Physicists at CERN have recorded particles moving faster than light

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Re: Physicists at CERN have recorded particles moving faster than ligh

Intuition is okay as long as you admit you might be wrong, and can come up with new predictions that are falsifiable. For example, Einstein and Dirac had wild flashes of insight, but they gave their ideas enough mathematical grounding to enable them to be tested. They both also believed things that are not scientifically testable, but they delivered the goods where it mattered.

I have lots of wild ideas about this latest experimental result but I recognize that I don't have the mathematical ability to develop them. My brain has never had the correct wiring to process such things beyond a certain level. In any case, going by the paper describing the results, there is still plenty of wriggle room to argue that the experiment might be flawed and that neutrinos might not be superluminal after all.

 

[TommyZ]

Re: Physicists at CERN have recorded particles moving faster than ligh

The CERN study was actually investigating flavor changing, they really weren't out to show that neutrinos could move FTL. Which doesn't surprise me, the idea that they do/can is so absurd nobody would've thought to actually approach it as a research topic

It's a fascinating claim... I will be anxious to see what it turns up but I am cautiously skeptical. I'd love to hear them determine that... its a verification of multidimensionality, or a sign of spacetime warping, or perhaps an indication that neutrino mass fluctuates and can locally become negative.... but the margin of error is very nearly the margin by which it's faster. I was reading on SlashDot - 732 km column the beam passed through they believe they know it accurately to about 20 cm. In 60ns, a beam of light apparently travels about 18 meters, so that's the spatial difference we're talking about. They claim their margin of error on the travel time is +/- 10ns but some informed individuals on SlashDot were questioning whether perhaps they had mischaracterized the kaon/pion decay times; or, perhaps, discovered new modes of decay which were fudging their 'start times'.

In any case I do hope it leads to an important discovery, whatever it may be, and not someone facepalming over a computational error or an equipment glitch. They said they did it 15,000 times to be sure.

Someone already posed this question - but what is known about neutrino information-containment? For instance it's been suggested that tachyons could not be encoded with information. Supposing these neutrinos are found to rotate in and out of an extra dimension which allows them to move quasi-FTL - they would be useful for FTL communication if 1) they could be encoded with information, 2) they could be generated easily like radio waves and 3) could be absorbed/detected easily. That 3rd one's a biggy.

This is one of those great, unexpected benefits of engaging in large-scale projects like this. Just like with the moon-landing, we could never have predicted all the great things we would learn

 

[Edit_XYZ]

Re: Physicists at CERN have recorded particles moving faster than ligh

CERN seems to be well on the path of proving wrong most of the last 30 years worth of theoretical physics:

The higgs boson is not found on the expected energy levels - of course, alternative explanations can always be found with generous amounts of artificial fine tunning.
This path is already beaten - to such a degree that it's not even original anymore: extra-dimensions/other universes/no testable predictions - sounds familiar? (I'm looking at you, 'not even wrong' string theory).

Supersymmetry is also not found where it was expected - eliminating the main theory; all remaining are theories that, again, include generous injections of deus ex scientia fine-tunning - which SUSY was created to avoid.

Dark matter is also not found - again.
Elusive, isn't it? Leading to warm dark matter attempted explanations, which were not sufficient to begin with for explaining why the galaxies stick together.

And now, FTL neutrinos!
As per special relativity, if a particle travels faster than light - regardless of whether it tavels into the past or not from your POV - you can arrange its frame of reference so that it DOES travel into the past from your POV.
Take that, Einstein! Bring it on, grandfather paradox!

That's what happens when theoretical physics constructs elaborate mathematical houses of cards and removes itself from experiment - while making no attempt to understand the 'whys', only caring about some sterile equations.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

Re: Physicists at CERN have recorded particles moving faster than ligh

What exactly are you trying to say here? I read your last sentence as "while making no attempts to establish a theory, only caring about some sterile theory"

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Re: Physicists at CERN have recorded particles moving faster than ligh

People really don't understand the scientific method, do they? This is what it's all about.

 

[Edit_XYZ]

Re: Physicists at CERN have recorded particles moving faster than ligh

What exactly are you trying to say here? I read your last sentence as "while making no attempts to establish a theory, only caring about some sterile theory"

In short, I find the 'Shut up and calculate' - most often, ONLY calculate - meme common today to be sterile.

For contrast, look how Feynman or Einstein worked - mathematics was a tool they had, but most definitely not the only tool.
Mathematics developed their ideas/insights, which were based on experiment and logic; it did not develop merely previous mathematics which developed previous mathematics which lost sight of experiment long ago, trying only to fit some initial wild ideea into the physical world by inventing mathematical phantasms (extra dimensions, etc).

 

[Kai Winn]

Re: Physicists at CERN have recorded particles moving faster than ligh

People really don't understand the scientific method, do they? This is what it's all about.

Much of what was said in this thread is theoretical physics, not derived from observation, but products of minds and maybe restricted to them. Mathematical proof? Einstein more than once presented one which turned out to be wrong, for example the paper proving the non-existence of black holes. General relativity and quantum mechanics don't get along with each other, so which one is right?

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Re: Physicists at CERN have recorded particles moving faster than ligh

That's why you make predictions from theory and do experiments to test them. Do you expect every theory to be right first time? You're incorrect to say that Theoretical Physics is not derived from observation. In fact, you could hardly be more wrong. And "products of minds" - of course, theory requires the intervention of the human mind. Do you expect to find the theories by examining tea leaves or cracking open a rock in the Gobi desert?

General Relativity and Quantum Field Theory don't sit well together - that's what earns the bread and butter of lots of Physicists. You have a solution - well publish it and have it peer reviewed. Put up or shut up.

 

[Kai Winn]

Re: Physicists at CERN have recorded particles moving faster than ligh

Why would I do this? It's so fascinating. Physics was quite settled in Newton's universe, but along comes the tax clerk and says that gravity is not a property of mass, but of space itself. All that empty nothingness has structure, fabrics, it's a space-time continuum. Huh? I doubt many people using that dazzling term know what they are talking about. Ok, space bends and curls all over the place, and that's what keeps the planets in their orbits, the curvature of space. Space also lasts on my shoulders, keeping me firmly on the ground. However, what do you still need the graviton for, a particle undetectable by definition?

 

[Edit_XYZ]

Re: Physicists at CERN have recorded particles moving faster than ligh

However, what do you still need the graviton for, a particle undetectable by definition?

To explain why quantum mechanics and relativity describe the same universe.
For more information, read wikipedia.

 

[Deckerd]

Re: Physicists at CERN have recorded particles moving faster than ligh

However, what do you still need the graviton for, a particle undetectable by definition?

To explain why quantum mechanics and relativity describe the same universe.
For more information, read wikipedia.

Yeah, cost the astrophysicists on the board are biased and wiki isn't.

 

[JarodRussell]

Re: Physicists at CERN have recorded particles moving faster than ligh

There are astrophysicists on this board?

 

[Deckerd]

Re: Physicists at CERN have recorded particles moving faster than ligh

I don't know if you're being sarky or not, but at least one has been participating in this thread.

 

[PurpleBuddha]

Re: Physicists at CERN have recorded particles moving faster than ligh

That's why you make predictions from theory and do experiments to test them. Do you expect every theory to be right first time? You're incorrect to say that Theoretical Physics is not derived from observation. In fact, you could hardly be more wrong. And "products of minds" - of course, theory requires the intervention of the human mind. Do you expect to find the theories by examining tea leaves or cracking open a rock in the Gobi desert?

General Relativity and Quantum Field Theory don't sit well together - that's what earns the bread and butter of lots of Physicists. You have a solution - well publish it and have it peer reviewed. Put up or shut up.

This. ^

If it is not derived from observation it is not not a theory in the proper sense.

Now there are inbetweeners where the idea for the theory is there but the observations are still waiting to be made. We see a lot of these such as string theory. And normally, because they lack the full status of being a theory they are not able to yet make practical and useful predictions, at least in a significant way. We have many industries that benefit greatly from applied quantum physics but nothing as of yet from applied string theory, because the major observations on string theory are still waiting to be made.

When they are it will come together into a proper theory and likely be modified a great deal. What comes out the other end may look nothing like string theory at all. It may be something that discards string theory as a failed and wrong idea, or something that springboards from the idea confirming its underlying notions while learning very new and unexpected things about the implications of the ideas that underpin the theory. This entire process of gaining knowledge through refined guesses that are vigorously tested and then discarded, confirmed, or modified leads down a very complex road of discovery.

So I am not sure there is much reason to be down on something like string theory merely because it is in its very early stages which lack predictive ability. They are part of the process of getting to the next stage even if they are flat out wrong.

 

[Edit_XYZ]

Re: Physicists at CERN have recorded particles moving faster than ligh

People really don't understand the scientific method, do they? This is what it's all about.

An understanding of the scientific method eludes many scientists as well.

They went on and on without bothering to test their 'theories'.
And whenever something in their theory was contradicted by reality/experiment, they invented extradimensions/etc - ideeas that have no experimental support whatsoever.

It reached the stage where theories - string theory - are unfalsifiable; they make no prediction whatsoever; there are so many degrees of freedom, they can fit any universe whatsoever. This is the 'glorious' result of decades of research.

 

[iguana_tonante]

Re: Physicists at CERN have recorded particles moving faster than ligh

There are astrophysicists on this board?

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Re: Physicists at CERN have recorded particles moving faster than ligh

People really don't understand the scientific method, do they? This is what it's all about.

An understanding of the scientific method eludes many scientists as well.

They went on and on without bothering to test their 'theories'.
And whenever something in their theory was contradicted by reality/experiment, they invented extradimensions/etc - ideeas that have no experimental support whatsoever.

It reached the stage where theories - string theory - are unfalsifiable; they make no prediction whatsoever; there are so many degrees of freedom, they can fit any universe whatsoever. This is the 'glorious' result of decades of research.

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of string theory for those very reasons, and also because it's background dependent. Still, it keeps the theoreticians off the streets and out of trouble. Whatever the theoretical framework, they'll be demanding a lot from experimentalists to have them attempt to test the region where GR and QFT overlap - that's the realm of the Planck energy, the Big Bang and space-time singularities. I guess paper, pencils, and blackboard chalk are cheap enough for now.

 

[PurpleBuddha]

Re: Physicists at CERN have recorded particles moving faster than ligh

So it now looks like that this may actually be an experiment that confirms relativity rather than disproving it:

The Michelson-Morley experiment shows that the experimental outcome of an interference experiment does not depend on the constant velocity of the setup with respect to an inertial frame of reference. From this one can conclude the existence of an invariant velocity of light. However it does not follow from their experiment that a time-of-flight is reference frame independent. In fact the theory of special relativity predicts that the distance between the production location of a particle and the detection location will be changed in all reference frames which have a velocity component parallel to the baseline separating source and detector in a foton time-of-flight experiment. For the OPERA experiment we find that the associated correction is in the order of 32 ns. Because, judging from the information provided, the correction needs to be applied twice in the OPERA experiment the total correction to the final results is in the order of 64 ns. Thus bringing the apparent velocities of neutrino's back to a value not significantly different from the speed of light. We end this short letter by suggesting an analysis of the experimental data which would illustrate the effects described.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.2685

Basically, if this is right, the finding forgot to take into account that the GPS units were in motion as well and thus in a different reference frame. That if true, when relativity is taken into account for the GPS units, there is a drop of 32 ns on each end basically cancelling out the 60 ns discrepancy.

If this turns out to be the explanation will it be an embarrassment for the team who had to turn to the scientific community at large on this? I understand they were in no way making the claim that the neutrinos were actually traveling faster than light, and seeking exactly this kind of review, but isn't this something that would normally be looked at upfront by the team especially since they said they went over the calculations again and again trying to find fault?

 

[iguana_tonante]

Re: Physicists at CERN have recorded particles moving faster than ligh

It might be an embarrassment, but not a failure. Even if they made a mistake in their calculations (heh, it happens), they handled the situation well and did the right thing opening the raw data to the science community. It's not their fault the media went crazy about it.

 

[PurpleBuddha]

Re: Physicists at CERN have recorded particles moving faster than ligh

True that.