EPTCERN finds neutrinos faster than light - Page 51
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LazinCajun
United States294 Posts
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drbrown
Sweden442 Posts
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-57398740-264/not-so-fast-neutrinos-cern-says-lights-speedier-still/ Dayum shame, i was preparing for time travel. | ||
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theincrediblemachine
Netherlands14 Posts
On March 23 2012 20:06 drbrown wrote: Just thought i should bump this, seeing as they've done a second test and found out that the first test was incorrect. http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-57398740-264/not-so-fast-neutrinos-cern-says-lights-speedier-still/ Dayum shame, i was preparing for time travel. "There's no final judgment yet, but it's clear which way opinions are tilting." Opinions is a key word here. Next to this, I've not seen any mention of where they have found the problem. I'm still inclined that the first results were accurate, and that we in fact, do not have any cosmic speed limit in this universe. Or maybe that's the sci-fi nerd in me talking. At any rate, I'm waiting with my judgements until final proof has been delivered. :D | ||
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radiatoren
Denmark1907 Posts
It all comes down to scientific experiments and how you interpret them. In the world of particle physics it seems that theoretical physisists are very much made into saints and evangelically following their theories rigidly is a duty. Not that I think the OPERA-results are solid any more, but I think it has had a positive effect on the theoretical vs experimental philosopy in the area. | ||
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Cascade
Australia5405 Posts
On March 23 2012 21:22 theincrediblemachine wrote: "There's no final judgment yet, but it's clear which way opinions are tilting." Opinions is a key word here. Next to this, I've not seen any mention of where they have found the problem. I'm still inclined that the first results were accurate, and that we in fact, do not have any cosmic speed limit in this universe. Or maybe that's the sci-fi nerd in me talking. At any rate, I'm waiting with my judgements until final proof has been delivered. :D It's the sci-fi nerd in you talking.  The quote you used was from the author of the article, ie a popular science reporter. The quote from the actual scientist is "The evidence is beginning to point towards the OPERA result being an artifact of the measurement," said CERN Research Director Sergio Bertolucci in a statement today. where the word "evidence" is used. Still not confirmed, but it seems like what the scientific community believed would happen is about to happen. There were plenty of people mentioning potential errors if you read a few pages back. It is actually even linked from the article. I think that soon you may have to let go of the idea of neutrinos randomly starting to travel faster than light at a certain energy. That however, does not rule out other methods of time travel or faster than light travel. Personally I would be surprised if it turned out to be possible, but ofc I have no empirical data to back that statement up.So who are surprised by this (if it indeed turns out to be an error)? Why? What did we learn? I think it can be summed up pretty well by a quote from Carl Sagan: Carl Sagan said: Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence. And regarding: On March 23 2012 21:49 radiatoren wrote: In the world of particle physics it seems that theoretical physisists are very much made into saints and evangelically following their theories rigidly is a duty. Not that I think the OPERA-results are solid any more, but I think it has had a positive effect on the theoretical vs experimental philosopy in the area. I honestly don't understand what you mean with this. Care to clarify? You realise that essentially all particle physicists, including the OPERA people and theoretical physicists, believed it was an experimental error from first day? Popular science is incredibly trigger happy when it comes to new discoveries, but that is expected and will not change anytime soon. After all, the goal of popular science is not to be correct, but to sell copies/get readers/earn money, and for that it is much better to go for the most incredible interpretation possible, or why not even make stuff up. | ||
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CHOMPMannER
Canada175 Posts
And they said we could not travel the speed of light....And we will...!!!! gogo science! | ||
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Miyoshino
314 Posts
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Condor
Netherlands188 Posts
On March 23 2012 23:02 Miyoshino wrote: Now that this stuff is all over, we can go back to the first 20 pages and point and laugh at all those people defending the OPERA team's measurements and the hype they created around this 'discovery'. Especially those that called those TL members with a pyhsics background 'trolls' for accurately predicting what would happen. Why gloat? | ||
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Miyoshino
314 Posts
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Whitewing
United States7483 Posts
Rather difficult to disprove Relativity.... using Relativity. | ||
Plexa
Aotearoa39261 Posts
On March 23 2012 23:10 Miyoshino wrote: So that those people will feel the humiliation they deserved and so they will not trick people in believing false things next time. Like who.... I see a bunch of skepticism from page 1 onwards. | ||
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Soleron
United Kingdom1324 Posts
On March 23 2012 23:16 Whitewing wrote: Rather difficult to disprove Relativity.... using Relativity. At no point would these results have disproved relativity. The media were so bad at getting the point across. | ||
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EtherealDeath
United States8366 Posts
On March 23 2012 23:16 Whitewing wrote: Their distance measurements to the target were off for the first test, the GPS satellites weren't properly calibrated. Rather difficult to disprove Relativity.... using Relativity. Actually if Relativity is wrong you could disprove it using Relativity, similar to how classical physics can be shown to be fucked up by using classical physics! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraviolet_catastrophe | ||
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radiatoren
Denmark1907 Posts
I honestly don't understand what you mean with this. Care to clarify? You realise that essentially all particle physicists, including the OPERA people and theoretical physicists, believed it was an experimental error from first day? Popular science is incredibly trigger happy when it comes to new discoveries, but that is expected and will not change anytime soon. After all, the goal of popular science is not to be correct, but to sell copies/get readers/earn money, and for that it is much better to go for the most incredible interpretation possible, or why not even make stuff up. Yes, the whole paradigm of the standard model is going to live on for quite some time and most of its content has been proven. However, particle physics is governed by theory upon theory upon theory. It is healthy that some facts get on the table. The Opera-experiment does not prove anything at all. However it spread some healthy doubt on the theoretical field and that is healthy. Having theories based on theories survive for too long is unhealthy for understanding. It becomes almost a fact and that is when things turn into a paradigm. Neutrinoes are one of the most evasive particles known and studying it is very hard work and very data-demanding. All I want to see is an unbiased presentation of the results and no stupid conjectore for the media and especially no confirmation or rejection of an experiment based on a theory. It is fine to give a headsup about it being inconsistent with theory, but let the experimental data and the following scrutiny of the data determine the validity. It should not be based on if anyone believes the result cause every result is based on the experiment and if anything has to change based on results it is either the experiment and/or theory, | ||
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DetriusXii
Canada156 Posts
On February 25 2012 19:10 Cascade wrote: OK, so let's see if I understand you correctly. You want me to start from intuitive classical mechanics laws and principles, and from that prove the Lorentz transform and GR? That is not possible. As you hinted yourself, GR is based on postulates. 1) Physics should look the same in every inertial frame (ie, physics is the same on a train). 2) The speed of light in vacuum is always perceived as the same, no matter what speed I move compared to the source of the light. The first one was introduced through "common sense" and I think you and most other people can accept it. The second is highly counter-intuitive postulating that light behaves completely different from any particle or wave previously seen. It was however an experimental fact at the time (I think they saw it from the light of the moon of Jupiter or Saturn. The light from the moon travelled at the same speed no matter if the moon and earth were travelling into or away from the beam. I'm not sure that this was the reason though.). So Einstein just went "Ok. well, assume that light actually behaves like this, then what?" And we got SR. If you want more direct OBSERVATIONS that things can't be accelerated beyond speed of light you should look at particle accelerators. They have been given kinetic energy to travel at thousands times the speed of light with the normal E_k = mv^2/2, but they still travel just below light speed. But no, speed of light as max speed cannot be proven mathematically from classical mechanics. Does that answer your concerns? There's also an extra hint that the speed of light was constant. Maxwell's EM equations, when relating the second time derivative of the electric field to the second spatial derivative of the electric field had the speed of light as a constant expression. The speed of light was constant independent of reference frames that the electric field was in. I do like witnessing engineers discuss physics. They're trained in classical mechanics and have difficulty accepting that quantum mechanics and relativity are supersets of classical mechanics. They can reduce to classical mechanics under certain constraints. It reminds me of my preconceived notions back in second year of university in my physics program. I think the Michelson-Morley experiment needs to be mentioned as a constant reminder that light doesn't behave in the same way as engineers think it does. | ||
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Spidinko
Slovakia1174 Posts
On March 23 2012 23:21 radiatoren wrote: Yes, the whole paradigm of the standard model is going to live on for quite some time and most of its content has been proven. However, particle physics is governed by theory upon theory upon theory. It is healthy that some facts get on the table. The Opera-experiment does not prove anything at all. However it spread some healthy doubt on the theoretical field and that is healthy. Having theories based on theories survive for too long is unhealthy for understanding. It becomes almost a fact and that is when things turn into a paradigm. Neutrinoes are one of the most evasive particles known and studying it is very hard work and very data-demanding. All I want to see is an unbiased presentation of the results and no stupid conjectore for the media and especially no confirmation or rejection of an experiment based on a theory. It is fine to give a headsup about it being inconsistent with theory, but let the experimental data and the following scrutiny of the data determine the validity. It should not be based on if anyone believes the result cause every result is based on the experiment and if anything has to change based on results it is either the experiment and/or theory, I think you're mistaking skepticism with bias. | ||
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Cascade
Australia5405 Posts
On March 23 2012 23:21 radiatoren wrote: Yes, the whole paradigm of the standard model is going to live on for quite some time and most of its content has been proven. However, particle physics is governed by theory upon theory upon theory. It is healthy that some facts get on the table. The Opera-experiment does not prove anything at all. However it spread some healthy doubt on the theoretical field and that is healthy. Having theories based on theories survive for too long is unhealthy for understanding. It becomes almost a fact and that is when things turn into a paradigm. Neutrinoes are one of the most evasive particles known and studying it is very hard work and very data-demanding. All I want to see is an unbiased presentation of the results and no stupid conjectore for the media and especially no confirmation or rejection of an experiment based on a theory. It is fine to give a headsup about it being inconsistent with theory, but let the experimental data and the following scrutiny of the data determine the validity. It should not be based on if anyone believes the result cause every result is based on the experiment and if anything has to change based on results it is either the experiment and/or theory, Ah ok, so you say that scientists should be a bit more open to deviations from/corrections to the standard model? Did I understand that correctly? I agree in general, but don't think it applies to this specific case of the neutrinos. Working in the field (phenomenology), I can say that most people would be very happy to see some real experimental signals of non-standard model physics (Beyond standard model - BSM). Which is why we have been building larger and larger accelerators (and other experiments) to look at higher energies, but for some decades now there has been nothing (or very little) unexpected, and in many cases there has been a VERY accurate agreement with standard model. However there has been plenty of false alarms, due to experimental errors, bad analysis, etc. And the last things you could argue being "new" would be the bottom quark (I wont even count the top), or the W and Z, which were both very expected and natural extensions of the standard model. As is the Higgs if it turns out to be there. There are currently a huge set of ideas on how the standard model can be extended, and none of them (at least none of the serious ones) predicted anything like a neutrino suddenly turning superluminal at a certain energy. So the fact that the result didn't make any sense from a theory point of view, together with a history of many more false signals than real surprises (last discovery of this magnitude would be quantum mechanics I guess...), made almost all scientists believe that it was a false signal. I think you can understand that sentiment, maybe even find it reasonable. Notice that I say BELIEVE, because we cannot be sure, so the entire community tried to check if this was a real signal or not empirically, by looking through everything at OPERA an N:th time, and by trying to repeat the measurement at other locations. In the end I think the reaction of scientific community was the correct one. Essentially "ok, this is probably an error, but let's make sure." (While popular science as usual goes "EINSTEIN PROVEN WRONG!!!"... defaq does einstein have to do with this?) If scientists would just ignore the measurement on theoretical ground, I would agree with you, but that is not what happened. And I don't think this will make anyone more open for controversial physics. Rather the opposite, it will be another in the line of false signals (if that is what comes out in the end) that will make it even more motivated to be sceptical next time. As a sidenote, there is a reason that there are two general purpose detectors at LHC (looking for new physics) that are designed kindof differently, or as different as is reasonable while looking for the same thing. If there would be only one, and it would find a signal, could you trust it? Could you be sure that it was not a loose cable somewhere? But if you have two experiments showing the same thing (as is what is happening now with the higgs, although a very weak signal) it is much more reliable. That is, the OPERA signal was a very strong signal (6 sigma?), but from a single experiment, and a result that didn't make any sense. The higgs signal is MUCH weaker (2-3 sigma, depending how you count) but a very predicted signal, and seen in two different experiments. Which is why I am very excited about the higgs signal, but never were excited about the neutrino.  Sorry for the wall of text. :o) | ||
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-Archangel-
Croatia7457 Posts
On March 23 2012 21:22 theincrediblemachine wrote: "There's no final judgment yet, but it's clear which way opinions are tilting." Opinions is a key word here. Next to this, I've not seen any mention of where they have found the problem. I'm still inclined that the first results were accurate, and that we in fact, do not have any cosmic speed limit in this universe. Or maybe that's the sci-fi nerd in me talking. At any rate, I'm waiting with my judgements until final proof has been delivered. :D Nikola Tesla agrees with you. | ||
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Mr.F.
United States62 Posts
On March 24 2012 00:42 Cascade wrote: Ah ok, so you say that scientists should be a bit more open to deviations from/corrections to the standard model? Did I understand that correctly? I agree in general, but don't think it applies to this specific case of the neutrinos. Working in the field (phenomenology), I can say that most people would be very happy to see some real experimental signals of non-standard model physics (Beyond standard model - BSM). Which is why we have been building larger and larger accelerators (and other experiments) to look at higher energies, but for some decades now there has been nothing (or very little) unexpected, and in many cases there has been a VERY accurate agreement with standard model. However there has been plenty of false alarms, due to experimental errors, bad analysis, etc. And the last things you could argue being "new" would be the bottom quark (I wont even count the top), or the W and Z, which were both very expected and natural extensions of the standard model. As is the Higgs if it turns out to be there. There are currently a huge set of ideas on how the standard model can be extended, and none of them (at least none of the serious ones) predicted anything like a neutrino suddenly turning superluminal at a certain energy. So the fact that the result didn't make any sense from a theory point of view, together with a history of many more false signals than real surprises (last discovery of this magnitude would be quantum mechanics I guess...), made almost all scientists believe that it was a false signal. I think you can understand that sentiment, maybe even find it reasonable. Notice that I say BELIEVE, because we cannot be sure, so the entire community tried to check if this was a real signal or not empirically, by looking through everything at OPERA an N:th time, and by trying to repeat the measurement at other locations. In the end I think the reaction of scientific community was the correct one. Essentially "ok, this is probably an error, but let's make sure." (While popular science as usual goes "EINSTEIN PROVEN WRONG!!!"... defaq does einstein have to do with this?) If scientists would just ignore the measurement on theoretical ground, I would agree with you, but that is not what happened. And I don't think this will make anyone more open for controversial physics. Rather the opposite, it will be another in the line of false signals (if that is what comes out in the end) that will make it even more motivated to be sceptical next time. As a sidenote, there is a reason that there are two general purpose detectors at LHC (looking for new physics) that are designed kindof differently, or as different as is reasonable while looking for the same thing. If there would be only one, and it would find a signal, could you trust it? Could you be sure that it was not a loose cable somewhere? But if you have two experiments showing the same thing (as is what is happening now with the higgs, although a very weak signal) it is much more reliable. That is, the OPERA signal was a very strong signal (6 sigma?), but from a single experiment, and a result that didn't make any sense. The higgs signal is MUCH weaker (2-3 sigma, depending how you count) but a very predicted signal, and seen in two different experiments. Which is why I am very excited about the higgs signal, but never were excited about the neutrino. Sorry for the wall of text. :o) 1 really important thing to note about the current state of the higgs is that the results ARE inconsistent with each other in a very specific way, such that neither of the detectors have found the higgs, they only have ruled out its existence using standard model predictions for low(ish) energies for all but a very small window in the mass range. the inconsistency comes from the fact that the average value of the anomaly they have found at each different detector is not in agreement. | ||
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oGoZenob
France1503 Posts
On March 24 2012 00:42 Cascade wrote: Ah ok, so you say that scientists should be a bit more open to deviations from/corrections to the standard model? Did I understand that correctly? I agree in general, but don't think it applies to this specific case of the neutrinos. Working in the field (phenomenology), I can say that most people would be very happy to see some real experimental signals of non-standard model physics (Beyond standard model - BSM). Which is why we have been building larger and larger accelerators (and other experiments) to look at higher energies, but for some decades now there has been nothing (or very little) unexpected, and in many cases there has been a VERY accurate agreement with standard model. However there has been plenty of false alarms, due to experimental errors, bad analysis, etc. And the last things you could argue being "new" would be the bottom quark (I wont even count the top), or the W and Z, which were both very expected and natural extensions of the standard model. As is the Higgs if it turns out to be there. There are currently a huge set of ideas on how the standard model can be extended, and none of them (at least none of the serious ones) predicted anything like a neutrino suddenly turning superluminal at a certain energy. So the fact that the result didn't make any sense from a theory point of view, together with a history of many more false signals than real surprises (last discovery of this magnitude would be quantum mechanics I guess...), made almost all scientists believe that it was a false signal. I think you can understand that sentiment, maybe even find it reasonable. Notice that I say BELIEVE, because we cannot be sure, so the entire community tried to check if this was a real signal or not empirically, by looking through everything at OPERA an N:th time, and by trying to repeat the measurement at other locations. In the end I think the reaction of scientific community was the correct one. Essentially "ok, this is probably an error, but let's make sure." (While popular science as usual goes "EINSTEIN PROVEN WRONG!!!"... defaq does einstein have to do with this?) If scientists would just ignore the measurement on theoretical ground, I would agree with you, but that is not what happened. And I don't think this will make anyone more open for controversial physics. Rather the opposite, it will be another in the line of false signals (if that is what comes out in the end) that will make it even more motivated to be sceptical next time. As a sidenote, there is a reason that there are two general purpose detectors at LHC (looking for new physics) that are designed kindof differently, or as different as is reasonable while looking for the same thing. If there would be only one, and it would find a signal, could you trust it? Could you be sure that it was not a loose cable somewhere? But if you have two experiments showing the same thing (as is what is happening now with the higgs, although a very weak signal) it is much more reliable. That is, the OPERA signal was a very strong signal (6 sigma?), but from a single experiment, and a result that didn't make any sense. The higgs signal is MUCH weaker (2-3 sigma, depending how you count) but a very predicted signal, and seen in two different experiments. Which is why I am very excited about the higgs signal, but never were excited about the neutrino. Sorry for the wall of text. :o) I was waiting for your post :p you're really good at explaining in a simple way. I have a hard time trying to explain this kind of thing to my friends/family who don't work in this field, nice to see that not everyone has this problem ^^ | ||
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