FTL Neutrinos?

Aero · Post by **Aero** » Fri Nov 18, 2011 4:29 pm

Section 9 of this CERN paper reports on the latest analysis.
http://inspirehep.net/record/928153/fil ... 9.4897.pdf

JoeP · Post by **JoeP** » Thu Dec 15, 2011 6:14 pm

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12/15 ... _captured/
Wonder if there was a neutrino burst...

kunkmiester · Post by **kunkmiester** » Thu Feb 02, 2012 2:48 am

Saw this on a search list, and did a quick google search for more news. Some interesting stuff out there, and I picked up a number of other details I didn't get before.

Apparently the best attack is that the way the pions that decay to the neutrinos also produce a muon, and the physicists taking this angle say that the nature of the creation of the pion, and the way energy is distributed when it decays, means that it's impossible to give a neutrino that much energy.

I'm not googlific enough to search, so I was wondering if any of the physicists here knew, was the energy of the muon also measured, to be sure it get the amount of energy it was supposed to? For the papers written on this angle, an e-mail and they'd be able to stick that in the papers too.

Wasn't seeing much on other experiments in other places for what it's worth.

D Tibbets · Post by **D Tibbets** » Thu Feb 02, 2012 7:26 pm

As for FTL neutrinos, I remain skeptical. Not because of in depth physics considerations, but because of conflicting evidence. Until someone addresses the historical data from SN1987a there is strong evidence that neutrino speed equals light speed within a few seconds per ~ 100,000 years. In 1987 (if I am remembering the year) there was a supernova in the Large Magellanic cloud (galaxy). This was the brightest supernova in the modern era of detectors. The light signal was detected by satellites, and neutrino flashes were detected within ~ 1-2 seconds in deep mine neutrino detectors. This was within the measurement errors and gives a neutrino speed within ~ 1 second/ 100,000 years of the light speed (speeds the same within ~ 1 part per 10^12 seconds) .
Until this information is debunked, or a work around is presented, it is just as valid (or more so ) than the recent lab data.

Dan Tibbets

Tom Ligon · Post by **Tom Ligon** » Fri Feb 03, 2012 3:37 pm

Actually SN1987A did produce a few neutrino counts prior to the light being seen, by something like 5 hours. That number is consistent with the neutrinos passing from the core at c, but light being delayed due to the layers above the core. For the neutrinos to have traveled slightly faster than c, per the Opera measurements, we would be looking for a short burst of excess neutrinos roughly 4 years before the SN was visible.

I'm sure they have looked, but equally sure bursts of a few counts must occur from time to time from other sources, which we likely would not be able to identify, so the confidence in this finding would be low.

ladajo · Post by **ladajo** » Fri Feb 03, 2012 4:24 pm

With a little brain power, if the Opera findings are acurate, the astrophysisists could come up with a decent NOVA predictor, and be pointing a star or small region BEFORE it pops.
Would not THAT be cool.

Of course, the flip side being the possibility of the, "The Earth will get smoked in two years" notice will not be cool.

D Tibbets · Post by **D Tibbets** » Tue Feb 07, 2012 9:00 pm

The astronomical data is two fold (SN1987A). The detection of excess neutrinos within hours of the light arrival is evidence for neutrino speed ~= to light speed within a tiny margin of error. The lack of signal ~ 4 years earlier argues that neutrino speed is not ~ the same as claimed by the lab test. The sensitivity and specificity of the astronomical data can be questioned, but there are essentially two observations that may counter the lab results.

As for neutrino arrival predicting a SN in the Milky Way, if the lab data was correct, then a few months or ~ one year forecast could be possible. The reverse of this is that a SN in the Milky Way (or one of it's satellite galaxies like the LMC) cannot have occurred within the same amount of time because we have not detected the FTL neutrino arrival. Such is the consequences of information traveling faster than the speed of light.
Special relativity would have to be reworked. The speed of light in a vacuum would no longer be the limit. Things like the Lorentz transform, etc. would have to be modified.

I wonder if there are predictions that have been experimentally proven for special relativity would not be valid if FTL neutrinos were real. Then again, if the neutrinos were born with FTL speeds I do not think special Relativity is violated. They would be renamed Tachions. Of course that leaves the questions of what happens when they react with normal matter through the Weak force, and the resultant transmission of information at FTL speeds.

A consideration, which should be obvous is the different measurements of distance. The accelerator and the neutrino detector may be seperated by X KM, but this is a distance measure along a curved surface ( the Earth is round). The nutrino that arrives at the detector has traveled a straight line through the Earth. The distance is less. This is an obvous sytematic error and I'm sure it was accounted for. Another consideration is that neutrinos may act in an opposite fashion than light. Light speed is maximum in a vacuum, It is generally less in matter. Neutrinos may actually speed up in matter. I know nothing of physics that might permit such a thing. But, negative refraction in meta materials results in faster light speed? Could something similar be happening with neutrinos and regular materials. The idea that neutrinos only very rarely react with matter would have to be changed very rarely interacts in a way that is measurable.

Then there is the issue of wavelength modifications/ measurement parameters. Some light waves seem to travel faster than they should through some material. But the information transmission is still claimed to be normal, it is just that the wavelength has changed/ broadened. If the peak of a light wave passage triggers a measurement at two detectors, the speed is as predicted. But if the first detector measures the peak, and the second detects the beginning of the up slope, results could be different. What is the wavelength of a neutrino any way? Would the length account for the arrival time differential? If so, I think the difference would become less significant the further away the detector was. A detector 10KM from the accelerator would show a greater difference in distance traveled as a percentage of prediction, than a detector at 100 KM.

http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/200606 ... _sys.shtml

[EDIT]- In short, the speed of neutrinos was through rock. Perhaps this material acts as a metamaterial with a negative index of refraction for neutrinos, just as some metamaterials with negative index of refractions results in apparent increased speeds of light. A true comparison of transmission speed must be through the same transparent medium, ie: vacuum. The lab results might be valid, but not really mean anything, though the speed of information transmission would still be a thorny issue. Has the consequences of negative index of refraction on light information transmission been hashed out?

Dan Tibbets

JoeP · Post by **JoeP** » Tue Feb 21, 2012 4:37 am

D Tibbets wrote:. . . The lack of signal ~ 4 years earlier argues . . .

This is a fact? Speculation?

Diogenes · Post by **Diogenes** » Wed Feb 22, 2012 10:40 pm

Error Undoes Faster-Than-Light Neutrino Results

According to sources familiar with the experiment, the 60 nanoseconds discrepancy appears to come from a bad connection between a fiber optic cable that connects to the GPS receiver used to correct the timing of the neutrinos' flight and an electronic card in a computer. After tightening the connection and then measuring the time it takes data to travel the length of the fiber, researchers found that the data arrive 60 nanoseconds earlier than assumed. Since this time is subtracted from the overall time of flight, it appears to explain the early arrival of the neutrinos. New data, however, will be needed to confirm this hypothesis.

http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsid ... tml?ref=hp

Skipjack · Post by **Skipjack** » Wed Feb 22, 2012 10:58 pm

Yeah, I thought it might have been something like that.

ladajo · Post by **ladajo** » Wed Feb 22, 2012 11:00 pm

Before I get a boo-boo lip, I am going to wait for official test results.

kunkmiester · Post by **kunkmiester** » Wed Feb 22, 2012 11:15 pm

That sounds like the sort of thing that would do this. It's probably buried deep enough in a cabinet that it's not checked very often, and only going over stuff with a fine toothed comb(and on the end of that process no less) or serious maintenance would the plug be checked, so it would escape the review done immediately after the first result, and only during the process of checking progressively smaller things would it be discovered.

Just like the moon landing though, I'm sure people will be hollering about how it's a coverup of something.

DeltaV · Post by **DeltaV** » Thu Feb 23, 2012 4:48 am

So loose connections can break the light barrier. Cool!

DeltaV · Post by **DeltaV** » Thu Feb 23, 2012 5:00 am

After tightening the connection and then measuring the time it takes data to travel the length of the fiber, researchers found that the data arrive 60 nanoseconds earlier than assumed.

Oh, wait, things speed up after tightening...

ladajo · Post by **ladajo** » Thu Feb 23, 2012 1:17 pm

Good catch! Missed that while contemplating my boo-boo lip. Dang, I let emotion get in the way of science.