# Faster Than Light neutrinos just *can't* exist... can they?



## qubit (Jan 4, 2012)

> Faster-than-light neutrinos can't catch a break. If they exist they would not only flout special relativity but also the fundamental tenet that energy is conserved in the universe. This suggests that either the speedy neutrino claim is wrong or that new physics is needed to account for it.
> 
> In September, physicists with the OPERA experiment in Gran Sasso, Italy, reported that neutrinos had apparently travelled there from CERN near Geneva, Switzerland, faster than light.
> 
> ...



I think they should build another OPERA style lab several times the distance from CERN, where the difference will be more pronounced and it will be easier to tell if it's just measurement error or the real thing. Of course, in today's age of austerity...

New Scientist


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## Deleted member 3 (Jan 4, 2012)

Indeed, because they're cheap to build anyway.


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## twicksisted (Jan 4, 2012)

DanTheBanjoman said:


> Indeed, because they're cheap to build anyway.



you could probably build a few for your average FED bailout


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## Drone (Jan 4, 2012)

IMO neutrinos *arrived* FTL, they didn't move FTL. They just used a shortcut from extra dimension. I believe neutrinos like gravity can "permeate" all dimensions


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## magibeg (Jan 4, 2012)

I personally hope that they do indeed travel faster than light. Nothing is gained by confirming prior knowledge.


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## NinkobEi (Jan 4, 2012)

I'm fairly convinced that all of today's well-regarded "theories" will eventually be debunked. If the law of conservation of mass can be broken, why not conservation of energy?

Have they ever said by how much the neutrino's beat the speed of light? Was it by a significant margin? or like .00003%?

edit: how long is 62 billionths of a second over a distance of 450 miles traveling the speed of light? edit: .0024156923374239 seconds - 62nanoseconds. Pretty sure thats less than .001% but someone confirm LOL


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## GSquadron (Jan 4, 2012)

If same people made einstein famous and if same people found neutrino speed
than same people gonna judge so don't even try to be a hero with just a word
like you all know what it is all. They "always" gonna judge who will be the hero
They didn't ask anyone about einstein's theory and look now!
It is in the middle of nowhere
Even De Brojle opposed Plank, Maxwell and Einstein about the electromagnetic
nature of light so don't think Einstein was a genius, if there was none who was
going to oppose him

Also, just for curiosity i found that there was something faster than light when i was 18 year old
So i am 100% sure that einstein was like a puppet for them and a hero for you!

#qubit
I don't really think there is needed a laboratory to prove it when you can prove it by math


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## Drone (Jan 4, 2012)

NinkobEi said:


> I'm fairly convinced that all of today's well-regarded "theories" will eventually be debunked. If the law of conservation of mass can be broken, why not conservation of energy?



All the laws will be broken if supersymmetry (string theory or a grand unified field theory) is right. It says that there's a symmetry relating the known fermions to hypothetical bosons and the known bosons to hypothetical fermions. In that case everything we ever know about matter, energy, time and space is incomplete and wrong (in the worst case). Atm it's crystal clear that everything is more complicated than we - the people - thought.

http://www.supersymmetry.com/


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## NinkobEi (Jan 5, 2012)

After some fuzzy math, Neutrino's traveled .00024% faster than the speed of light assuming the measurements were true. Doesn't seem very significant to me. When something hits 110% SoL give me a call.

String theory seems a little too fantastic to me to be true. Sure there are some math equations to back it up, but some of the variables (see: extra dimensions) used are just completely made up and a figment of someone's imagination.


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## qubit (Jan 5, 2012)

NinkobEi said:


> After some fuzzy math, Neutrino's traveled .00024% faster than the speed of light assuming the measurements were true. Doesn't seem very significant to me. When something hits 110% SoL give me a call.



That's kinda how I feel, it's so tiny that it's just measurement error. That's why I said about making another OPERA facility much further away to try and reduce the error and see if the discrepancy goes away.

It's expensive, but yeah, all research at this level, is.


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## arnoo1 (Jan 5, 2012)

They prove that neutrino's are faster, they tested it 2 times, apparently they are faster xd


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## Steevo (Jan 5, 2012)

To calculate that they had to use high precision timing, and how precise was that timing? The time it would take a pulse to travel through wire and be processed, even a miniscule difference in wire length, processing time. They might use GPS but GPS has atmospheric errors even with correction. Fiber optic?  unless it was laid in the same path the neutrinos took it would take longer to arrive as the path is longer, plus processing time.


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## JustaTinkerer (Jan 5, 2012)

arnoo1 said:


> They prove that neutrino's are faster, they tested it 2 times, apparently they are faster xd



Tested it "with more accuracy" the second time....still think its wrong so spend a few billion to prove it right/wrong...

String theory is looking more and more likely


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## twilyth (Jan 6, 2012)

NinkobEi said:


> After some fuzzy math, Neutrino's traveled .00024% faster than the speed of light assuming the measurements were true.



From our point of view it doesn't seem like a big deal, but faster is faster and that throws a wrench into relativity.  Well, not technically since it only states you can't travel _*at*_ the speed of light, but still, transluminal speeds are still a big deal since it appears to violate everything we thought we knew.

Also, as to experimental error, if any group of people on the face of the planet know about experimental error, it's these guys (and ladies).


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## The_Ish (Jan 8, 2012)

So what if they can? What implications would it have?


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## qubit (Jan 8, 2012)

The_Ish said:


> So what if they can? What implications would it have?



It would bust quite a few laws of physics, that's what. Have a read of the OP and the rest of the thread to get a better idea of this.


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## Completely Bonkers (Jan 8, 2012)

I don't see the problem.

Has the equation E=mc2 been challenged? No. Holds.

Is it possible to say that in Earth's gravitational field where g bends the space time continuum that a neutrino can get from A to B faster than light (of a specific wavelength)? Yes. But did we also send light down the same track and compare? No. Oohps.

Do we now have a better estimate of "c"? Could be.

What did we actually observe?

Is t (time) continuous and synchronous for all experiments in g?

Is the sun and Earth's spin causing additional accelerations other than g that might impact t*?

Did the neutrino take a shortcut? It's uncertainly possible.

Could it be that nothing travels faster than c, but light is fast, and so close to c, we assume it is c, and in all experiments it is so close we equate it... but actually, a neutrino is faster than light<neutrino<c ?


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## Frick (Jan 8, 2012)

Completely Bonkers said:


> I don't see the problem.
> 
> Has the equation E=mc2 been challenged? No. Holds.
> 
> ...



Gee, you should write a mail to them, I guess they never thought about that. 

I'm sorry about that, was a bit sarcastic, but I just find these discussions funny.


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## Completely Bonkers (Jan 8, 2012)

I'm an 80-20 Pareto advocate. Relativity is irrelevant to our lives. Throw it out with the bathwater. Let's start discussing OC'ing and bios haxxing. That has PRACTICAL benefits.


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## Drone (Jan 9, 2012)

Completely Bonkers said:


> Could it be that nothing travels faster than c, but light is fast, and so close to c, we assume it is c, and in all experiments it is so close we equate it



Light doesn't always travel at c speed.



> The fastest part of a single photon, the *precursor wave front* always travels at the speed of light in vacuum. The *main wave packet* of the single photon travels no faster than the speed of light in vacuum in any dispersive medium, and can be delayed up to 500 nanoseconds in a slow light medium. Even in a superluminal medium where the group velocity (of an optical pulse peak) is faster than the speed of light in vacuum, the main part of the single photon has no possibility to travel faster than its precursor.



In a nutshell: Single Photons Do Not Exceed the Speed of Light

According to special relativity c is the speed at which electromagnetic radiation propagates (not only light).


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## TheMailMan78 (Jan 9, 2012)

Two "confirmed" theories were possibly debunked last year "Speed of light" and "Consistent decay" both of which are corner stones to physics. Even if Einstein relativity theory is wrong this just proves to me quantum physics is still way to young and hard to prove to be taken at face value.

Sorry but I'm still in the Einstein camp.


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## qubit (Jan 9, 2012)

TheMailMan78 said:


> Consistent decay



What do you mean by this? I'd like to look it up.

I reckon that both Einstein and quantum mechanics are right, but that we're only seeing part of a much larger picture.


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## NinkobEi (Jan 9, 2012)

I wonder if Quantum theory can be applied to predicting human behavior? I like to imagine each subatomic particle as a little life form that decides what to do for himself. Impossible to predict the actions of 1 particle but very accurately predicting many particles is possible.


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## TheMailMan78 (Jan 9, 2012)

qubit said:


> What do you mean by this? I'd like to look it up.
> 
> I reckon that both Einstein and quantum mechanics are right, but that we're only seeing part of a much larger picture.



http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=149245



NinkobEi said:


> I wonder if Quantum theory can be applied to predicting human behavior? I like to imagine each subatomic particle as a little life form that decides what to do for himself. Impossible to predict the actions of 1 particle but very accurately predicting many particles is possible.



Why not? They say photosynthesis is quantum mechantics at work in the known world because they don't know how it works. A lot of this reminds my of the Aliens guy. "We dunno how it works. There for it must me quantum mechanics."



DanTheBanjoman said:


> Indeed, because they're cheap to build anyway.



Im working on one now. It consists of coke cans, distilled water, and a polyurethane marital aid.


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## scoutingwraith (Jan 9, 2012)

About the theories. In science there is nothing solid that holds forever. We just make an observed scientific fact and then build up from there because we do not know when something has "begun" or "ended" (in a metaphorical sense) 

Which reminds me. Was not there an experiment where they sent neutrinos over a 400 Mph distance and they arrived faster than the given FTL speed. I think they recorded it and used error correction to see if they were wrong. Apparently they were not. (sorry guys cant remember the article i read it from)


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## Steevo (Jan 9, 2012)

That is what is being debated, they are putting this out there to see if there was something they missed, forgot, omitted, or calculated wrong.



I for one am believing they did not and the neutrinos escaped the gravity of earth and by doing so the spin of the earth in the cosmos accelerated the receiver at the particle stream, the effect being they appeared to have traveled FTL. 


Think of two people playing catch. 

Assume we know the following


The precise position of the pitcher and catcher.
The precise time the ball left
The precise time the ball arrived
The maximum speed of the ball


With all of the above we can calculate the time in flight to .1 of a second.


So it was supposed to be 2.2 seconds +/- .1 second, but it arrived in 2 seconds. 


Was the distance measured wrong?
Was the time incorrect?

Now lets say we tried it again and verified both the time and distance. 


This is an example of what is happening broken down into classical physics, the closest approximation to what I believe is happening is the catcher is on a train at one end moving towards the spot from which the pitcher threw the ball, and the pitcher is on the other end moving away from the spot the ball was released. At the moment the ball was released the interaction of the pitcher ended and the time in flight in influenced only by the speed of the ball, and the approaching speed of the catcher.


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## NinkobEi (Jan 9, 2012)

Surely the station is using a constant to test its equipment though. Can't they shoot other particles from one station to the other and measure its speed? If an X-ray gets there at the speed of light but a neutrino gets there faster then I think that confirms the test.



scoutingwraith said:


> Which reminds me. Was not there an experiment where they sent neutrinos over a 400 Mph distance and they arrived faster than the given FTL speed. I think they recorded it and used error correction to see if they were wrong. Apparently they were not. (sorry guys cant remember the article i read it from)



And to this guy, this whole thread is about the test you are talking about.


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## qubit (Jan 9, 2012)

NinkobEi said:


> Surely the station is using a constant to test its equipment though. Can't they shoot other particles from one station to the other and measure its speed? If an X-ray gets there at the speed of light but a neutrino gets there faster then I think that confirms the test.



Indeed, this is exactly the sort of thing they tried - twice - and the neutrinos got there sooner, by just a tiny bit. However, the difference is so small, that it's prone to significant measurement error, that's why I suggested that they build another receiving station further away, to reduce the uncertainty.

They also want to transmit this as a brief burst, rather than a long stream, which makes it easier to tell when it starts and stops and hence the timing measurement is easier.


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## scoutingwraith (Jan 9, 2012)

NinkobEi said:


> Surely the station is using a constant to test its equipment though. Can't they shoot other particles from one station to the other and measure its speed? If an X-ray gets there at the speed of light but a neutrino gets there faster then I think that confirms the test.
> 
> 
> 
> And to this guy, this whole thread is about the test you are talking about.



I was talking about an experiment done last year. 

This one


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## twilyth (Jan 9, 2012)

qubit said:


> They also want to transmit this as a brief burst, rather than a long stream, which makes it easier to tell when it starts and stops and hence the timing measurement is easier.


I think that was the second test.

The problem with verification via other particles or forms of radiation is that neutrinos are the only things we can generate that pass through hundreds of miles of solid rock.  In fact, the detection rate I think is just a tiny fraction of the total number generated.  Fortunately, they're so common, that doesn't matter.

There are however other neutrino detection sites around the world - Kamiokande, Sudbury, ICE cube (if it's up and running yet), etc.  My guess would be that they can't collimate the beam sufficiently to get enough neutrinos to such remote locations.  But that's just a guess.


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## NinkobEi (Jan 9, 2012)

scoutingwraith said:


> I was talking about an experiment done last year.
> 
> This one



Mkay, nice job on reading the OP, LOL. I consider myself successfully trolled. Well done.


> "In September, physicists with the OPERA experiment in Gran Sasso, Italy, reported that neutrinos had apparently travelled there from CERN near Geneva, Switzerland, faster than light."


and from your article


> 12:05 23 September 2011
> The ghostly subatomic particles seem to have zipped faster than light from the particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, to a detector in Italy.



Its just another article on the same event.


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## robal (Jan 9, 2012)

Aleksander Dishnica said:


> ...so don't think Einstein was a genius, if there was none who was going to oppose him...



There were many that opposed him. And he WAS a genius. No doubt about that.

But that still doesn't mean that theory of relativity is correct.


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## scoutingwraith (Jan 9, 2012)

NinkobEi said:


> Mkay, nice job on reading the OP, LOL. I consider myself successfully trolled. Well done.
> 
> and from your article
> 
> ...



Didnt mean to troll or anything. Its just that the thread reminded me of the previous experiment. Hence i read it and found the previous one i was talking about.

So we have a  couple of theories with the potential of being disproved.  
Lets see if we can break other potential laws.


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## Drone (Jan 10, 2012)

qubit said:


> Indeed, this is exactly the sort of thing they tried - twice - and the neutrinos got there sooner, by just a tiny bit.



They can get the same result as many times they want, what if the entire method/experiment is wrong. Other neutrino observatories never detected that. ICE CUBE has a very precise and sensitive detectors and they observe high energy cosmic neutrinos, they say neutrinos lose their energy before they can reach sol. I think they need to use a new verification method for "pinging" neutrinos.


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## qubit (Jan 10, 2012)

Drone said:


> They can get the same result as many times they want, what if the entire method/experiment is wrong. Other neutrino observatories never detected that. ICE CUBE has a very precise and sensitive detectors and they observe high energy cosmic neutrinos, they say neutrinos lose their energy before they can reach sol. I think they need to use a new verification method for "pinging" neutrinos.



Sure, that's why I said the rest of the post.


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## Drone (Jan 10, 2012)

^ Yeah I know. Unfortunately there are only two grand labs in the world that can carry out such experiments. One of them is FermiLab. I don't know how long will it take before they can approve or dismiss results got from Gran Sasso lab.


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