The speed of light may have been broken.

[OnlyMe]

Minos is expecting to have an upgrade running with new results in 2014; i.e. in 3 years. What they are doing now is going back through their old data to check again for FTL neutrinos, and they expect those results in 6 months.

This is what I had understood.

However, to be fair, I did dig up this interesting paper:

http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/9505117v1

“If superluminal particles couple to ordinary matter, they will not in general be found traveling at a speed higher than c (except near the vertex of accelerator experiments). At superluminal speed, such particles are expected to release ”Cherenkov” radiation (i.e. ordinary particles, whose emission in vacuum is kinematically allowed in such case) until they will be decelerated to a speed v ≤ c”

This is more along the lines of one of my "speculations" as to what "could" be occurring. In fact if this were to be the case even the AN 1987A neutrinos could have started out at >c and shed velocity. At that distance we would be unable to tell.

Either way, it shows how little we still actually know about particle physics and neutrinos. For quite a long while, CERN was insisting that the Higgs Boson was an almost certainty, and now that quest is quietly abandoned. What next? And, can we 'know' whether anything new we create in particle physics, not done in nature, is safe?

I think we actually know quite a bit about particle physics. I don't believe that everything we think we know is an accurate description of what is, but we are talking about aspects of the world that are several orders of magnitude below the threshold of direct observation.

In any event if the CERN data proves up even as an initially >c velocity that rapidly degrades to c or below, it will have some important implications for physics. Perhaps initially more so for QM than for GR and SR, but ultimately I think how we understand both will be influenced.

It seems that at least to some extent the discussion here is reaching some point of consensus, anyway.

 

[AlphaNumeric]

Since Motor Daddy seems unwilling (and likely unable) to retort my response to his box thing perhaps he could at least give a clear overview of the scenario and why he thinks there's a problem with relativity in the scenario. Please be as quantitative as possible, giving a clear description/definition of the setup and the supposed derivation of the problem.

He's never had an issue stating it in the post, I just want to make sure we're all on the same page.

 

[billvon]

Say we took piece of string and made a sine wave on the table. After the sine wave is made, we will measure the length of the wave. Next, we pull the string tight and measure that straight length. This stretch length of string will be longer than the wavelength of string in the form of a sine wave.

That's because when you plot a sine wave the X axis is time and the Y axis is magnitude. In reality there is no photon 'displacement' in the Y axis. The only time you can see any sort of orthogonal axis effect is when the EM wave interacts with something like a charged particle (which is where you can observe effects like polarization.)

 

[rpenner]

Previously discussed:
Luis Gonzalez-Mestres Properties of a possible class of particles able to travel faster than light (Submitted on 25 May 1995)

A more recent pre-print by the same author Astrophysical consequences of the OPERA superluminal neutrino (Submitted on 29 Sep 2011)

A simple discussion of the recent OPERA result on the apparent critical speed of the muon neutrino is presented. We point out in particular some of the possible consistency problems of such an interpretation of the OPERA data with respect to well-established astrophysical observations.

Andrew G. Cohen and Sheldon L. Glashow New Constraints on Neutrino Velocities (Submitted on 29 Sep 2011)

The OPERA collaboration has claimed that muon neutrinos with mean energy of 17.5 GeV travel 730 km from CERN to the Gran Sasso at a speed exceeding that of light by about 7.5 km/s or 25 ppm. However, we show that such superluminal neutrinos would lose energy rapidly via the bremsstrahlung of electron-positron pairs ($$\nu\rightarrow \nu+e^-+e^+$$). For the claimed superluminal neutrino velocity and at the stated mean neutrino energy, we find that most of the neutrinos would have suffered several pair emissions en route, causing the beam to be depleted of higher energy neutrinos. Thus we refute the superluminal interpretation of the OPERA result. Furthermore, we appeal to Super-Kamiokande and IceCube data to establish strong new limits on the superluminal propagation of high-energy neutrinos.

A blog entry (possibly by Michael Schmitt) covers the above above pre-print and many others. Theories about Superluminal Neutrinos

Davide Castelvecchi covers this pre-print in a Scientific American blog entry entitled Superluminal Neutrinos Would Wimp Out En Route

 

[keith1]

...the nearly identical experiment was done with the Minos detector at Fermilab in which a neutrino beam traveled ~750 km underground, arriving at a detector in a deep mine at very close to c...

I would like to add two apparent differences in the two experiments:

• CERN/Gran Sasso's particle pathway geology consists of a high massive metamorphic structure. Fermi/Soudan pathway is of a lesser massive content.
  (see: Bedrock Geology of France, Italy, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois)
  
• Direction of pathways generally opposite of each other--CERN/GranSasso favoring the pathway direction of Earth rotation.

 

[Gravage]

Well, yeah. We just did.

I'm not really interested in experiments, I rather want to see it detected it in nature/universe, and so far neutrino's speed in nature/universe has always been measured/detected one notch below light speed, so this experiment doesn't mean much.

 

[Gravage]

But not all neutrinos are created equally and faster than light is just another flavor.

But in vacuum of the universe, they all travel at the same speed (what has been measured/detected so far).

 

[Saint]

Why not CERN repeat the experiment immediately?
Is it very difficult to setup the experiment?

 

[AlphaNumeric]

Why not CERN repeat the experiment immediately?
Is it very difficult to setup the experiment?

Yes, neutrinos are very difficult to detect and the data involved takes years to collect and analyse. It's not a matter of flicking a switch and some numbers being printed out. There's huge amounts of data which must be processed.

 

[OnlyMe]

Why not CERN repeat the experiment immediately?
Is it very difficult to setup the experiment?

To Alpha's comments I would add that the CERN/GRAN SASSO group is continuing to collect new data. At least that was my understanding. And as Alpha pointed out the process does require "time".

 

[Saint]

Can someone teach me what is the measurement unit for mass of electron, neutrino etc?
We don't express it in kg ?

 

[OnlyMe]

Can someone teach me what is the measurement unit for mass of electron, neutrino etc?
We don't express it in kg ?

Saint, this can get confusing, but all the information is available through Wiki.

The electron mass, the mass of all subatomic particles for that matter, can be expressed as either eV (electron volts) or as amu (atomic mass units).

1 amu (atomic mass unit) = 1.66054 x 10-24 grams and 1 eV (electron volts) = approximately 1.602×10−19joule. The joule is an energy measurement.

From there the electron mass can be expressed as either, 0.511 MeV/c2 or 5.486 x 10-4 amu. Either way it is very small compared to everyday standards of mass and "weight", though weight is a bad way to think of it.

The neutrino has no firmly defined mass. It is considered to be at least 100,000 times smaller than an electron. It is so small for a long time it was thought to have no mass. Still there are some physicists who would say it has no mass but they are becoming fewer as time passes and experience grows.

It is not an easy thing to describe, electron mass. Try reading the Wiki pages on electron mass, atomic mass units and electron volts.

 

[billvon]

I'm not really interested in experiments, I rather want to see it detected it in nature/universe

That's what an experiment is. We've been detecting natural neutrinos since 1942. Someone else here related the experiment involving neutrino production from the supernova called SN1987A.

and so far neutrino's speed in nature/universe has always been measured/detected one notch below light speed, so this experiment doesn't mean much.

The SN1978A experiment led to a speed estimate very close to lightspeed.

 

[Walter L. Wagner]

We've been detecting natural neutrinos since 1942.

Actually, the first detection of a neutrino was after nuclear reactors were developed, and a detector placed adjacent to a running reactor. That was circa 1956:

http://www.ps.uci.edu/physics/news/nuexpt.html

 

[Gravage]

That's what an experiment is. We've been detecting natural neutrinos since 1942. Someone else here related the experiment involving neutrino production from the supernova called SN1987A.



The SN1978A experiment led to a speed estimate very close to lightspeed.

I don't understand it at all. An experiment doesn't always show what happens in nature, this is much like comparing human and cyborg, they are both made of atoms, but they also both have differences. In experiment you artificially fire sub-atomic particles, while in nature/universe it is naturally occurred, there is a difference.

 

[KilljoyKlown]

I don't understand it at all. An experiment doesn't always show what happens in nature, this is much like comparing human and cyborg, they are both made of atoms, but they also both have differences. In experiment you artificially fire sub-atomic particles, while in nature/universe it is naturally occurred, there is a difference.

If it can be proved that particles moved faster than C, it would matter not how they were generated.

 

[billvon]

Actually, the first detection of a neutrino was after nuclear reactors were developed, and a detector placed adjacent to a running reactor. That was circa 1956.

You're correct; my mistake. The first experiment to detect neutrinos was designed in 1942, but they did not have the reactor/sensor technology to actually perform it until 1956.

 

[billvon]

An experiment doesn't always show what happens in nature

Well, it literally does. ("Nature" being the world of physical laws.) Many of these experiments require a lot of artificial equipment since we don't have good senses for things like neutrinos.

But if you mean "produced by natural causes" then yes, we've detected neutrinos from supernovas as well.

 

[OnlyMe]

Well, it literally does. ("Nature" being the world of physical laws.) Many of these experiments require a lot of artificial equipment since we don't have good senses for things like neutrinos.

But if you mean "produced by natural causes" then yes, we've detected neutrinos from supernovas as well.

And from the sun.

 

[Gravage]

Well, it literally does. ("Nature" being the world of physical laws.) Many of these experiments require a lot of artificial equipment since we don't have good senses for things like neutrinos.

But if you mean "produced by natural causes" then yes, we've detected neutrinos from supernovas as well.

Yes, of course, my vocabulary was misunderstood.