
Next Thread
Print Thread
Page 1 of 4 1 2 3 4
#40229 09/19/11 05:27 PM
Joined: May 2011
Posts: 2,819
O
Orac Offline OP
Megastar
OP Offline
Megastar
O
Joined: May 2011
Posts: 2,819
Ok I will post a link from Tommaso Doringo for those who haven't seen it

http://www.science20.com/quantum_diaries_survivor/sixsigma_signal_superluminal_neutrinos_opera-82744

Personally I am with Tommaso I really doubt it and CERN has delayed the release to check the data.

If this stands we have new physics ... something faster than the speed of light has been recorded for the first time.


I believe in "Evil, Bad, Ungodly fantasy science and maths", so I am undoubtedly wrong to you.
.
Joined: Dec 2010
Posts: 1,858
B
Megastar
Offline
Megastar
B
Joined: Dec 2010
Posts: 1,858
orac, I can't find that one. I clicked on the link and it took me to the home page at Science 2.0 and I can't find anything on there about superluminal neutrinos.

It sounds interesting, but off of the top of my head I agree with you. It is unlikely.

Bill Gill


C is not the speed of light in a vacuum.
C is the universal speed limit.
Joined: Aug 2010
Posts: 3,570
B
Megastar
Offline
Megastar
B
Joined: Aug 2010
Posts: 3,570
I had the same problem, Bill, but found lots of other interesting things.


There never was nothing.
Joined: May 2011
Posts: 2,819
O
Orac Offline OP
Megastar
OP Offline
Megastar
O
Joined: May 2011
Posts: 2,819
Ahh Tommaso is a CDM colaborator he had to take it down I see ... you will have to wait until Friday for the official release by looks.

Here is Lubus going to town on the result which is about all that's left up at the moment .. alot of which I agree with but would have been nicer about it.

http://motls.blogspot.com/2011/09/italian-out-of-tune-superluminal.html

Last edited by Orac; 09/20/11 02:13 AM.

I believe in "Evil, Bad, Ungodly fantasy science and maths", so I am undoubtedly wrong to you.
Joined: May 2011
Posts: 2,819
O
Orac Offline OP
Megastar
OP Offline
Megastar
O
Joined: May 2011
Posts: 2,819
Adding in some clarifications:

Luboš Motl clarified Tommaso is employed by IFNF which also pays for Opera so it’s a clash of interest for him to talk about unpublished Opera’s results so he has taken down the webpage.

http://blog.vixra.org/2011/09/05/2691/

Quote:

Update 20-Sep-2011: Neither of the Higgs seminars discussed any new data beyond that shown at Lepton-Photon 2011. The Santander workshop is proceeding with no slides being posted online so far. We are waiting for the OPERA neutrino seminar of Friday where the growing rumour says they will report the discovery of tachyonic neutrinos.


I believe in "Evil, Bad, Ungodly fantasy science and maths", so I am undoubtedly wrong to you.
Joined: Aug 2010
Posts: 3,570
B
Megastar
Offline
Megastar
B
Joined: Aug 2010
Posts: 3,570


There never was nothing.
Joined: Dec 2010
Posts: 1,858
B
Megastar
Offline
Megastar
B
Joined: Dec 2010
Posts: 1,858
I have seen several discussions about this so far. Most are rather skeptical. A couple have also pointed out that when supernova 1987A was spotted that a group of neutrinos was detected about 3 hours earlier than the light. They explain this by the fact that the neutrinos from the explosion left the star immediately upon creation. The light had to travel through the mass of the star before it could start on its journey. The best timing they can get showed that the neutrinos traveled very slightly faster than light. Most people didn't put much faith in the value being faster, because of uncertainties in the measurement. But, the amount that the supernova neutrinos traveled faster than light was much much smaller than the amount claimed with the OPERA experiment. And the error bands don't even start to overlap. So most have decided to have serious doubts about the reality of the OPERA data.

Bill Gill


C is not the speed of light in a vacuum.
C is the universal speed limit.
Joined: May 2011
Posts: 2,819
O
Orac Offline OP
Megastar
OP Offline
Megastar
O
Joined: May 2011
Posts: 2,819
Okay the conferences and discussion roll on

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-09-cern-faster-than-light-particle.html

What does give me confidence is those who have recorded the findings don't like them either and want others to check the measurement.

So lets take a leap of faith and discuss what are the options for how such a result can come about.

First you need to know Nuetrinos are weird you perhaps need to do some background on them (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino).

One of the most weird part about Nuetrinos is there flavours and oscillation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino_oscillation).

Okay so lets look at the 3 possibilites I see feel free to throw in thoughts.

1.) QM Lorentz-violation effect

QM predicted that nuetrinos may infact travel faster than light because of the weird oscillation by a process called lorentz-violation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz-violating_neutrino_oscillations). The problem this creates for physics is QM is more fundemental than the physical world something always strongly resisted by many scientists and many of you :-)


2.) Tachyonics is real and possible (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyon). The posibility of Nuetrinos being tachyonic was discussed Alan Chodos in 1985 as a test of tachyonics (http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1985PhLB..150..431C).
The dislike of tachyonics is along the similar lines to QM above it gives GR/SR causality problems as all the discussed time paradoxes come into being. This may be less of a hassle these days as QM to some degree has closed these violations and if you accept the QM Novikov self-consistency principle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novikov_self-consistency_principle) they are completely closed.


3.) We are looking at some weird new physics. The books open on this one throw in your thoughts.

EDIT: WOW the story is everywhere now dominating most of the physics discussions. Quite strange watching a result a few of us were quietly discussing going to headlines around the world.

Last edited by Orac; 09/23/11 06:52 AM.

I believe in "Evil, Bad, Ungodly fantasy science and maths", so I am undoubtedly wrong to you.
Joined: Aug 2010
Posts: 3,570
B
Megastar
Offline
Megastar
B
Joined: Aug 2010
Posts: 3,570
I've not had time to follow up on Orac's links yet, so this might be covered somewhere. If these results are right, and SR prohibits a subluminal object from becoming superluminal, presumably, these neutrinos always travel faster than light.

Does this mean we've found the tachyon?

If so, should they not be travelling backwards through time????


There never was nothing.
Joined: Aug 2010
Posts: 3,570
B
Megastar
Offline
Megastar
B
Joined: Aug 2010
Posts: 3,570
Can someone explain the animation shown at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyon.

Elsewhere, we had a discussion about what, if any, interaction two observers could have if they were travelling in opposite directions through time. I think we, more or less, reached a point where we were saying that their interaction would be limited to 10^-43s; not really long enough to "see" anything.


There never was nothing.
Joined: May 2011
Posts: 2,819
O
Orac Offline OP
Megastar
OP Offline
Megastar
O
Joined: May 2011
Posts: 2,819
Tomasso has put the original links back up now

http://www.science20.com/quantum_diaries_survivor/sixsigma_signal_superluminal_neutrinos_opera-82744

The paper is up although understandably slow downloading (http://arxiv.org/abs/1109.4897)

Quote:

The OPERA result is based on the observation of over 15000 neutrino events measured at Gran Sasso, and appears to indicate that the neutrinos travel at a velocity 20 parts per million above the speed of light, nature’s cosmic speed limit.


It's rather hectic today running from meeting and group discussion and online presentations.

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-09-scientists-stunned-sceptical-faster-than-light-particles.html

People stunned is a fair comment because CERN have actually done alot of checks they have know of the result for months.

From what people say this actually matches closely the original FTL claim from the supernova which was subsequently explained away by saying the nuetrinos were emitted earlier than the light.

Lubos and probably alot of the string theory boys are banking on a media density effect but the QM groups have a vastly different take.

For Bill S most in QM are definitely favouring nuetrino oscillation because it's only just above the speed of light not miles above (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz-violating_neutrino_oscillations).

Quote:

The unconventional energy dependence in the theory leads to other novel effects, including corrections to the dispersion relations that would make neutrinos move at velocities other than the speed of light. By this mechanism neutrinos could become faster-than-light particles.


The big question can we match theory to numbers!

Well got to get back to it ... will post more when I know a bit more.

Last edited by Orac; 09/23/11 01:22 PM.

I believe in "Evil, Bad, Ungodly fantasy science and maths", so I am undoubtedly wrong to you.
Joined: Aug 2010
Posts: 3,570
B
Megastar
Offline
Megastar
B
Joined: Aug 2010
Posts: 3,570
http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20110822191734data_trunc_sys.shtml

"If true, the results will open up new physics in which Einstein's relativity doesn't hold true."

Would we still fave to throw out SR if these neutrinos always travel at superluminal speed?


There never was nothing.
Joined: Aug 2010
Posts: 3,570
B
Megastar
Offline
Megastar
B
Joined: Aug 2010
Posts: 3,570
BTW, Orac, it's good to have someone on the Forum who is so close to the centre of activity.


There never was nothing.
Joined: May 2011
Posts: 2,819
O
Orac Offline OP
Megastar
OP Offline
Megastar
O
Joined: May 2011
Posts: 2,819
Close ... not close enough :-)

I am sure most physics research uni's are the same the real work is with CERN, fermi etc which many of us have friends in as you probably figured that out already.


I believe in "Evil, Bad, Ungodly fantasy science and maths", so I am undoubtedly wrong to you.
Joined: Oct 2004
Posts: 51
P
Member
Offline
Member
P
Joined: Oct 2004
Posts: 51
Have they checked to make sure which direction the detected neutrino was travelling?

Joined: Aug 2010
Posts: 3,570
B
Megastar
Offline
Megastar
B
Joined: Aug 2010
Posts: 3,570
Originally Posted By: Planko
Have they checked to make sure which direction the detected neutrino was travelling?


I assume you are thinking about the question of which way it might have been travelling through time. If it was going backwards in time it would be observed at Gran Sasso first, then at CERN. It's not as straightforward as that, though. To be observed at all, the two time frames would somehow have to co-incide.


There never was nothing.
Joined: Aug 2010
Posts: 3,570
B
Megastar
Offline
Megastar
B
Joined: Aug 2010
Posts: 3,570
BTW, the thread "Communication across time" contains a discussion of this sort of problem.


There never was nothing.
Joined: May 2011
Posts: 2,819
O
Orac Offline OP
Megastar
OP Offline
Megastar
O
Joined: May 2011
Posts: 2,819
Okay I have read and discussed superluminal nuetrinos to death over the last week .. so what have I learnt and what do I think.

Well to me the result is an odd ball and it doesn't sit well with any of the predicted theories .... but I am willing to make one of two bets based on the data.

So here is my take for what it's worth to people interested.

Biggest weirdo for me is the speed variance is not effected by the energy levels of the nuetrinos. The energy of the neutrinos have a fairly wide spread so I would expect the speed to vary but no such dependency was observed. Most physical effects you could imagine would have an energy dependence of some sort, okay it may be so small we can't see it but that in itself is weird why is it so small. Even within QM effects it would expect a difference between higher energy netrinos and lower.

To me the result alone for me says there is one of two options a systemic measurement error (they made a mistake) or that the effect is outside "normal" physics of light and particles.

Such weird physics outside normal physics is known and more importantly to me it was one of the first to actually conclusively produced superluminal light => enter ... L. J. Wang, A. Kuzmich & A. Dogariu (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v406/n6793/abs/406277a0.html)

The inital reporting of this was met with howls that it had to be wrong nowdays we routinely accept it and teach it, here is a laymans version (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3077368/ns/t...ins-rules-road/).

At the time this was sort of considered a parlor trick you needed to contrive very special setups to do it and it had never been seen in nature.

Gain-assist is a constant like refractive index it does not matter what the enrgies of the particles or photons entering and the noted result would be entirely consistant with it.

Now what I am asking myself is what we are seeing a gain-assist of nuetrinos through matter (IE the earth). It's not very exciting for relativity or pseudoscience people who want superluminal speeds and GR/SR to be wrong but it is very very interesting to physicists none the less.

So my bets are down 50-50 for me

1). We have a systemic error that hasn't been identified
2). Nuetrinos see matter with a gain assist index.


I believe in "Evil, Bad, Ungodly fantasy science and maths", so I am undoubtedly wrong to you.
Joined: Aug 2010
Posts: 3,570
B
Megastar
Offline
Megastar
B
Joined: Aug 2010
Posts: 3,570
Originally Posted By: Orac
For Bill S most in QM are definitely favouring nuetrino oscillation because it's only just above the speed of light not miles above


Would the neutrino not have had to be travelling at superluminal speed from "birth"?


There never was nothing.
Joined: May 2011
Posts: 2,819
O
Orac Offline OP
Megastar
OP Offline
Megastar
O
Joined: May 2011
Posts: 2,819
Originally Posted By: Bill S.

Would the neutrino not have had to be travelling at superluminal speed from "birth"?


Yes Bill we know of no natural way that anything ever gets accelerated to it's speed ... we are the only ones who do that sort of thing :-)

Sub-Atomic and photon particles are born at whatever speed they do even if it was superluminal.

As I stated above I doubt the effect is QM because there is no energy dependancies that we can see.

We discussed that the nuetrino is thought to be two small virtual particles oscilating about a centre point. What exactly is the nature of this oscilation is the real curious part.

Now move to quantum tunneling and you will find quantun tunneling takes "no time" (http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/460/2042/499.full.pdf).

So if the oscillation is a QM tunnel effect and that tunnelling was biased in some way along the axis of the travel path the particle would appear to micro jump the width of the oscillation.

The reason it was theorized it might be superluminal is because when you measure the spin of nuetrinos they are always left handed so there is some sort of bias.

Now there is alot of "ifs" in all that.

However the one consistancy you would expect is a higher energy nuetrino by definition "spins" faster and so if the above effect was real it should tunnel more often ergo it should appear to be even faster.

The absence of that effect is what I think is compelling against this explaination. It is true perhaps the bias is so small we can't measure the different energies doing different speeds but I would need convincing on that.

There is probably one last thing to add in where do thing go when they Quantum tunnel .... well thats a whole story right there .... extra dimension, dark matter, space "bulk", they just jump ... pick any story you like or make up your own :-)


Last edited by Orac; 09/29/11 03:50 AM.

I believe in "Evil, Bad, Ungodly fantasy science and maths", so I am undoubtedly wrong to you.
Page 1 of 4 1 2 3 4

Link Copied to Clipboard
Newest Members
debbieevans, bkhj, jackk, Johnmattison, RacerGT
865 Registered Users
Sponsor

Science a GoGo's Home Page | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Contact UsokÂþ»­¾W
Features | News | Books | Physics | Space | Climate Change | Health | Technology | Natural World

Copyright © 1998 - 2016 Science a GoGo and its licensors. All rights reserved.

Powered by UBB.threads™ PHP Forum Software 7.7.5