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Subatomic particles exceed the speed of light?

emina

Devoted Cultist
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The reaction to this seems to be one of caution, but just supposing, what if...? :shock:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15017484

Speed-of-light experiments yield baffling result at LHC


Puzzling results from Cern, home of the LHC, have confounded physicists - because it appears subatomic particles have exceeded the speed of light.

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.'"
Caught speeding?

The speed of light is the Universe's ultimate speed limit, and much of modern physics - as laid out in part by Albert Einstein in his theory of relativity - depends on the idea that nothing can exceed it.

Thousands of experiments have been undertaken to measure it ever more precisely, and no result has ever spotted a particle breaking the limit.

But Dr Ereditato and his colleagues have been carrying out an experiment for the last three years that seems to suggest neutrinos have done just that.

Neutrinos come in a number of types, and have recently been seen to switch spontaneously from one type to another.

The team prepares a beam of just one type, muon neutrinos, sending them from Cern to an underground laboratory at Gran Sasso in Italy to see how many show up as a different type, tau neutrinos.

In the course of doing the experiments, the researchers noticed that the particles showed up a few billionths of a second sooner than light would over the same distance.

The team measured the travel times of neutrino bunches some 15,000 times, and have reached a level of statistical significance that in scientific circles would count as a formal discovery.

But the group understands that what are known as "systematic errors" could easily make an erroneous result look like a breaking of the ultimate speed limit, and that has motivated them to publish their measurements.

"My dream would be that another, independent experiment finds the same thing - then I would be relieved," Dr Ereditato said.

But for now, he explained, "we are not claiming things, we want just to be helped by the community in understanding our crazy result - because it is crazy".

"And of course the consequences can be very serious."
 
Are they using atomic seconds or ephemeris seconds and which did they use to measure the speed of light?
A problem arises with those who have a scientific education in that they lose the faculty to distinguish between theory and fact.
I predict that a theoretic reason will be cobbled together to account for this anomaly and all will quietly be forgotten, the holy grail of physics intact and all is well with the world. :)
 
Christ, can't you stop having a go at every available opportunity?

If they were that strung out about it, I doubt they'd be publishing their findings or inviting others to try and replicate the results.
 
The distance between the two is over 730km. And if they're wrong about the distance by about 30cm, they'll get that result.
 
BlackRiverFalls said:
Christ, can't you stop having a go at every available opportunity?

If they were that strung out about it, I doubt they'd be publishing their findings or inviting others to try and replicate the results.
No offence, but if Ghostisfort hadn't picked up on this one, I'd have been tempted to.

Reading on, it appears that some physicists predicted something like it happening, more than 25 years ago.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/sep/22/faster-than-light-particles-neutrinos

Faster than light particles found, claim scientists

Particle physicists detect neutrinos travelling faster than light, a feat forbidden by Einstein's theory of special relativity

guardian.co.uk, Ian Sample, science correspondent. 22 September 2011

....

Alan Kostelecky, an expert in the possibility of faster-than-light processes at Indiana University, said that while physicists would await confirmation of the result, it was none the less exciting.

"It's such a dramatic result it would be difficult to accept without others replicating it, but there will be enormous interest in this," he told the Guardian.

One theory Kostelecky and his colleagues put forward in 1985 predicted that neutrinos could travel faster than the speed of light by interacting with an unknown field that lurks in the vacuum.

"With this kind of background, it is not necessarily the case that the limiting speed in nature is the speed of light," he said. "It might actually be the speed of neutrinos and light goes more slowly."

Neutrinos are mysterious particles. They have a minuscule mass, no electric charge, and pass through almost any material as though it was not there.

Kostelecky said that if the result was verified – a big if – it might pave the way to a grand theory that marries gravity with quantum mechanics, a puzzle that has defied physicists for nearly a century.

"If this is confirmed, this is the first evidence for a crack in the structure of physics as we know it that could provide a clue to constructing such a unified theory," Kostelecky said.

Heinrich Paes, a physicist at Dortmund University, has developed another theory that could explain the result. The neutrinos may be taking a shortcut through space-time, by travelling from Cern to Gran Sasso through extra dimensions. "That can make it look like a particle has gone faster than the speed of light when it hasn't," he said.

But Susan Cartwright, senior lecturer in particle astrophysics at Sheffield University, said: "Neutrino experimental results are not historically all that reliable, so the words 'don't hold your breath' do spring to mind when you hear very counter-intuitive results like this."

Teams at two experiments known as T2K in Japan and MINOS near Chicago in the US will now attempt to replicate the finding. The MINOS experiment saw hints of neutrinos moving at faster than the speed of light in 2007 but has yet to confirm them.
Keeps things interesting.
 
The figures:
Researchers on the Opera (Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus) experiment recorded the arrival times of ghostly subatomic particles called neutrinos sent from Cern on a 730km journey through the Earth to the Gran Sasso lab.

The trip would take a beam of light 2.4 milliseconds to complete, but after running the experiment for three years and timing the arrival of 15,000 neutrinos, the scientists discovered that the particles arrived at Gran Sasso sixty billionths of a second earlier, with an error margin of plus or minus 10 billionths of a second.

The measurement amounts to the neutrinos travelling faster than the speed of light by a fraction of 20 parts per million. Since the speed of light is 299,792,458 metres per second, the neutrinos were evidently travelling at 299,798,454 metres per second.

The result is so unlikely that even the research team is being cautious with its interpretation. Physicists said they would be sceptical of the finding until other laboratories confirmed the result.

...

Despite the marginal increase on the speed of light observed by Ereditato's team, the result is intriguing because its statistical significance, the measure by which particle physics discoveries stand and fall, is so strong.

Physicists can claim a discovery if the chances of their result being a fluke of statistics are greater than five standard deviations, or less than one in a few million. The Gran Sasso team's result is six standard deviations.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/ ... -neutrinos
 
This result shows that the Cern neutrinos seem to have travelled 1/40,000 times faster than light.

If neutrinos consistently travel faster-than-light, then the neutrinos from the 1987 supernova in the LMC would have got here in 1983.

They didn't, so that forces one of 3 conclusions;
1/ the neutrinos observed in 1987 didn't come from that supernova event;
2/ the neutrinos observed by Cern are special, or 'magic' neutrinos different from those emitted by the 1987 supernova
3/there is some systematic error.

I'd cautiously favour 3 at the moment, but it would be interesting to be proved wrong. Communication at speeds faster than light can cause some interesting effects with respect to causality; once that is possible, all bets are off.
 
Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.
Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

maybe neutrinos are science's bad news?
 
Mal_Content said:
maybe neutrinos are science's bad news?
Could be good news, if it leads to a better understanding of physics.

But since the rest of physics hangs together pretty well, I'm with eburacum on a 'systematic error'. If it is, then uncovering it will either lead to improved experimental techniques, or perhaps to some minor, unsuspected, branch of science.

Much as I'd like to see a starship or a time machine being built next week, I expect that would be the most unlikely outcome! 8)
 
How exciting!

However, it is more likely that an error occurred in an experiment that spans the length of a country! Good on them for opening up their data to other scientists to see if they can figure out what the hell is going on. Science done right (and it is possible to do it wrong) is a self correcting mechanism, and we'll see that in action here hopefully.

Here's a nice piece from the Bad Astronomer on this: http://mblogs.discovermagazine.com/bada ... own-folks/
 
If the particles showed up before they did the experiment - then's the time to worry.
 
One of the comments on the Badastronomy link echoes something I thought of:
Count me in in that group that suspects strongly that they’ll find some fault in equipment, components or computation (or, indeed something forehead-slappingly doh! like forgetting that the Earth is curved when they assumed a straight line distance from the gps measurement – which come to think about it would mean they thought the distance was further and the neutrinos faster than expected).

Also count me in that group that really, really hopes they’re right. For all the dedicated and hard work done, we’ve not really seen a proper breakthrough in physics – not one that’s been experimentally shown to be true rather than string-theory philosophising – for the better part of a century now. Plus I want my warp drive.
:D
 
BlackRiverFalls said:
Christ, can't you stop having a go at every available opportunity?

If they were that strung out about it, I doubt they'd be publishing their findings or inviting others to try and replicate the results.

I don't have a go at every opportunity or I would be typing 24/7.
Also, I understand that publication is the normal procedure for these things?
Is there more, hidden? I think we should be told. :)
 
This story has certainly grabbed the public imagination.

In the top ten of the BBC's Most Popular (read) stories, three are on this topic!
 
Light speed: Flying into fantasy
By Jason Palmer, Science and technology reporter, BBC News

...

"The scientists are right to be extremely cautious about interpreting these findings," said Jim Al-Khalili, a physicist from the University of Surrey, who suggested that a simple error in the measurement is probably the source of all the fuss.

But he has gone further.

"So let me put my money where my mouth is: if the Cern experiment proves to be correct and neutrinos have broken the speed of light, I will eat my boxer shorts on live TV." :D

...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15034414
 
rynner2 said:
"So let me put my money where my mouth is: if the Cern experiment proves to be correct and neutrinos have broken the speed of light, I will eat my boxer shorts on live TV." :D
Oh I really really really hope he has to do that.
 
Ronson8 said:
rynner2 said:
"So let me put my money where my mouth is: if the Cern experiment proves to be correct and neutrinos have broken the speed of light, I will eat my boxer shorts on live TV." :D
Oh I really really really hope he has to do that.

Yes, I look forward to seeing that happening! :D
 
Mythopoeika said:
Ronson8 said:
rynner2 said:
"So let me put my money where my mouth is: if the Cern experiment proves to be correct and neutrinos have broken the speed of light, I will eat my boxer shorts on live TV." :D
Oh I really really really hope he has to do that.

Yes, I look forward to seeing that happening! :D

I never had Rynner pegged as a boxers man.
 
No offence, but if Ghostisfort hadn't picked up on this one, I'd have been tempted to.

I was referring to general scientist bashing, not the discussion of the neutrino story as such.
 
So the neutrino leaves.
The barman says 'We don't serve faster-than-light particles here.'
A neutrino walks into a bar.
 
A neutrino walks into a bar.
The barman says 'Blimey! You're early!"
 
..and the neutrino says "Did I leave my hat in here tomorrow?"

I'm kind of relishing the image of various eminent minds, turning to feverishly-chalked blackboards in dusty University rooms the world over, and saying "ermmm..." :).

Thing is, would CERN announce these findings unless they were absolutely, 100% sure of what they were saying?
 
Well they're certain enough that they've checked for any errors.

I doubt CERN would release this to the scientific community and public if it was a simple case that they'd forgotten to carry a 1 or something.

It's really astounding how many people on this board are saying "it's probably a mistake, physics can't be wrong!!!!"

We're Forteans, of course science if wrong!
 
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