FTL!!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15017484
There have been a few articles of this ilk lately; looks like the standard model could be in trouble.
That's interesting. I wonder what the LHC uses to detect neutrinos. We'll definitely see some more experiments along this line to see if they can confirm the data, or if there was some kind of experimental error.
I dont know enough to know how significant particles traveling faster than light is to our current understanding. Can someone help with that. Paging Hamilcar...
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on September 22, 2011, 12:57:45 PM
FTL!!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15017484
There have been a few articles of this ilk lately; looks like the standard model could be in trouble.
Much more than the standard model would be in trouble. All of physics since 1905 will need to be rethought if light speed is not as we understand it. This is, however, not the first time light speed seems to have been exceeded. Speculation has been that apparent breaking of the speed limit is related to Quantum Entanglement (which, bizarrely seems to transmit information at infinite speed).
This is one of those Fossile Rabbit in the Pre-Cambrian moments. If true, this can potentially completely change physics.
my understand of our current understanding is that nothing is supposed to go faster then light. Nature is so against breaking that law that as you approach the speed of light it slows down time so that you can't go faster.
Ah, the Skorzeny effect: showing up unexpectedly at Gran Sasso.
Quote from: HVC on September 22, 2011, 01:32:57 PM
my understand of our current understanding is that nothing is supposed to go faster then light. Nature is so against breaking that law that as you approach the speed of light it slows down time so that you can't go faster.
To be technical, nothing can
appear to go faster than light; this includes a thing observing itself going faster than light. But yes, basically that is true. However Quantum Entanglement seems to suggest that information might move faster than light.
Quote from: HVC on September 22, 2011, 01:32:57 PM
my understand of our current understanding is that nothing is supposed to go faster then light. Nature is so against breaking that law that as you approach the speed of light it slows down time so that you can't go faster.
Special relativity allows for superluminal particles with mass, but noone has ever detected a tachyon. Tau neutrinos are definitely sub-luminal particles, as is every other particle with a mass that we've detected.
Quote from: Viking on September 22, 2011, 01:48:56 PM
Quote from: HVC on September 22, 2011, 01:32:57 PM
my understand of our current understanding is that nothing is supposed to go faster then light. Nature is so against breaking that law that as you approach the speed of light it slows down time so that you can't go faster.
To be technical, nothing can appear to go faster than light; this includes a thing observing itself going faster than light. But yes, basically that is true. However Quantum Entanglement seems to suggest that information might move faster than light.
what does information mean in this context?
It means we have to remeasure all the stars to find out how far away they are all over again.
Quote from: Viking on September 22, 2011, 01:48:56 PM
However Quantum Entanglement seems to suggest that information might move faster than light.
Are you sure about that? Wiki's description of quantum entanglement is that no information is conveyed.
Quote from: Viking on September 22, 2011, 01:32:18 PM
All of physics since 1905 will need to be rethought if light speed is not as we understand it.
Why is that?
Quote from: Razgovory on September 22, 2011, 02:06:11 PM
It means we have to remeasure all the stars to find out how far away they are all over again.
That'll take a really long measuring tape. :huh:
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 22, 2011, 02:08:06 PM
Quote from: Viking on September 22, 2011, 01:32:18 PM
All of physics since 1905 will need to be rethought if light speed is not as we understand it.
Why is that?
no more time travel? :D
Ya, i'm not sure either. the possibility of things moving faster then light shouldn't effect the study or knowledge of stuff we know isn't moving faster then light.
Quote from: Fate on September 22, 2011, 02:07:58 PM
Quote from: Viking on September 22, 2011, 01:48:56 PM
However Quantum Entanglement seems to suggest that information might move faster than light.
Are you sure about that? Wiki's description of quantum entanglement is that no information is conveyed.
I'm not sure, that is why I hedge my comments with "seems" and "might".
A good thing Einstein didn't get the relativity Nobel.
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 22, 2011, 02:08:06 PM
Quote from: Viking on September 22, 2011, 01:32:18 PM
All of physics since 1905 will need to be rethought if light speed is not as we understand it.
Why is that?
That's when Einstein had the clever idea that there was a speed limit and that limit was light speed.
Quote from: Viking on September 22, 2011, 02:36:37 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 22, 2011, 02:08:06 PM
Quote from: Viking on September 22, 2011, 01:32:18 PM
All of physics since 1905 will need to be rethought if light speed is not as we understand it.
Why is that?
That's when Einstein had the clever idea that there was a speed limit and that limit was light speed.
I undertand that but why does the fact that some particles travel faster change everything we have known about physics since 1905?
Quote from: Barrister on September 22, 2011, 02:10:23 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on September 22, 2011, 02:06:11 PM
It means we have to remeasure all the stars to find out how far away they are all over again.
That'll take a really long measuring tape. :huh:
The way we judge how far away stars are and how big they are is based on relativity. How fast light travels, and how much it bends around really big objects.
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 22, 2011, 02:40:17 PM
Quote from: Viking on September 22, 2011, 02:36:37 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 22, 2011, 02:08:06 PM
Quote from: Viking on September 22, 2011, 01:32:18 PM
All of physics since 1905 will need to be rethought if light speed is not as we understand it.
Why is that?
That's when Einstein had the clever idea that there was a speed limit and that limit was light speed.
I undertand that but why does the fact that some particles travel faster change everything we have known about physics since 1905?
Because all of the explanations we have about how things smaller than protons behave begin with the assumption that the speed of light in a vacuum is constant and the universal speed limit. It would be like trying to explain the movement of the plants without having a theory of gravity.
Quote from: Viking on September 22, 2011, 03:17:40 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 22, 2011, 02:40:17 PM
Quote from: Viking on September 22, 2011, 02:36:37 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on September 22, 2011, 02:08:06 PM
Quote from: Viking on September 22, 2011, 01:32:18 PM
All of physics since 1905 will need to be rethought if light speed is not as we understand it.
Why is that?
That's when Einstein had the clever idea that there was a speed limit and that limit was light speed.
I undertand that but why does the fact that some particles travel faster change everything we have known about physics since 1905?
Because all of the explanations we have about how things smaller than protons behave begin with the assumption that the speed of light in a vacuum is constant and the universal speed limit. It would be like trying to explain the movement of the plants without having a theory of gravity.
Plants are stationary.
Quote from: Viking on September 22, 2011, 03:17:40 PMIt would be like trying to explain the movement of the plants without having a theory of gravity.
How did we get onto gardening?
Quote from: Warspite on September 22, 2011, 03:19:34 PM
Quote from: Viking on September 22, 2011, 03:17:40 PMIt would be like trying to explain the movement of the plants without having a theory of gravity.
How did we get onto gardening?
One step away from steaks soon.
:frusty:
meh....
physics since 1905 rely just as much for meaning as the word "planets" relies on meaning on the letter "e"
I think that analogy works just as well...
On the other hand it might just be a problem with equipment. I imagine that even if the results bear out relativity still is party true. We know our knowledge of the universe is flawed, as little thingies and big thingies don't work together very well in our current theories. Not to mention the fact that the universe acts like it has more mass then it does.
That is why they remain cautious, as this definitely needs to be replicated.
I blame the Italians for this :mad:
I think you're overstating things, Viking. Even if this data turns out to be accurate under certain circumstances, the model would still hold up for the majority of phenomena (or so it would appear, based on the apparent strength under experiment of c). It would be a lot like the way that Newton's gravitation still holds up rather well for some work, while in other areas general and special relativity and quantum mechanics have overtaken it.
Quote from: Neil on September 22, 2011, 04:51:40 PM
I think you're overstating things, Viking. Even if this data turns out to be accurate under certain circumstances, the model would still hold up for the majority of phenomena (or so it would appear, based on the apparent strength under experiment of c). It would be a lot like the way that Newton's gravitation still holds up rather well for some work, while in other areas general and special relativity and quantum mechanics have overtaken it.
Well, yes, it could still work. But, in a sense, it would be like the situation between Copernicus and Kepler, where Copernicus was right and the Earth orbited the Sun, but the Ptolemaic system was better at describing the course of the planets. Relativity would still work as a tool, but it would not be correct description of the cosmos.
Quote from: Viking on September 22, 2011, 05:03:15 PM
Quote from: Neil on September 22, 2011, 04:51:40 PM
I think you're overstating things, Viking. Even if this data turns out to be accurate under certain circumstances, the model would still hold up for the majority of phenomena (or so it would appear, based on the apparent strength under experiment of c). It would be a lot like the way that Newton's gravitation still holds up rather well for some work, while in other areas general and special relativity and quantum mechanics have overtaken it.
Well, yes, it could still work. But, in a sense, it would be like the situation between Copernicus and Kepler, where Copernicus was right and the Earth orbited the Sun, but the Ptolemaic system was better at describing the course of the planets. Relativity would still work as a tool, but it would not be correct description of the cosmos.
All we really have are models and tools, and if they describe phenomena, then they are correct. It's not as if relativity really works on quantum scales anyways, so I'm not sure that it's even really affected by this discovery. That's the whole reason that we invented quantum mechanics in the first place.
Still, I'm not going to panic until some other teams start spotting superluminals.
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/220911/full/news.2011.554.html
QuotePublished online 22 September 2011 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2011.554
News
Particles break light-speed limit
Neutrino results challenge cornerstone of modern physics.
Geoff Brumfiel
An Italian experiment has unveiled evidence that fundamental particles known as neutrinos can travel faster than light. Other researchers are cautious about the result, but if it stands further scrutiny, the finding would overturn the most fundamental rule of modern physics — that nothing travels faster than 299,792,458 metres per second.
The experiment is called OPERA (Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus), and lies 1,400 metres underground in the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy. It is designed to study a beam of neutrinos coming from CERN, Europe's premier high-energy physics laboratory located 730 kilometres away near Geneva, Switzerland. Neutrinos are fundamental particles that are electrically neutral, rarely interact with other matter, and have a vanishingly small mass. But they are all around us — the Sun produces so many neutrinos as a by-product of nuclear reactions that many billions pass through your eye every second.
The 1,800-tonne OPERA detector is a complex array of electronics and photographic emulsion plates, but the new result is simple — the neutrinos are arriving 60 nanoseconds faster than the speed of light allows. "We are shocked," says Antonio Ereditato, a physicist at the University of Bern in Switzerland and OPERA's spokesman.
Breaking the law
The idea that nothing can travel faster than light in a vacuum is the cornerstone of Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity, which itself forms the foundation of modern physics. If neutrinos are travelling faster than light speed, then one of the most fundamental assumptions of science — that the rules of physics are the same for all observers — would be invalidated. "If it's true, then it's truly extraordinary," says John Ellis, a theoretical physicist at CERN.
Ereditato says that he is confident enough in the new result to make it public. The researchers claim to have measured the 730-kilometre trip between CERN and its detector to within 20 centimetres. They can measure the time of the trip to within 10 nanoseconds, and they have seen the effect in more than 16,000 events measured over the past two years. Given all this, they believe the result has a significance of six-sigma — the physicists' way of saying it is certainly correct. The group will present their results tomorrow at CERN, and a preprint of their results will be posted on the physics website ArXiv.org.
At least one other experiment has seen a similar effect before, albeit with a much lower confidence level. In 2007, the Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search (MINOS) experiment in Minnesota saw neutrinos from the particle-physics facility Fermilab in Illinois arriving slightly ahead of schedule. At the time, the MINOS team downplayed the result, in part because there was too much uncertainty in the detector's exact position to be sure of its significance, says Jenny Thomas, a spokeswoman for the experiment. Thomas says that MINOS was already planning more accurate follow-up experiments before the latest OPERA result. "I'm hoping that we could get that going and make a measurement in a year or two," she says.
Reasonable doubt
If MINOS were to confirm OPERA's find, the consequences would be enormous. "If you give up the speed of light, then the construction of special relativity falls down," says Antonino Zichichi, a theoretical physicist and emeritus professor at the University of Bologna, Italy. Zichichi speculates that the 'superluminal' neutrinos detected by OPERA could be slipping through extra dimensions in space, as predicted by theories such as string theory.
Ellis, however, remains sceptical. Many experiments have looked for particles travelling faster than light speed in the past and have come up empty-handed, he says. Most troubling for OPERA is a separate analysis of a pulse of neutrinos from a nearby supernova known as 1987a. If the speeds seen by OPERA were achievable by all neutrinos, then the pulse from the supernova would have shown up years earlier than the exploding star's flash of light; instead, they arrived within hours of each other. "It's difficult to reconcile with what OPERA is seeing," Ellis says.
Ereditato says that he welcomes scepticism from outsiders, but adds that the researchers have been unable to find any other explanation for their remarkable result. "Whenever you are in these conditions, then you have to go to the community," he says.
Prepare for an onslaught of crazy Christians attacking science based on the changing data, especially as it applies to c and radiometric dating.
Quote from: Neil on September 22, 2011, 01:23:29 PM
I wonder what the LHC uses to detect neutrinos.
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.symmetrymagazine.org%2Fbreaking%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2010%2F05%2Fopera.jpg&hash=eb84fa9af3f212346fef7ff7e517e1b6dbc3ca72)
This thing.
Super-K looks a lot cooler and sciency.
That's a lot smaller than the older detectors. This is a fine future we live in.
Well, it's built to detect particle collision-resultant neutrinos from Cern. I don't think it can reliably detect, say, solar or cosmic ray neutrinos (maybe it can, I'm not sure). Ice Cube, by contrast, is huge, at least in the sense that it utilizes a very large volume of preexisting transparent ice. Still pretty cool, yeah.
All I'm saying is that if I were going to set a movie or a comic book in a neutrino detector, I'd film at or draw the Mt. Kamioka facility.
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.universetoday.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2008%2F05%2Fneutrino.jpg&hash=cfc6eae7620b69039f88856d1d55cf3fa7ea2d24)
That's cinematic right there. As opposed to the stockroom in a grocery store look of OPERA.
The bartender says, 'I'm sorry, we don't serve neutrinos in here'. A neutrino walks into a bar.
Quote from: Warspite on September 23, 2011, 11:23:40 AM
The bartender says, 'I'm sorry, we don't serve neutrinos in here'. A neutrino walks into a bar.
:lol:
Quote from: Warspite on September 23, 2011, 11:23:40 AM
The bartender says, 'I'm sorry, we don't serve neutrinos in here'. A neutrino walks into a bar.
:lol:
More on the story.
Quote
Test confirms particles appear to travel faster than the speed of light
(CNN) – Travel faster than the speed of light? Really?
Back in September, scientists found that tiny particles called neutrinos appeared to do just that, defying Einstein's special theory of relativity.
It could be a fluke, but now the same experiment has replicated the result. It's not hard proof yet, though; other groups still need to confirm these findings.
Physicists with the OPERA (Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus) experiment said in September that neutrinos sent about 454 miles (730 kilometers) from CERN in Switzerland arrived at Italy's Gran Sasso National Laboratory a fraction of a second sooner than they should have according to Einstein's theory.
Other scientists were skeptical, raising questions about possible flaws in the study.
So OPERA scientists rechecked parts of the experiment to take into account suggestions from their critics. They announced Friday that the new test confirms the initial findings.
"This result confirms that neutrinos arrived at Gran Sasso lab 62.1 nanoseconds in advance with respect to the time computed assuming the speed of light in vacuum," according to Lucia Votano, director of INFN-Gran Sasso Laboratory.
The OPERA team's initial result was based on observing more than 15,000 bunches of neutrinos, or electrically neutral subatomic particles. But the scientists did not track any one specific neutrino. Instead, the neutrinos were produced in long pulses that lasted about 10 millionths of a second.
"Although this sounds short, it is hundreds of times longer than the 60 nanoseconds early arrival time of the neutrinos at the Gran Sasso in Italy," said Andy Cohen, a professor of physics at Boston University, who is not involved in OPERA.
This means that when a neutrino arrived at Gran Sasso there was no way to know exactly when it was produced during the pulse, preventing an accurate measurement of its speed.
The new study used shorter pulses making it easier to know more precisely when an individual neutrino was generated.
"They did this for only 20 neutrinos," Cohen said, "but since the speed of each one is known, this leads to a very precise result, confirming that the neutrinos appear to be arriving 60 nanoseconds earlier than expected."
But don't throw your physics book just yet. Cohen said there are other potential issues with the experiment that haven't been addressed yet. "While this result is a very significant improvement over the previous measurement, many of the concerns that have been raised about possible sources of uncertainty remain.
"We should probably remain skeptical until we have confirmation from other experiments," he said.
Votana agrees and said the OPERA measurement needs to be confirmed by independent scientists. Even if the results are confirmed, we won't toss out all of Einstein's theory. A broader theory would be generated that would include Einstein's theory, Votana said.
Scientists at Fermilab in Illinois and in Japan are expected to try to replicate the findings.
"If the neutrinos are truly traveling faster than light this would require profound changes in the way we understand space and time," Cohen said
I want to learn how to bend reality.
Quote from: Siege on November 19, 2011, 10:48:20 PM
I want to learn how to bend reality.
Easy enough. Just remember: there is no spoon.
Quote from: Darth Wagtaros on November 19, 2011, 11:01:47 PM
Quote from: Siege on November 19, 2011, 10:48:20 PM
I want to learn how to bend reality.
Easy enough. Just remember: there is no spoon.
Drunk boy: Do not try and drink the beer. That's impossible. Instead... only try to realize the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Drunk boy: There is no beer in the bottle.
Neo: There is no beer in the bottle?
Drunk boy: Then you'll see, that it is not the beer what you drink, it is only yourself.
Quote from: Warspite on September 23, 2011, 11:23:40 AM
The bartender says, 'I'm sorry, we don't serve neutrinos in here'. A neutrino walks into a bar.
A neutrino enters a bar and asks how much they charge for a drink there. The bartender's answer, "For you, my friend, no charge".