REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Dimension-hop may allow neutrinos to cheat light speed

POSTED BY: NIKI2
UPDATED: Wednesday, September 28, 2011 06:17
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Tuesday, September 27, 2011 8:06 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...


FTL travel is a reeeely exciting concept, I'd adore to believe in it. Now this is all over the science pages--I don't understand it all, so I can't discuss whether it's valid or not...but wouldn't it be NEAT??
Quote:

A CERN experiment claims to have caught neutrinos breaking the universe's most fundamental speed limit. The ghostly subatomic particles seem to have zipped faster than light from the particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, to a detector in Italy.

Fish that physics textbook back out of the wastebasket, though: the new result contradicts previous measurements of neutrino speed that were based on a supernova explosion. What's more, there is still room for error in the departure time of the supposed speedsters. And even if the result is correct, thanks to theories that posit extra dimensions, it does not necessarily mean that the speed of light has been beaten.

"If it's true, it's fantastic. It will rock the foundation of physics," says Stephen Parke of Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois. "But we still have to confirm it."

Neutrinos are nearly massless subatomic particles that are notoriously shy of interacting with other forms of matter. An experiment called OPERA (Oscillation Project with Emusion tRacking Apparatus) sent beams of neutrinos from a particle accelerator at CERN to a detector in the Gran Sasso cavern in Italy, 730 kilometres away.

The neutrinos arrived 60 nanoseconds sooner than they would have if they had been travelling at the speed of light, the team says.

Supernova contradiction
If real, the finding will force a rewrite of Einstein's theory of special relativity, one of the cornerstones of modern physics (and a theory whose predictions are incorporated into the design of the accelerators at CERN). "It's not reasonable," says theorist Marc Sher of the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.

One problem is that the CERN result busts the apparent speed limit of neutrinos seen when radiation from a supernova explosion reached Earth in February 1987.

Supernovae are exploding stars that are so bright they can briefly outshine their host galaxies. However, most of their energy actually streams out as neutrinos. Because neutrinos scarcely interact with matter, they should escape an exploding star almost immediately, while photons of light will take about 3 hours to get out. And in 1987, trillions of neutrinos arrived 3 hours before the dying star's light caught up, just as physicists would have expected.

The recent claim of a much higher neutrino speed just doesn't fit with this earlier measurement. "If neutrinos were that much faster than light, they would have arrived [from the supernova] five years sooner, which is crazy," says Sher. "They didn't. The supernova contradicts this [new finding] by huge factors." More at http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20957-dimensionhop-may-allow-neu
trinos-to-cheat-light-speed.html


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Tuesday, September 27, 2011 11:29 AM

KIRKULES


Apparently the Luminiferous ether isn't as Homogeneous as we suspected. Maybe some day we'll be able to send Niki back to her home planet.

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Tuesday, September 27, 2011 11:50 AM

BYTEMITE


Think I might wait until we can get some confirmation data.

No FTL yet, neutrinos are almost massless.

If true, have a feeling this may be related to another FTL speed event involving a photon wave. Distortions between a transmitter and a receiver can spread out a wave, causing parts of the wave to travel much slower than they should and other parts of the wave to speed up greatly to compensate.

Extra dimensional movement could be involved, but I'd look elsewhere first.

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Tuesday, September 27, 2011 11:57 AM

KIRKULES


Quote:

Originally posted by Bytemite:

If true, have a feeling this may be related to another FTL speed event involving a photon wave.


That was my first thought also. Maybe the arriving neutrinos weren't the same ones they sent but others bumped by some wave form.

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Tuesday, September 27, 2011 5:17 PM

PHOENIXROSE

You think you know--what's to come, what you are. You haven't even begun.


I'll just let the brilliant mind behind xkcd speak for me:

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Wednesday, September 28, 2011 6:17 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...


Rose: PRICELESS! Thanx; the award for the first giggle of the morning goes to you, hands down!


Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off



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