Interesting Science News (Faster Than Light Neutrino)

[jyl]

Even with all the grains of salt that it deserves, this is fascinating.

"If it’s true, it will mark the biggest discovery in physics in the past half-century: Elusive, nearly massive [NOTE: should say "massless"] subatomic particles called neutrinos appear to travel just faster than light, a team of physicists in Europe reports . . .

In fact, the result would be so revolutionary that it’s sure to be met with skepticism all over the world . . .

. . . OPERA detects neutrinos that are fired through the earth from the European particle physics laboratory, CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland. As the particles hardly interact at all with other matter, they stream right through the ground, with only a very few striking the material in the detector and making a noticeable shower of particles.

. . . researchers timed the roughly 16,000 neutrinos that started at CERN and registered a hit in the detector. They found that, on average, the neutrinos made the 730-kilometer, 2.43-millisecond trip roughly 60 nanoseconds faster than expected if they were traveling at light speed . . . Ereditato says the uncertainty in the measurement is 10 nanoseconds.

. . . OPERA researchers are simply presenting a curious result that they cannot explain and asking the community to scrutinize it. “We are forced to say something,” he says. “We could not sweep it under the carpet . . .

Obviously, physicists will tear this data and the experiment apart, and do multiple independent experiments.

The article goes on to quote a physicist conducting a similar experiment in Japan as saying the electronics and GPS signals used in the timing method is a potential source of "tens of nanoseconds" in measurement error.

Can Neutrinos Move Faster Than Light? | Wired Science | Wired.com

This got me wondering, how do you measure extremely short time periods given the time delays inherent in electronic devices?

If an electrical signal moves through a circuit at appx lightspeed (as we were all taught in school), that is about 300 millimeters per nanosecond. So every meter of wire is a 0.3 nanosecond delay. Of course you'd try to account for signalling delays in the measurement. But are there processors involved in detecting and recording the event? If the processor runs at 1 Ghz (one clock cycle per nanosecond), that would introduce significant delay, wouldn’t it? Processors also have lots of circuitry, e.g. an Intel core i7 chip is about 15 millimeters per side, what is the signal path through the processor and what delay does that mean? And the memory, the bus, I/O, etc? And are those delays predictable, or variable?

Anyone know?

[VINMAN]

Neutrino? Thought that what a brand of dog food..

[UconnTim97]

pshaw, I drive a 944, that's nothing.

[M.D. Holloway]

True but wouldn;t they take they slight delay into account? Prolly a metric to english thing...

[Tervuren]

Originally Posted by LubeMaster77

True but wouldn;t they take they slight delay into account? Prolly a metric to english thing...

GPS satellites are not just factoring in the difference caused by the transmission distance, but even relativity as it relates to how fast they are going compared to the other objects they are communicating with.

If they can do that, I'm sure they are accounting for the rest.

[imcarthur]

Ian

[KaptKaos]

So what if Einstein was wrong and matter can travel faster than light? What then? That changes things tremendously.

[jluetjen]

That could be the biggest discovery since... cold fusion!!!

[sammyg2]

Chuck Norris is gonna be pissed, he invented the theory of relativity.

Later Einstein claimed it was his idea so chuck roundhouse kicked him and turned him into Steven Hawking. You don't want to piss Mr. Norris off.

[RWebb]

Originally Posted by KaptKaos

So what if Einstein was wrong and matter can travel faster than light? What then? That changes things tremendously.

the universe would be inside out & upside down

however, we on Earth would notice nothing

[M.D. Holloway]

So what are the nuetrinos made of? I bet thats some fast stuff!

[tcar]

Originally Posted by LubeMaster77

So what are the nuetrinos made of? I bet thats some fast stuff!

Neutrinos sort of slivers of atoms.

They have almost no mass.

Come in 3 'flavors'.

Some think they can travel at different speeds, but this is the first suggestion that they can beat 186k miles / sec +.

Many think there is an error somewhere in the calculations.

[red-beard]

Yeah, but even if we perfect FTL, we're still gonna get groped by the TSA...

[RWebb]

Neutrinos are made from strings (well maybe -- at least until today).


Neutrinos are cousins of leptons -- but are not "kissin' cousins" cuz they interact weakly (not weekly, ok?).

Well, with that, I think I will go eat a quark, even tho my name is not Muster Mark.

[slakjaw]

Originally Posted by kaptkaos

so what if einstein was wrong and matter can travel faster than light? What then? That changes things tremendously.

+1

[KaptKaos]

Originally Posted by tcar

Neutrinos sort of slivers of atoms.

They have almost no mass.

It's the almost part that's the problem. IIRC, Einstein postulated that matter would change to energy as it approached the speed of light. Seems like we may have proof that it doesn't.

[KaptKaos]

Originally Posted by RWebb

Neutrinos are made from strings (well maybe -- at least until today).

Hawking doesn't think so.

[KaptKaos]

Originally Posted by RWebb

the universe would be inside out & upside down

however, we on Earth would notice nothing

But I thought that the speed of light was "settled science"?

[RWebb]

who told you that?

[KaptKaos]

Originally Posted by RWebb

who told you that?

The guys at the the University of East Anglia.