Tachyons ?

[Dream]

They rechecked the thing 1500 times? Overkill much? Now I KNOW it was a screw up.

 

[Relayer1]

"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."

I have come across him before. He'd probably do it too...

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

The rechecked the thing 1500 times? Overkill much? Now I KNOW it was a screw up.

I do hope you're kidding.

 

[RJDiogenes]

The neutrinos are having to travel through a section of the Earth's crust so there must be some tunnelling involved - of the quantum variety - as there is very small cross section for weak force interaction between neutrinos and the matter in their path. I believe some experiments have previously demonstrated that quantum tunnelling is superluminal for photons:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster...t_.28Casimir_vacuum_and_quantum_tunnelling.29

Sorry, I haven't bothered to find a non-Wikiprdia reference.

That's exactly what I was thinking of. As the article implies, we don't really know the speed of light, just that it's a constant (or, as you say, that the constant is necessarily the speed of light). So the neutrinos could indeed be "superluminal" according to current measurements without being tachyonic or leading to causality violations.

 

[JarodRussell]

A 60 nanosecond difference on 700km. That's already a 0.01 second difference between the Sun and Earth. That is pretty significant. Anyone want to calculate what a "Neutrinoyear" might be compared to a "Lightyear"? And then how much faster than light they would arrive from the Andromeda galaxy that is 2.5 million lightyears away?

 

[jgalley]

haven't these scientists played Mass Effect? just go to mars and start digging. then send a ship out to find the relay. problem solved.

And Chuck Norris is as good as any Shepard :-D

 

[think]

the universe is expanding at four times the speed of light we just perversive the visual spectrum in a conical section there of.. that radiation that is moving at 4c is ever expanding into the unknown