Einstein's theory threatened:CERN scientists discover particle traveling faster than speed of light

Yeah I may have heard that. I also understand it has nothing to do with anything.

So the bottom line is you really do think these guys are so stupid that they don’t know the difference between measuring at the surface and measuring at the devices. To each his own.

I wish I would have listened to you sooner. I could have saved myself some time!

Just read his screen name. All talk....

It is especially strange when I hear how you are supposed to question the scientists. Yet the people who write this never take it a step further. If I am supposed to question the experts then why would I take something someone anonymously posts on the web at all seriously? As “stupid” as these scientists are they are certainly far more credentialed and regularly demonstrate far greater skills and abilities than your average web site posters.

This logic is of course the reason diseases like measles are making a comeback as parents refuse to get children immunized. I mean who are you going to believe, the experts or Jenny McCarthy? It seems for many the answer is Jenny McCarthy. Let’s see 99.9% of physicians or a nude model? I guess the real “thinkers” are going with the big tits every time; nude modeling as a valid path to microbiology expertise...who would have thought!

I guess from now on the few times I stop by will to be to see what planet has been found to be made up of fossil red blood cells.But I’m still trying to get my head around that plumb-bob angle thingy. :-)

But... but... she's famous! And she cured her kid of Autism!

I think you are in the wrong forum. Have you heard of the toughest sergeant preparing those in boot camp hating him and then realizing he is doing them a favor preparing them for real conditions of battle. You seem to be from the philosophy department and go on all about higher physics yet can't grasp high school physics. What I have done is to show possible errors to show that MAYBE the path is shorter to explain the "faster" time. If the labs can prove that the path is indeed 730 km then we have a real problem and real research and analysis. I welcome it as anyone in science would if c, the speed of light, is broken.

I have also been wondering if depth has an effect on time. Doesn't general relativity state that gravity has an effect on time. And isn't the strength of gravity determined by the square of the distance from the center of the mass? Is any of this relevant or does it get canceled out? If time is a factor then it could account for a slight change in arrival times for the neutrinos. I can't imagine these physicists would miss something like this so I have to be wrong. The only thing I can think is some unknown element has been over looked because we are not aware we need to factor for it. My guess is an error will be found. But in the mean time all those anti-science people can have their field day jumping up and down about how science is not trust worthy because it always gets new information that causes it to change. That this in some way makes it less than reliable?

If it makes you feel better about yourself to think that: enjoy. I am glad I could help. Why don’t you point out to the others here all of the physics errors in my above posts. I am sure they would appreciate you setting them straight.

I actually did make a small error from typing too fast. Why don't you point it out -- among any others you can find!

What you are stating is generally correct however it becomes too difficult a thing to calculate and in any case, gravity being such a weak force relatively it won’t make a difference. Especially considering the tiny mass of a muon neutrino. The difficulty would come both in how you would calculate gravity at a point inside an object but mostly because other things would swamp this effect. For instance being near the Himalayas vs. being in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean would have a greater effect (because of the mass of the mountains) on your calculations. Also being under the Himalayas would mean you had more mass “over your head” than being on the surface in Florida and so would (in an extremely small way) counteract (in theory) the pull of the Earth on you. At some point as you move away from the mountains (and the mass above your head or to your side or whatever) the effect would diminish to zero. Finally the Earth is in motion internally in many ways, adding to the complexity. When we calculate gravity we use a “moment” meaning an idealized steady state Earth. We don’t take into account all of the above variables, at least the way we do physics over in Philosophy.

As you might imagine taking all of this into account would take a LOT of information and a ton of simultaneous differential equation. Finally (to repeat) the effect would be so small anyway as to be meaningless.

Although I guess if a physicist wouldn’t know any better than to take the road distance instead of the neutrino path as the distance in this experiment he might be dumb enough to have never heard of any of this.

This is the most humorous instance on the topic that I am aware of:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,839785,00.html

Note: In the cutting edge gravity wave studies things as massive as mountains must be taken into account as these measures are so precise.
Of course this is just a philosopher talking

I used to think Einstein had a good theory. I never thought I would turn into one of those people who think Einstein didn't know what he was doing. But the more I learn about what his theory says and the logic behind it, the more I think it is wrong. It just takes so long to figure out what the theory means and the math behind it, that by the time you begin to understand what is being postulated and what the implications of the theory are you have committed so much time and are proud to have grasped the idea. Then you finally get it and are in a position to see that it doesn't really work out. It has contradictions and any particular object can be said to have infinitely variable velocities as long as there are infinite reference frames to make an observation from.
Also if you ever get into the history of relativity. Look at the mathematics that takes place just before Einstein publishes the Special Theory. All the equations have already been proposed by others. Like the lorentz transformation which is critical to the theory. Einstein just took those equations and used them to back up his theory and his proofs of derivation are highly questionable.

Good Information. Keep us up to date.

http://dvice.com/archives/2011/10/speedy-neutrino.php


Speedy neutrino mystery likely solved, relativity safe after all

The OPERA neutrino detector in Italy
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ShareThose weird faster-than-light neutrinos that CERN thought they saw last month may have just gotten slowed down to a speed that'll keep them from completely destroying physics as we know it. In an ironic twist, the very theory that these neutrinos would have disproved may explain exactly what happened.

Back in September, physicists ran an experiment where they sent bunches of neutrinos from Switzerland to Italy and measured how long the particles took to make the trip. Over 15,000 experiments, the neutrinos consistently arrived about 60 nanoseconds early, which means 60 nanoseconds faster than the speed of light. Einstein's special theory of relativity says this should be impossible: nothing can travel faster than light.

The fact that the experiment gave the same result so many times suggested that one of two things was true: either the neutrinos really were speeding past light itself and heralding a new era of physics, or there was some fundamental flaw with the experiment, which was much more likely. It's now looking as though the faster-than-light result was a fundamental flaw, and appropriately enough, it's a flaw that actually helps to reinforce relativity rather than question it.

The Experiment
Here's the deal: neutrinos move very very fast (at or close to light speed, at least), and the distance that they traveled in this experiment was (to a neutrino) not that far, only 450 miles. This means that in order to figure out exactly how long it takes a given neutrino to make the trip, you need to know two things very, very precisely: the distance between the two points, and the time the neutrino leaves the first point (the source) and arrives at the second point (the detector).

In the original experiment, the CERN researchers used GPS to make both the distance measurement and the time measurement. They figured out the distance down to about 20 centimeters, which is certainly possible with GPS, and since GPS satellites all broadcast an extremely accurate time signal by radio, they were also used as a way to sync the clocks that measured the neutrino's travel time. The CERN team had to account for a lot of different variables to do this, like the time that it takes for the clock signal to make it from the satellite in orbit to the ground, but they may have forgotten one critical thing: relativity.

It's All Relative
Relativity is really, really weird. It says that things like distance and time can change depending on how you look at them, especially if you're moving very fast relative to something else. In the case of the neutrino experiment, we've got two things to think about: the detectors on the ground that measure where and when the neutrinos depart and arrive, and the GPS satellites up in space that we're using as a basis for these measurements. Since the satellites are orbiting the Earth and moving way faster than the detectors, we say that they're in a different "reference frame," which just means that the motion of the satellites is significantly different than the motion of the Earth.

Part of the deal with relativity is that neither of these reference frames are the "correct" one. From our perspective here on Earth, the satellites are whizzing around in orbit at about 9,000 miles per hour. But the perspective of the satellites, the Earth is whizzing around just as fast, and the difference in velocities between these two reference frames is large enough that some strange things start to happen.

A Satellite's Perspective
To understand how relativity altered the neutrino experiment, it helps to pretend that we're hanging out on one of those GPS satellites, watching the Earth go by underneath you. Remember, from the reference frame of someone on the satellite, we're not moving, but the Earth is. As the neutrino experiment goes by, we start timing one of the neutrinos as it exits the source in Switzerland. Meanwhile, the detector in Italy is moving just as fast as the rest of the Earth, and from our perspective it's moving towards the source. This means that the neutrino will have a slightly shorter distance to travel than it would if the experiment were stationary. We stop timing the neutrino when it arrives in Italy, and calculate that it moves at a speed that's comfortably below the speed of light.

"That makes sense," we say, and send the start time and the stop time down to our colleagues on Earth, who take one look at our numbers and freak out. "That doesn't make sense," they say. "There's no way that a neutrino could have covered the distance we're measuring down here in the time you measured up there without going faster than light!"

And they're totally, 100% correct, because the distance that the neutrinos had to travel in their reference frame is longer than the distance that the neutrinos had to travel in our reference frame, because in our reference frame, the detector was moving towards the source. In other words, the GPS clock is bang on the nose, but since the clock is in a different reference frame, you have to compensate for relativity if you're going to use it to make highly accurate measurements.

Not So Fast
Researchers at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands went and crunched the numbers on how much relativity should have effected the experiment, and found that the correct compensation should be about 32 additional nanoseconds on each end, which neatly takes care of the 60 nanosecond speed boost that the neutrinos originally seemed to have. This all has to be peer-reviewed and confirmed, of course, but at least for now, it seems like the theory of relativity is not only safe, but confirmed once again.

Paper, via Tech Review

This (above) could be correct.
Also:
A supernova witnessed in the 80’s happened 100,000 years ago and the light and neutrinos arrived about the same time (neutrinos slightly slower) but if the Grand Sasso time was correct they would have arrived 4 years earlier.

One source says that the results were spurious as a result of a loose fiber optic cable that affected an atomic clock.

Faster-than-light neutrino result reportedly a mistake caused by loose cable

This reminds me of Andromeda Strain where a little piece of paper gets stuck in the clapper of the bell on the teletype machine and screws up a carefully designed communications system. Sometimes the simplest of problems are the hardest to find when you're worrying about incredibly complex systems.

Just came here to post that!

Makes sense.

An sometimes they are caused by shoddy workmanship.... the CERN has so far been a cluster **** from start to finish.

I just read a recent article that traced the problem down to faulty wiring. I would have thought they would have checked the equipment first. I guess they assumed the equipment was working properly.

There have been multiple problems with the technical side of the house. I would love to know what the root problem is....cheapness? Rush? Lack of the right technical staff?? Shoddy management?

http://www.dw.de/dw/article/0,,15765824,00.html

Great...even now these clowns cant figure it out....