Talk-Polywell.org

"Puzzling results from Cern, home of the LHC, have confounded physicists - because it appears subatomic particles have exceeded the speed of light."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15017484

You saw it too! I have a similar post in General.

I suppose general might have been more appropriate, but since I saw this while reading 'news', my pea brain put it here. I'll wander over to 'general' and see if there are any good limericks

There was a young lady named bright
who could travel much faster than light
She went out one day
in a relative way
and came back the previous night.

Just saw it on the cbc, it says they've been double checking the data for the last 6 months.

I was reading it before getting busy with work.
It's a puzzling result and I am curious to see their data.
Interesting news indeed.

Paper was just posted on arxiv

http://arxiv.org/abs/1109.4897

Just read it on a news site - then came here to see if it was up yet. Looking forward to discussion on this one.

Anyone ready to bet on a FTL Mach Effect starship yet?

When Einstein first developed general relativity, he started with two fundamental assumptions. The first, which seems self-evident, states that the laws of physics do not depend on location or motion. Scientists refer to this principle as Lorentz invariance. The second assumption, which is not so obvious, was that the speed of light is the same regardless of one’s frame of reference.

Many scientists hope for some evidence indicating general relativity is wrong, because such evidence would open up abundant avenues for research.

This paper has hundreds of fathers. I speculate since the "God Particle" is not found and the standard theory can not be milked for much longer, one must look to ones future employment.

If there is a paycheck in believing General Relativity is wrong, to hell with a 100 years of physics.

The King is dead, long live the king. Throw Out The Old and Bring In The New ... as long as the funding keeps flowing.

I am surprised that all the science purest and naysayers to be found on this site who have such a hard time coping with cold fusion are so ready and eager to toss the grand old lady of Physics over the side just on the weight of one poorly done experiment. Where is the duplication!!!

GR has been tested six ways to Sunday(thoroughly, completely, in every way imaginable)

It cannot be wrong.

The AP version:

http://news.yahoo.com/roll-over-einstei ... 37846.html

Slashdot had a nice discussion in the user comments that seem relevant:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=244 ... d=37484194

Comment: Re:What about a supernova? (Score 5, Interesting)
by radtea on Thursday September 22, @04:30PM (#37484194) Attached to: CERN Experiment Indicates Faster-Than-Light Neutrinos

Neutrinos have been observed coming from supernovae from light years away. There would have been a very noticeable time difference between the neutrinos and the light at that distance if this were true. (Any astrophysicists about to verify this?)

SN1987A results were consistent with neutrinos moving at c, although the precise detection time of the optical signal was some hours after the neutrino signal (which was found in subsequent analysis.) John Simpson tried to use an argument about times and average energies to argue for a slightly later than expected arrival time, to support his 17 keV neutrino.

These results are 60 ns in about 2 ms, or a factor of 0.00003. The LMC (home of SN1987A) is 160,000 light years away, so this would have the neutrino signal arriving several years ahead of the optical signal.

Ergo, your skepticism is justified. Good call on the comparison measure.

I read the paper.
They seem to have considered any possible source of error. What is necessary now is to check that the equipment specifications and all the assumed corrections have been correctly measured.

A small error in an estimated correction will bring the experiment results in line with standard statistical accuracy.

[Speculation]
Perhaps it is just because neutrinos are non-gravitational and light reacts to gravity. Perhaps it is not that the neutrinos went FASTER than light, it is that the light slowed down a bit from earth gravity.
With the SN, if the above is true, the neutrinos would escape the exploding core immediately while the light had to climb the gravity well.
It could happen
[/Speculation]
Ok, maybe it is just the density of the medium.

I'm always surprised when I hear intelligent people say something like the standard theory is now wrong. It isn't wrong it's simply being improved.

To quote the paper linked above:

"Despite the large significance of the measurement reported here and the stability of the analysis, the potentially great impact of the result motivates the continuation of our studies in order to investigate possible still unknown systematic effects that could explain the observed anomaly. We deliberately do not attempt any theoretical or phenomenological interpretation of the results."

http://static.arxiv.org/pdf/1109.4897.pdf

I dont think so? unless the elementry electric and magnetic constants are affected by gravity, which even if they are, the effects could not have generated a 6 part in 10,000, that's a bit big of a difference. The speed of light they're comparing should be the real speed of light, the one from Maxwell's Eqs.

In other note... it's interesting you would say neutrinos are not affected by gravity. Base on the third postulate of GR, the equivalence principle, gravity doesnt really care about particles at all, it just slows time.

What could be happening, which i dont know how significant the results would be, but the difference of source to the center of Earth vs the detector to the center of Earth may provide enough of a difference?