Scientists confirm critical part of faster than light neutrino experiment
(Nvonews.com)
Can anything travel faster than light? That is the question now causing heated debates among physicists. Apparently the answer is yes. French and Italian scientists recently discovered that neutrino particles can in fact travel faster than light. Even though the findings are yet to be confirmed by other labs in the world, it is already causing a considerable amount of consternation in the world.
The speed of light represents a high speed barrier which is supposedly unsurpassable. Much of modern physics is based on this assumption. Now, scientists are wondering, could Einstein have been wrong?
European Organization for Nuclear Research the biggest lab of its kind in the world said that they have eliminated one possible source of error in their findings. They have repeated the experiment with short beam pulses allowing them to ensure that the starting time of the neutrinos was being measured correctly. The results have matched those carried out in September, which yielded the faster than light results.
In the experiment researchers had fired neutrino beams from Geneva to Gram Sasso, and found that the neutrinos reached their destination 60 nanosecond before they should have reached, even though the margin of error in the experiment was 10 nanoseconds.
“A measurement so delicate and carrying a profound implication on physics requires an extraordinary level of scrutiny,” president of Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics Fernando Ferroni said. “The positive outcome of the test makes us more confident in the result, although a final word can only be said by analogous measurements performed elsewhere in the world.”
Einstein in 1905 had postulated that nothing in the universe can go faster than light.
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The OPERA recorded speed of Neutrino which is more than light. Before 23 years, I had proved mathematically that relative velocity may be more than light velocity. CERN proved experimentally that velocity of Neutrinos may be more than light, if this news will be confirmed then that will be new beginning of physics. So, it is necessary to think different than old concept of science.
Please read paper “What is matter & dark matter is made up of?” on my web site http://www.maheshkhati.com. This paper may help to find solution to this problem & other problems like what is dark matter? & about true relativity. I strongly oppose special theory of relativity
Mahesh Khati
November 26, 2011 at 11:42 pm
This discovery, if proved correct might not undermine the laws of physics as much as we might expect. It could just mean that the upper speed limit is the speed of neutrino not light. It’s also possible that the neutrinos might be traveling in other dimensions of space time. Which would allow for the circumventing of special relativity not the breaking of it.
Greg
November 27, 2011 at 3:38 am
Greg, it’s not quite as simple as that. The speed of light (c) isn’t just a number but it is part of the translation function between matter and energy (hence e=mc^2). This equation is used to measure the masses and thus the behavior of subatomic particles and their gluon fields. The correspondence between theory and observed data is within nine decimal places. The Lorenz-Fitzgerald equations that connect speed to mass, length, and time are dependent on c being the maximum speed of any particle that carries mass (interacts with the Higgs field).
So you cannot just replace every occurrence of c in physics with a new value (say, “n”, the speed of a neutrino in a vacuum). The equations will not work. If neutrinos travel faster than the speed of light, then, I agree, they probably do it via one of the additional eleven dimensions postulated by string theory.
Earl Cox
November 27, 2011 at 12:44 pm
Not that long ago it was thought that the speed of sound was not possible for man to break. Hello Chuck. Science must go forward, theories are just as the name implies, theories.
Charles
November 27, 2011 at 4:22 pm
let the experiments be done on large scale say from moon to earth, so that time of arrival of neutrino to that of light will be more than a second. then only such results can be considered. there may be delays or time errors in emission of neutrino, detection etc.
jayaram a s
November 27, 2011 at 6:29 pm
Yes, their are some partcles which can trvel much more faster than light. it is repeated by some scientists/some incidents in past history. But we donot have enough necessary scientific infrastucture in the past/present to prove it.
But in future, it may be proved .Their are also rumours that once this theory is proved, NO NUCLEAR BOMB on earth will work. And that particular time in future is almost as same as the time of jesus returning to earth.
These are all unprovable with our present scientific infrastructure alone. i will say, even the scientic world is not adapted to the future realistics.
aseef
November 27, 2011 at 6:53 pm
Charles, the speed of sound was never connected mathematically to a fundamental relationship between space and time. There was only a mechanical debate over whether an aircraft could exceed the speed of sound. The speed of light, however, is an intrinsic part of Special Relativity which has been proven (at least in four dimensional space-time) to a very high degree of precision.
Also “theories are just as the name implies, theories” confuses the common use of the word theory (“I have a theory about who killed JFK”) with the rigorous framework of observation and experimentation and phenomenological connections that form a scientific theory. The Special and General Theories of Relativity are not just conjectures but mathematically supported systems of descriptive and predictive power.
Earl Cox
November 27, 2011 at 9:09 pm
aseef, your metaphysical jumble is a bit hard to understand, but I would like to point out something that is very important:
If nuclear weapons actually work today (and they do) then proving a theory about faster-than-light neutrinos, about the shape of the solar system, about the nature of dark matter, or the reason grass is generally green in the northern hemisphere is not going to keep nuclear weapons from working in the future.
Theory explains an observation (a nuclear explosion). Theory does not control an observation.
Earl Cox
November 27, 2011 at 9:18 pm
Earl Cox,
As ludacris as what assef is saying, he is merely joking. It’s understandable that the joke was ill received because he never came to an actual intelligent point. However, I think what he’s trying to say it that not all hell is going to break loose if the superluminous nuetrino exists that we’d just have to adapt our theory and that things that work will continue to work.
Sorry if I rambled
Craig
November 28, 2011 at 6:06 am
Actually, the experiment confirms a logical problem with the relativity of simultaneity, and if you look at the competing experiments (faster than SOL, not faster than SOL) you will see that the argument is narrowing down to this issue: does the relativity of simultaneity have logical content?
The answer is no, but it took some time to locate the logical error in it, which is a geometrical error. Einstein was a constructivist: he felt logic ultimately ended in paradox, so there had to be some arbitrary intervention in it in order to avoid the argument ending in paradox. It is a position as old as Aristotle. However, the recent renaissance in the historiography of set theory called into question whether any of the paradoxes themselves had logical content. The main book is A. Garciadiego, BERTRAND RUSSELL AND THE ORIGINS OF THE SET-THEORETIC ‘PARADOXES.’
The reason for the investigation of the paradoxes is that, if they were shown not to have logical content, then constructivism itself had no program, no reason to exist, quite apart from the dubious notion of violating logic.
In any event, Einstein was a confirmed constructivist, as he showed in “Geometry and Experience.” However, it was never clear where Einstein made his constructivist intervention in the relativity of simultaneity, so it was felt that he never applied his constructivist notion.
However, he did do so. It is disguised in the 1905 paper, but in RELATIVITY: THE SPECIAL AND GENERAL THEORY, he made it explicit in the “train” experiment, where, if you read the book, you will see that he says that point M “naturally” coincides (“fallt zwar…zusammen”) with point M’. Actually, the French and Italian translations deviated subtly from the original German discussion of the train experiment, in an unconscious attempt to correct this logical flaw.
As I pointed out in 2008 in this paper
http://ssrn.com/abstract=897085
we can’t take “natural” out of the coincidence which occurs in the relativity of simultaneity, or we wind up with one Cartesian coordinate system after having been given to assume 2 systems. Also, we cannot find any meaning for the term if it is left in, so the relativity of simultaneity becomes problematic.
What is clear is that “natural” coincidence is a perfect constructivist intervention. It meets all the normative criteria of constructivism, including the very odd belief that reality is progressive.
However, now no scientist can claim that the relativity of simultaneity has logical content. It all too obviously does not (you can translate mechanically the train experiment into the 1905 experiment and locate the “natural” coincidence in the 1905 paper).
The problem with critiques of the CERN experiments is that they are simply reassertions of the relativity of simultaneity, as if repeating the formulation enough times, or loudly enough, makes it true.
On the other hand, the CERN experiments do NOT have the Standard Model as their protocol. You are simply misunderstanding them if you regard them as more relativistic experiments showing results other than those predicted by relativity. The CERN experiments do NOT assume that the relativity of simultaneity has logical content, because it does not. What the CERN experiments do is to provide experimental confirmation of the objection to the relativity of simultaneity on the grounds that it contains an anomalous “natural” coincidence of points. THAT is the importance of the CERN experiments.
Anyone who had followed the development of the historiography of set theory over the past 25 years (including Ferreiros and Grattan-Guinness) could have told you that some insight would develop with regard to the relativity of simultaneity, especially since Einstein thought so highly of Poincare and yet Poincare has repeatedly been the subject of extremely damning comments in this new set theory historiography.
John Ryskamp
November 28, 2011 at 7:15 am
Energy is related to the mass of an object. BUT IF AN OBJECT HAS NO MASS OR VERY SMALL MASS THEN ITS SPEED COULD BE HIGHER THAN SOMETHING LIKE A PHOTON. SO LOGICALLY IF (FTL) IS A VALID ARGUMENT what is next?
First we must prove it on a large scale say a race of a photon and a neutron from say Earth to a distant object like an satelite launched that just travel through space rigged to send neutron and photons back during its one way voyage. Voyger is getting old.
clint
November 29, 2011 at 1:52 am
John,
Einstein did not believe that logic ended in a paradox, in fact, his thought experiments with gave birth to relativity (as well as his arguments about quantum theory with Bohr) were based on the fundamental belief that logic could be a guide to the behavior of physical systems.
Assessing the nature of simultaneity is not only a property in relativity but is also an epistemological (and ontological) factor in predicate logics of many order. Further, non-Boolean logics (such as Zadeh (or Fuzzy) logic) often operate in mathematical spaces of higher dimensionality where even functional set memberships are counter-intuitive. Like theory, logic does not determine the behavior of physical systems – physical systems behave according to their own internal phenomenology.
The OPERA results, in any case, are empirical observations and will live or die on the long term experimental evidence. I’d personally bet that there is some very elusive systemic error in the OPERA measurement framework, but I would not be surprised if high energy neutrinos turn out to a class of statistical tachyons.
Earl Cox
November 29, 2011 at 10:10 am
Was a common electromagnetic wave, such as light, pulsed through the same tunnel from Geneva to Saso to make sure there was no distance measurement error?
Dave
December 1, 2011 at 3:24 am
Earl,
I would like to pick your brain for a moment on the superluminal neutrino activity in a moment.
Before we get to that part, I wanted to just shed some light on a part of the Big Bang Theory that keeps getting to me…
After some very rudimentary, mind you, research on all things Standard Model, General / Special Theories of Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics / Particle Physics, something has bothered me profusely: Every show / paper I’ve picked up so far, each describes the big bang as an event in which, something like the first 10 minutes of the big bang, all the energy flow in that singular instant is what now makes up or stars, etc. And at that point of 10 minutes, the leading authors on this would say that the universe expanded by billions upon billions of light years… within 10 minutes.
Does anyone else see the paradox here? How does the universe grow by a size, i.e. have an outwardly acceleration (bubble model) moving faster than speed of light? To simplify it even further: we describe LENGTH not time with our units of “light-years”, right? So then how can in 10 “light-minutes” or even non-”light”-minutes, the universe have expanded more than 10^9 light-years than that.
This question above, being tested and confirmed, I believe could have a vested interest here. My theory is the the superluminal activity here resonates with the superluminal activity that happened during the first few moments at the big bang.
I don’t know how Einstein’s theories apply their upper-limit of c to the material in the first few seconds, milliseconds, of the big bang. Because those particles have mass, a non-infinite and a non-zero mass, and are travelling at speeds far greater than the speed of light. That is the only way that the material from the big bang could have reached billions of light years within the first few “moments” of the universe.
Thoughts? Comments? Questions?
Matt
Matt M.
December 2, 2011 at 6:11 pm
if we do the same experiment in the same way and get same result, is it “confirmation”? it is simply equivalent to say that human error is not there. but same experimental error if exists will continue to be there. if we measure a line of actually 10m length with a wrongly calibrated scale and get 11m as length, we will get the same answer even if it is done with same scale 100 times!
jayaram a s
December 4, 2011 at 8:38 pm