2nd test affirms faster-than-light particles

CBSnews.com ^ | November 18, 2011 | Brian Vastag

[TN4Liberty]

A second experiment at the European facility that reported subatomic particles zooming faster than the speed of light -- stunning the world of physics -- has reached the same result, scientists said late Thursday.

The "positive outcome of the [second] test makes us more confident in the result," said Fernando Ferroni, president of the Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics, in a statement released late Thursday. Ferroni is one of 160 physicists involved in the international collaboration known as OPERA (Oscillation Project with Emulsion Tracking Apparatus) that performed the experiment.

While the second experiment "has made an important test of consistency of its result," Ferroni added, "a final word can only be said by analogous measurements performed elsewhere in the world."

That is, more tests are needed, and on other experimental setups. There is still a large crowd of skeptical physicists who suspect that the original measurement done in September was an error.

CERN clocks subatomic particles traveling faster than light Video: Faster-than-light measurement shocks physicists God Particle riddle could be solved "by 2012"

Should the results stand, they would upend more than a century of modern physics.

In the first round of experiments, a massive detector buried in a mountain in Gran Sasso, Italy, recorded neutrinos generated at the CERN particle accelerator on the French-Swiss border arriving 60 nanoseconds sooner than expected. CERN is the French acronym for European Council for Nuclear Research.

A chorus of critiques from physicists soon followed. Among other possible errors, some suggested that the neutrinos generated at CERN were smeared into bunches too wide to measure precisely.

So in recent weeks, the OPERA team tightened the packets of neutrinos that CERN sent sailing toward Italy. Such tightening removed some uncertainty in the neutrinos' speed.

The detector still saw neutrinos moving faster than light.

"One of the eventual systematic errors is now out of the way," said Jacques Martino, director of the National Institute of Nuclear and Particle Physics in France, in a statement.

But the faster-than-light drama is far from over, Martino added. The OPERA team is discussing more cross-checks, he added, including possibly running a fiber the 454 miles between the sites.

For more than a century, the speed of light has been locked in as the universe's ultimate speed limit. No experiment had seen anything moving faster than light, which zips along at 186,000 miles per second.

Much of modern physics -- including Albert Einstein's famous theory of relativity -- is built on that ultimate speed limit.

Should Einstein be worried?

The scientific world stopped and gaped in September when the OPERA team announced it had seen neutrinos moving just a hint faster than light.

"If it's correct, it's phenomenal," said Rob Plunkett, a scientist at Fermilab, the Department of Energy physics laboratory in Illinois, in September. "We'd be looking at a whole new set of rules" for how the universe works.

[Secret Agent Man]

No, but, see, science settled it already.

Solutions for sickness demanded bloodletting. Science settled it.

The appendix and a whole bunch of other organs were concluded to be vestigial and not used anymore. Science settled this a long time ago.

Mental problems were solved by taking a thin metal rod behind the eye and wiggling it around in a person’s prefrontal cortex and scrabling it. Science settled this.

Now everything someone suffers from has to be a disease or syndrome to have the symptoms managed by drugs rather than cured. Science is settled on this too.

[reg45]

The ultimate speed is the speed of light (in a perfect vacuum).

These experiments were not carried out in a vacuum. Other particles, which are less affected by the material around them - such as neutrinos - may well move faster than light in that partular medium.

[numberonepal]

Actually: δx/δt

[OldNavyVet]

The speed of light is approximately 186,000 miles per second, and what is "seen" now ... is something that happened at some earlier time.

Given that something can move faster than the speed of light ... might be used to look back in time. What we see NOW is always something that happened in the past

Folks, we're looking at technology that might provide humans with time travel observations, the ability to see things that happened in the past.

And, perhaps, the future?

[Donald Rumsfeld Fan]

Much of modern physics -- including Albert Einstein's famous theory of relativity -- is built on that ultimate speed limit.

[onedoug]

I seem to recall a supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud some years ago in which neutrinos were detected before the explosion itself became visible. This would seem to render the neutrino massless, though I still wonder weather there might be some relativistic explanation. Otherwise it would seem to violate causality.

Scratching my head....

[6ppc]

They didn’t bury him in that box with the cat, did they?

No, that was Schrödinger ;^)

[6ppc]

Next Wednesday afternoon on the interstates leaving Atlanta the cops won't bother pulling over anyone doing less than that.

Unless you are on I-75 South...time will speed by as you crawl along slower than a turtle.

[sportutegrl]

Faster than light Neutrinos result of GPS Movement.

In other words, the Tom Tom came out of the dashboard suction cup again.

[SkyDancer]

Yes but how do you measure it?

[OldNavyVet]

the ability to see things that happened in the past.

Revise that to read ... The ability to see things faster, but never before they happen.

[TBP]

Warp 2, Mr. Sulu.

[Phlyer]

what makes light travel at any given speed . .

This arose from an earlier question, when it was not assumed that the speed of light is a fixed value. The question, colloquially stated, was: If light waves . . what waves?

There is compelling information (diffraction patterns, etc.) that light behaves like a wave. Yet there was no known way for waves to propogate without a medium - something to 'wave' or carry the energy. A substance called 'the ether' was postulated as a medium to carry the wave energy of light. If the ether were a property of space, then the measured velocity of light would change based on how the observer was moving relative to the fixed ether. In other words, if you were travelling along with the ether, you'd measure a lower speed for light, and if you were travelling against it, you'd measure a higher speed.

Michelson and Morley set up an experiment to prove this. But what they found was that the measured speed of light was independent of our own motion - it was always a constant.

Einstein - among others - explained this in various analyses including the theories of relativity - which provided very elegant, testable, and accurate ways to show they were consistent with all observed data. Maxwell's equations provide very elegant, testable, and accurate ways to calculate electric and magnetic effects, and the constant speed of light is integral to them. In essence, light waves are interchanging electric and magnetic fields, and Einstein showed that at one particular speed, these are self-sustaining even in a vacuum.

But, the speed of light is not really a constant. It is a constant in any medium, and it is fastest in a vacuum. The speed of light is inversely proportional to the index of refraction for the medium - which means the speed of light inside a diamond is less than half of what it is in a vaccum.

This new experiment measures the elasped time for neutrinos to travel a known distance - and compares it to a calculated time for light to travel that same distance. Neutrinos are funny things, and there may be interactions at a level where the strong and weak nuclear forces have a greater effect than electro-magnetic forces. So I'm not saying that neutrinos can't travel faster than light in the particular conditions of this experiment.

However, when the difference is measured in nano-seconds, it is on the same order as the accuracy of the measurements - and those are always questionable. Frankly, I think the answer will turn out to be an error in their analysis of their setup, but that's what a proper scientific method is all about - make a prediction, check it experimentally, and scrub your answer until no other answer (like missed analysis of timing, or of distance, or of something else) can explain the observed results as well as your answer.

Oh, and as another poster responded, electrons don't really orbit atomic nuclei. That's not really relevant to this.

[mmichaels1970]

My 15yo daughter told me about this when I picked her up from school today. Apparently her and her "Indian friend who is sort of a nerd" found the article on his cell phone during lunch.

A dad could have worse problems than having to discuss neutrinos with his teenager on the ride home from school. :)

[EEGator]

Isn’t that velocity?

[BenKenobi]

Well, there’s been evidence before of things moving faster than light.

Look up action at a distance. It’s something that Newton assumed was true, and Einstein needed it to be false for special relativity.

If Gravity works as an action at a distance, then this is just huge, absolutely huge. It means no gravitons, etc.

[JustSayNoToNannies]

Have they accounted for the GPS errors?

They say they did.

[chesley]

He still doesn’t care.

But it is an interesting theory. I wonder if we could come up with a thought experiment about how that would work? And what he would mean for society if it were proven?

[LesbianThespianGymnasticMidget]

Electrons dont really orbit. They have probabilities of being in any particular place in their electron shell. It is hard to grasp. See this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfPeprQ7oGc

[Pan_Yan]

I take 85 south out of the city. If you're doing the speed limit it's safest to be on the shoulder with your hazard lights on.