CERN claims FTL neutrinos

[junk]

Something quite interesting
http://boingboing.net/2011/09/22/cern-l ... vrit=36761

(meant it in regards to our discussions of FTL and causality so assumed it would fit into the human tech thread)

[Ktrain]

We read about this in the gradlab today, let's just say epic nerd conversation.

[Nemo]

Im inclined to think its not, I certainly hope it is. That'd be two 'universal constants' down

[Cy83r]

On person's logical refutation.

[junk]

Well I think it's nice from them to put up their tests for review and hope they get verified.
As to the speed compared to the SN we observed. There could be a number of factors including neutrino type, medium and a bunch of other stuff.

Well we'll see I guess.

[Mjolnir]

Well I think it's nice from them to put up their tests for review and hope they get verified.
As to the speed compared to the SN we observed. There could be a number of factors including neutrino type, medium and a bunch of other stuff.

Neutrinos oscillate between types. In fact, the experiment was designed to measure this. The neutrinos from the supernova would have cycled through all three types. It'd be a suspicious coincidence for one type to be tachyonic and the others to be slower than light by just the right amount to make the overall velocity the expected "just short of c". Also, if I remember the experiments designed to detect tachyons correctly, tachyonic particles would appear to be heading toward the source in their interactions with normal matter, which would be rather more noticeable than a few tens of ns difference in the travel time.

It's notable that we can't actually send a light beam along the same path as the neutrino beam, because the neutrino beam passes through the Earth. Their expected time is based on measurements of the distance, largely using radio signals traveling between the surface and satellites, following a very different path through Earth's gravity well. I haven't gone over the paper in detail yet, but my bet is some overlooked GR effect due to Earth's gravity well or rotation, or some issue with clock synchronization. Spacetime near Earth is curved and twisted, and a given path through it isn't exactly as long as you'd expect using Euclidean geometry. 60 ns would be 18 meters, though...a rather large error.

The original paper is here: http://arxiv.org/abs/1109.4897

[Trantor]

Well I think it's nice from them to put up their tests for review and hope they get verified.
As to the speed compared to the SN we observed. There could be a number of factors including neutrino type, medium and a bunch of other stuff.

Neutrinos oscillate between types. In fact, the experiment was designed to measure this. The neutrinos from the supernova would have cycled through all three types. It'd be a suspicious coincidence for one type to be tachyonic and the others to be slower than light by just the right amount to make the overall velocity the expected "just short of c". Also, if I remember the experiments designed to detect tachyons correctly, tachyonic particles would appear to be heading toward the source in their interactions with normal matter, which would be rather more noticeable than a few tens of ns difference in the travel time.

It's notable that we can't actually send a light beam along the same path as the neutrino beam, because the neutrino beam passes through the Earth. Their expected time is based on measurements of the distance, largely using radio signals traveling between the surface and satellites, following a very different path through Earth's gravity well. I haven't gone over the paper in detail yet, but my bet is some overlooked GR effect due to Earth's gravity well or rotation, or some issue with clock synchronization. Spacetime near Earth is curved and twisted, and a given path through it isn't exactly as long as you'd expect using Euclidean geometry. 60 ns would be 18 meters, though...a rather large error.

The original paper is here: http://arxiv.org/abs/1109.4897

And i just say there´s still a lot to discover out there. Maybe even another or other "universes" "above" ours. A guestbook-comment fits it well: "This is the thing I find so fascinating about science. As Tim Minchin put it, "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed". This discovery could one day change our understanding of the universe and the way in which things work. Doesn't meant previous scientists were wrong; all science is build on the foundation of others work. That's not arrogance, it's a thirst for knowledge."

Just have a look on the evolution (aka "history") of science: Compare the middle-ages to 19th century to todays science. Jaja, they were wrong 400 years back, even with their view on planetary motion. But still it worked for them. Like our todays´ physics works for us.
Don´t pick on the details, it´s about the bigger picture.

[Trantor]

...

Don´t pick on the details, it´s about the bigger picture.

...or in other words:

[Arioch]

"Cold fusion."

[Trantor]

"Cold fusion."

Yummy.

[Absalom]

I can see a couple ways this could go:
1) CERN goofed. Easiest solution.
2) We learn a little bit about time. Conventional thinking says that going FTL == going back in time, but these results don't say that, suggesting that perhaps 'negative time' manifests in other ways (Mjolnir, do you know if neutrino conversions are 1-way?).
3) Photons are not the ultimate carriers of causality, but instead a 'sub-carrier' of causality. Though ANY genuine FTL physics would probably require this...
4) Remember that 'fake' FTL signal effect from a few years back where they built a complex waveform that transformed itself into the 'data' signal at the receiver, before the photons that had been sent AS the actual signal arrived? Imagine that, but with probability fields instead of photons. This could actually even be useful, unlike FTL neutrinos themselves.

As far as the 'this could apply to space travel!' bunch goes, I half-remember the Scientifica (as in: the Language Of Science!!!11!1!) phrase "Produced in a particle accelerator" translating to the Engineeria phrase "Too energy-intensive for production use", so... useless.

Seriously, what are we going to do with the actual find itself? Use it to build FTL 'radio' receivers, so that we can hear aliens talking about how they have too many Reality-TV-analogues on TV, and their MTV-analogue doesn't show music videos anymore? This isn't especially useful.

Anyways, can anyone think of some other possible implications of this?

[Nemo]

60 ns would be 18 meters, though...a rather large error.

I figured thats too much of an error for it to be a special relativity affect alone, that it is most likely some obscure combination of hardware/code and the earth quake that happened after they calibrated. But, it looks like they really dotted i's/crossed t's on this one. They detailed clock timings into ns for relevant reference frames, hardware lag times, included earthquake shifting their target's position etc. Im still doubtful that it shows what it apparently shows, just too much to go wrong too easily, but it is funny enough to make me hope its right anyway.

"Cold fusion."

Spoil sport.

Oh and someone solved LENR, he just wont let anyone see how. But he will sell you a 1 megawatt reactor, requires "complimentary" power source, some assembly required.

[Mjolnir]

2) We learn a little bit about time. Conventional thinking says that going FTL == going back in time, but these results don't say that, suggesting that perhaps 'negative time' manifests in other ways (Mjolnir, do you know if neutrino conversions are 1-way?).

This doesn't say much about how FTL would relate to time travel, as the emitter and detector are in very similar frames.

As for the neutrinos...my understanding is that neutrinos are a mixture of states, oscillating between electron, muon, and tau states as they travel. They don't really change into different types of neutrinos, they just roll through different aspects as time goes on. (which requires that they experience time, which is why they're expected to have nonzero mass and travel slower than light...)

In this case, only some of them interact as tau neutrinos instead of the muon neutrinos they were emitted as, the main goal being to pin down details of the oscillation.

3) Photons are not the ultimate carriers of causality, but instead a 'sub-carrier' of causality. Though ANY genuine FTL physics would probably require this...

Paraphrasing, our value of c is low. Light doesn't travel at c, it travels slightly slower. Neutrinos in this experiment would then just be traveling closer to c. Nice and neat, preserves relativity and causality. It seems extremely unlikely though, simply due to the sheer amount of energy we pack into protons in accelerators like the LHC and Tevatron. We've stacked up quite a few 9's of c, and never seen a proton reach 1.0c.

I figured thats too much of an error for it to be a special relativity affect alone, that it is most likely some obscure combination of hardware/code and the earth quake that happened after they calibrated. But, it looks like they really dotted i's/crossed t's on this one. They detailed clock timings into ns for relevant reference frames, hardware lag times, included earthquake shifting their target's position etc. Im still doubtful that it shows what it apparently shows, just too much to go wrong too easily, but it is funny enough to make me hope its right anyway.

Indeed. Instrument/experiment error seems the most likely explanation, but it's quite a subtle one if so (or so blindingly obvious that we'll all feel like idiots when it's figured out). I wonder how hard it'd be to do an experiment timing actual EM signals traveling across analogous paths above Earth's surface, but cutting through its gravity well in a similar way, being timed using the same techniques.

If it turns out to be real, well, we'll have our first tachyonic particle, or at least a sometimes-tachyonic one, which might be weirder. The universe just got a good bit stranger, as causality is not exactly preserved. Neutrino radio won't take off...over the long term, we know neutrinos do travel at the expected average speed, or those supernova neutrino observations would have been early by years. It does open the possibility of FTL communication and sending messages back in time, especially if a tachyonic particle is found that's easier to handle and doesn't oscillate through slower-than-light states. It'd probably start off a whole new direction of research looking for more tachyonic particles and trying to work out the implications of causality violation.

[Absalom]

2) We learn a little bit about time. Conventional thinking says that going FTL == going back in time, but these results don't say that, suggesting that perhaps 'negative time' manifests in other ways (Mjolnir, do you know if neutrino conversions are 1-way?).

This doesn't say much about how FTL would relate to time travel, as the emitter and detector are in very similar frames.

As for the neutrinos...my understanding is that neutrinos are a mixture of states, oscillating between electron, muon, and tau states as they travel. They don't really change into different types of neutrinos, they just roll through different aspects as time goes on. (which requires that they experience time, which is why they're expected to have nonzero mass and travel slower than light...)

In this case, only some of them interact as tau neutrinos instead of the muon neutrinos they were emitted as, the main goal being to pin down details of the oscillation.

I think you misunderstand what I was suggesting. The normal interpretation of 'negative time' is that you travel back in time. What if negative time instead means that you continue traveling forward in time, but all the various particle interactions preferentially run backwards (I don't care to speculate about anything higher level), e.g. muon neutrinos transition into electron neutrinos instead of tau (assuming that there's a one-way sequence in the first place, this could be used as a test: you test the side effects). That is what I was suggesting with 2: a completely different interpretation of 'negative time', one that doesn't provide a means for the grandfather paradox & co to work.

Don't have a clue if it could work with relativity though, any thoughts?

3) Photons are not the ultimate carriers of causality, but instead a 'sub-carrier' of causality. Though ANY genuine FTL physics would probably require this...

Paraphrasing, our value of c is low. Light doesn't travel at c, it travels slightly slower. Neutrinos in this experiment would then just be traveling closer to c. Nice and neat, preserves relativity and causality. It seems extremely unlikely though, simply due to the sheer amount of energy we pack into protons in accelerators like the LHC and Tevatron. We've stacked up quite a few 9's of c, and never seen a proton reach 1.0c.

Also, it's a shame that even if true it would probably be in the 'still useless' realm, due to the unavoidable energy requirements of getting stuff up to those speeds.

The only way we're going interstellar distances at any rate really is to find (a) shortcut dimension(s).

[Arioch]

The most obvious problem with this new observation is that cited in the article referenced by Cy83r, which is: we've been studying detected neutrinos for some sixty years. Neutrinos bombard us constantly, both from interstellar radiation and, more importantly, from the Sun. If it were true that neutrinos did travel faster than light, it's very difficult to believe that no one had detected this before now.

I'll say it again: "Cold fusion." This experimental report is titillating, but doesn't mean anything until it's confirmed by a separate group.

[Trantor]

These neutrinos have their own time. Hammertime. As in E = mc Hammer.
And they were happy to finally leave Svitzerland, so they gave some extra gas.

[fredgiblet]

I loled

[Nemo]

2) We learn a little bit about time. Conventional thinking says that going FTL == going back in time, but these results don't say that, suggesting that perhaps 'negative time' manifests in other ways (Mjolnir, do you know if neutrino conversions are 1-way?).

This doesn't say much about how FTL would relate to time travel, as the emitter and detector are in very similar frames.

As for the neutrinos...my understanding is that neutrinos are a mixture of states, oscillating between electron, muon, and tau states as they travel. They don't really change into different types of neutrinos, they just roll through different aspects as time goes on. (which requires that they experience time, which is why they're expected to have nonzero mass and travel slower than light...)

In this case, only some of them interact as tau neutrinos instead of the muon neutrinos they were emitted as, the main goal being to pin down details of the oscillation.

I think you misunderstand what I was suggesting. The normal interpretation of 'negative time' is that you travel back in time. What if negative time instead means that you continue traveling forward in time, but all the various particle interactions preferentially run backwards (I don't care to speculate about anything higher level), e.g. muon neutrinos transition into electron neutrinos instead of tau (assuming that there's a one-way sequence in the first place, this could be used as a test: you test the side effects). That is what I was suggesting with 2: a completely different interpretation of 'negative time', one that doesn't provide a means for the grandfather paradox & co to work.

Don't have a clue if it could work with relativity though, any thoughts?

3) Photons are not the ultimate carriers of causality, but instead a 'sub-carrier' of causality. Though ANY genuine FTL physics would probably require this...

Paraphrasing, our value of c is low. Light doesn't travel at c, it travels slightly slower. Neutrinos in this experiment would then just be traveling closer to c. Nice and neat, preserves relativity and causality. It seems extremely unlikely though, simply due to the sheer amount of energy we pack into protons in accelerators like the LHC and Tevatron. We've stacked up quite a few 9's of c, and never seen a proton reach 1.0c.

Also, it's a shame that even if true it would probably be in the 'still useless' realm, due to the unavoidable energy requirements of getting stuff up to those speeds.

The only way we're going interstellar distances at any rate really is to find (a) shortcut dimension(s).

I said it on another thread, no negative time. No more so than negative velocity. One can change position in space, one can change position in time, one can measure rate of change in position movement, but its always positive. And whats being measured isn't a neutrino decay affect or something, its an oscillation. Think sine waves. Neutrino mass a) exists and b) is variable. Neutrinos having mass at all violates standard particle physics, that mass not being consistent is just baffling. Where does it go/come to/from? Its been suggested before that other constants can supplant c in relativity, and in relation to neutrinos.

http://arxiv.org/abs/0909.1856

If I'm not mistaken, the paper was originally in Chinese, and it suffers a bit from translation. The problem they were trying to side step was neutrino rest mass being negative. Frankly, I can't help but wonder what if they're fixing the wrong end, what if it really does have negative rest mass No no, bad. BAD.

Anyway, the thought has occured to folks:
http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0009291 Neutrinos as superluminal fermions.








And yet the simpler, and therefore more probable answer, is that some bobble head at CERN cant hack it at programming, and used the wrong integer type in some code somewhere for some piece of hardware somewhere.

[Mjolnir]

Also, higher energy neutrinos arrived sooner. Tachyonic particles are expected to behave the other way around, with higher energy particles moving closer to the speed of light and lower energy particles moving faster. These neutrinos appeared to behave like normal positive, real-mass particles, just faster.

[TrashMan]

I'm a not a beliver in travel back in time. The "cannot move faster then light or it will break casuality" is not a rule I belive in.
It's a product of a mathematical equation with immaginary numbers and theorethical constructs.