[Merged] Neutrinos travel faster than light?

[psyche101]

How did they fire this Neutrino beam, though? Do they have a network of Secret Tunnels all across Europe, or did they fire it through the air? That sounds a little risky, if you don't mind me saying, particularly if they're baffled by it.

Neutrinos don’t interact with normal matter well, so they can pass right through the Earth as if it isn’t there. In a fraction of a second, some of them enter a detector called OPERA in Italy where they are recorded. If you divide the distance between those two points by the time it takes for the neutrinos to travel, you get their speed. Light should make the journey from CERN to Gran Sasso in about 3 ms, but according to the OPERA collaboration press release, they are detecting the neutrinos as making the journey in about 60 nanoseconds less than expected. I am not inclined to believe this result just yet, neutrinos have mass, so we are looking at quite a re-write of special relativity of this is true.

A neutrino (English pronunciation: /njuːˈtriːnoʊ/, Italian pronunciation: [neuˈtriːno]) is an electrically neutral, weakly interacting elementary subatomic particle[1] with a small but non-zero mass.

LINK

This is not the first time OPERA has offered incorrect results. Looking back at the discovery of SN 1987A (obviously in 1987!) neutrinos and photons arrived at earth at the same time, but OPERA says the neutrinos should have arrived 3.2 years later.

LINK - Dr David Goldberg, Faster than light neutrinos? A quick calculation

[Habitat]

We are witnessing an historic event with what is happening with these experimental results. If Einstein is wrong, it is back to the drawing board for much previously accepted "knowledge". Alternatively, if the results are eventually shown to be false, then the reliability of scientific findings that have vast resources behind them, and exhaustive checking and re-checking, are still suspect.

[Rlyeh]

?

Gravity warps space-time. An area of higher gravity in the neutrinos path causes the neutrino to get through it quicker without increasing its speed. It doesnt go faster the space-time it travels through is more warped.

Then you're denying gravitational acceleration. You're saying if I drop an object, it wont have an acceleration of approx 9.8 m/s² ?

http://www.earthsci.unimelb.edu.au/ES304/MODULES/GRAV/NOTES/gravacc.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_acceleration

Edited September 26, 2011 by Rlyeh

[NatureBoff]

Are there any reliable sources for what you say here? Or is that an educated guess?

Just an educated guess I'm affraid.

[Von Bismarck]

The news media were abuzz this week with reports of experiments conducted at the Gran Sasso particle detector complex in Italy, apparently showing subatomic particles called neutrinos had traveled from the giant particle accelerator at CERN, outside Geneva, to the Italian detector at a speed just slightly faster than the speed of light -- a result that, if correct, would overturn more than a century of accepted physics theory. Professor of Physics Peter Fisher, head of MIT's Particle and Nuclear Experimental Physics division, answered some questions about these new findings.

.3 Questions: Faster than light?

[Baffled777]

Could anyone explain to my feeble mind this - if the neutrinos indeed did break the 'c' speed barrier, they would be going back in time right? Wouldn't they be then caught up in a loop going backwards and never arrive at the destination??

Many thanks!

[Taita]

I was just reading a few articles on this and it appears the concensus is neutrinos never die. Does this make sense? That would mean there is some aspect of the particle which has as yet been unreported and NOT a faster than/fast as speed of light something or other. They do not agree on its mass but most think it may have a very small mass and therefore should not be able to reach speed of light speeds.

If it does indeed have mass is it not subject to entropy? Some in these sites even believe it is due to the extreme number of neutrino being created constantly(since beginning of universe) that they are likey a driving factor in the expansion of the universe.

Has anyone ever seen an article describing a dead neutrino? Perhaps a new name for when it runs out of gas, so to speak? Perhaps it undergoes a transformation like a Neutron death.

I was wondering how many are created in order to have one reach the desired target accurately. Also, if they can direct them with precision and on command, how great is that for possible use in communications?

Mark

[questionmark]

Could anyone explain to my feeble mind this - if the neutrinos indeed did break the 'c' speed barrier, they would be going back in time right? Wouldn't they be then caught up in a loop going backwards and never arrive at the destination??

Many thanks!

Probably not, because the time for the moving object would not change, just the time of the observer.

[bison]

A interesting article at Wired. Indicates the care with which the measurements were taken. They took account of the displacement caused by a recent earthquake, and can also detect, and factored in, continental drift, in their calculations. The six sigma statistical rating of the results suggests that they are extremely unlikely to be due to a random occurrence. or 'fluke'. http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2011/09/neutrinos-and-the-speed-of-light-a-primer-on-the-cern-study/

[Mentalcase]

So it comes down to calculation errors. GPS is not 100%, we know that. As I've read numerous times, this is where the error lies. Now assuming an error isn't in the works, then perhaps our idea of a neutrino is pointless without a definitive weight. Now assuming they aren't massless, then I would argue that the universe would collapse due to the abundance of such particles. The highest mass of all three neutrino varieties couldn't exceed 0.3 eV, they should be much less.

I really want to understand how gravity effects neutrinos, without this data, we may as well be talking about Bigfoot.

When trying to detect supernova, we observe the neutrinos before the light, correct?

At least we have motivation for more discoveries! Physics would be boring if we knew everything!

[StarMountainKid]

A little more information why neutrinos may travel faster than the speed of light.

Flavour oscillation

Neutrinos are most often created or detected with a well defined flavor (electron, muon, tau). However, in a phenomenon known as neutrino flavor oscillation, neutrinos are able to oscillate between the three available flavors while they propagate through space

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino#Oscillation

The unconventional energy dependence in the theory leads to other novel effects, including corrections to the dispersion relations that would make neutrinos move at velocities other than the speed of light. By this mechanism neutrinos could become faster-than-light particles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz-violating_neutrino_oscillations

Flavor:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flavor_(particle_physics)#Leptons

[liteness]

That is irrelevant. As Rlyeh pointed out, we don't measure how fast a neutrino is going by looking at the speedometer on the neutrino's dash board, we measure it by observing its travel from our reference frame.

Don't let the geometric space-time explanation of gravity confuse the point: if you drop a cup it will accelerate towards the floor as if a force is acting on it.

Whether you treat gravity as a force generating motion in objects or as a topology dictating the evolution of an object's location is a matter of personal preference: you will get the same answer either way. Obviously in regions of extreme gravity, like in black holes, the topology approach is simpler, and in regions of weak gravity, like Earth, the force approach is simpler.

(Also don't confuse the concept of treating gravity as a force to be identical with treating gravity as Newtonian... you can represent all of general relativity in the context of forces acting on objects, it is just horribly messy.)

No. The neutrino might age less if it travels through an increased gravity field... but we measure the speed based on our clocks, not the neutrino's.

Higher gravity between CERN and Italy would increase the curvature, which increases the length of the geodesic. In that event the neutrino would appear travel slower than it should (i.e. we would have underestimated the distance between CERN and Italy).

Excellent post.

[Stellar]

Could other naturally occuring nuetrinos have made the impacts?

Although the text doesn't specify, I imagine its largely based on the effect of neutrino oscillation. Neutrinos oscillate between the 3 different "flavours" -- the electron neutrino, muon neutrino and tau neutrino. CERN probably fired off a certain flavour of neutrino and measured the neutrinos of whatever flavour they should be 700+ km away. That way, any neutrinos which were created in the rock would not have had enough time to change to that specific flavour. Also, perhaps they know the composition of the rock and know that there are no nuclear reactions happening in that rock to create neutrinos.

[Stellar]

Since gravitation acts the same as acceleration, if gravitation is not accounted for, in this case, it would change both:

. the speed (slower)

. and the observer's points of reference

Gravity doesnt affect the forward speed of an object. The effect of gravity would pull the neutrino "down" towards the center of the Earth, therefore arching the trajectory of the neutrino, but would not affect the forward speed because no component of gravity is parallel to the forward motion of the neutrino. The forward speed will stay the same, but the flight path will be longer (because its no longer a straight line) and the total speed of the object will be faster (due to the addition of verticle velocity); however, the increase inverticle velocity will compensate for the increased flight path, so really, the Earth's gravity wouldnt have an effect on the experiment. Not to mention how little mass a neutrino has, which would reduce any gravitational effects even more.

[Stellar]

As Rlyeh said this would violate causality and would be equivalent to the neutrino traveling backward in time. An effect occurring before its cause.

Perhaps light is more similar to sound than physics has assumed...

[Soul Kitchen]

Does it actually apply to neutrinos? By definition a neutrino has no mass or size and on popping out of existence neither slows down nor turns solid/massive.

Neither does light.

[Blackwhite]

How did they fire this Neutrino beam, though? Do they have a network of Secret Tunnels all across Europe, or did they fire it through the air? That sounds a little risky, if you don't mind me saying, particularly if they're baffled by it.

The scientists have been sending the neutrinos through the Earth from CERN, near Geneva in Switzerland, to INFN Gran Sasso Laboratory in northern Italy, a distance of 454 miles. They've repeated the experiment 5,000 times over the last three years or so and each time they travelled faster than light.

Edited September 29, 2011 by Blackwhite

[Joe_gunn]

Dear Stellar,

As I was perusing the internet yesterday, I came across your post, and was so amazed by your recent quote:

Perhaps light is more similar to sound than physics has assumed...

that I actually joined this forum for the sole purpose of asking you to elaborate and clarify what you actually meant. This would mean a lot to me.

Warm regards

[Habitat]

Dear Stellar,

As I was perusing the internet yesterday, I came across your post, and was so amazed by your recent quote:

that I actually joined this forum for the sole purpose of asking you to elaborate and clarify what you actually meant. This would mean a lot to me.

Warm regards

I hope Stellar still takes the same hat size after reading your post.

[Stellar]

Dear Stellar,

As I was perusing the internet yesterday, I came across your post, and was so amazed by your recent quote:

that I actually joined this forum for the sole purpose of asking you to elaborate and clarify what you actually meant. This would mean a lot to me.

Warm regards

Well, although we do know that light is fundamentally different than sound, perhaps causality doesn't hinge on our perception of light any more than causality hinges on our perception of sound. Perhaps, just as it is possible (without violoating causality) for us to hear a bullet from a gun pass by before hearing the gun fire, a similar phenomena is possible with light.

[encouraged]

Has anyone ever seen an article describing a dead neutrino? Perhaps a new name for when it runs out of gas, so to speak? Perhaps it undergoes a transformation like a Neutron death.

Sounds like a good name for a band, "Greatfully Dead Neutrinos."

I think I better read the wiki or something--that university physics glossary link someone gave me--on neutrinos to gather some info because it seems we have given and taken away heaps of properties so far.

[Joe_gunn]

Hello Stellar & friends,

Many thanks for your reply. I see your point and it's a good one. At the risk of being called a lunatic, please allow me to explain my trepidation. For a number of years now, I've been researching ancient civilizations and some of the unexplained artifacts associated with them. The raising of 80 ton stones to the top of the pyramids is a well known one. Others include such feats as precision "laser" cuts (and placement) of some of the hardest granite on the planet (second only to diamond) in Peruvian mountains (approx. 18,000 BC): (http://criticalbelie...int&thread=2887)

as well as massive granite spheres of Costa Rica – some weighing up to 30 tons, and here is the kicker – they were cut as a "perfect" sphere down to an accuracy of ~2 millimeters!

(http://www.world-mys....com/sar_12.htm)

In any case, here is where I'm going with this: There are very few ancient texts left regarding the technologies and abilities of these civilizations. The few authentic texts that do remain are generally via such clairvoyants that have never been debunked (though many have tried) as:

Edgar Cayce (1877 - 1945) (http://www.amazon.co...17428212&sr=1-1)

and

Andrew Jackson Davis (circa 1845) (http://www.amazon.co...17428137&sr=8-5)

One such clairvoyant was Frederick Spenser Oliver whose book "A Dweller on Two Planets" (circa 1886) is an amazing work of historical fact regarding a civilization that flourished between 200,000 BC and 10,000 BC. Granted, I use the word "fact" - loosely.

In this book he specifically, exactly and correctly specifies the frequencies of various light spectra in THz (remember - this is 1886). [ James Clark Maxwell whose work was prerequisite to determination of optical frequency by (Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1857 - 1894) ) died in 1879 ].

He goes on to explicitly correlate their ability to generate sound from a source light! I never understood this relationship, but before beating a dead horse to death, below I quote his description and prediction in 3 separate parts. Any takers – I'm all ears (joegun@ptd.net):

"So mightest thou go on to the discovery soon to be made by the world of science, that light, all light, of the sun, or from any source, can be made to yield sound; upon this discovery hinge some of the most astounding inventions that thine age hath even dreamed of in its visions. But the primal discovery in this wonderful link, first of the sequence, will be the greatest of all, and so heralded."

.....................................

"Poseid knew that light gives out sound when correctly resisted. It knew that magnetism gives rise to electricity in the same manner and for the same reason. Thus, the loadstone exhibits magnetism; revolve it in the field of a dynamo and so cut the current and pile it upon itself, so to speak, and electricity develops. So, resist this and light appears; this, and heat comes; again resisted properly, and sound results, then next energy appears as pulsing motion. But these various processes may be "short-circuited" and all of the intermediate phenomena cut out."

.....................................

"The Poseidi found that in the realm beyond magnetism were yet other forces, superior and more intense of pulsation, forces operated by the mind."

[StarMountainKid]

Well, although we do know that light is fundamentally different than sound, perhaps causality doesn't hinge on our perception of light any more than causality hinges on our perception of sound. Perhaps, just as it is possible (without violoating causality) for us to hear a bullet from a gun pass by before hearing the gun fire, a similar phenomena is possible with light.

If we imagine the bullet as a photon proceeding from an event, and imagining our hearing a bullet pass by as that photon entering our eye, this is our only perception of the event (the gun firing).

Wouldn't there have to be some other phenomenon emitted from the event traveling slower than the photon for your idea to be realistic (the sound of the gun firing)?

Because the photon is traveling in time as well as in space, the actual moment when the event occurred can not be perceived, as it exists in the past and that moment no longer exists in the present, so we only can depend on the speed of the photon for causality.

What think you?

[StarMountainKid]

I'm wondering, since the speed of light is determined by the permittivity and the permeability of empty space, which are related to the electromagnetic field, whereas neutrinos are electrically neutral (not affected by electromagnetic forces), and are mediated by the weak interaction, could this difference have any significance in their relative velocities in the experiment?

[encouraged]

I'm wondering, since the speed of light is determined by the permittivity and the permeability of empty space, which are related to the electromagnetic field, whereas neutrinos are electrically neutral (not affected by electromagnetic forces), and are mediated by the weak interaction, could this difference have any significance in their relative velocities in the experiment?

This causes me to want to take the earlier suggestion I made even further.

What would it mean to the collective laws of physics if where light is mentioned and the object of investigation, if we instead substitute the neutrino with the least mass. It seems to me to be a more stable base from which to work since it is effected so little by the various forces. Just a thought, but one to which I am not capable of advancing to see if it solves some of our problems in find the unified theory.

Anyway, it is time for me to turn horizontal.