The Mythical Tunnel Between CERN and Central Italy

fph il quozientatore writes "Mariastella Gelmini, the Italian minister of Public Education and Scientific Research, complimented the researchers for the recent (supposed) discovery of faster-than-light neutrinos. Her press release mentions that Italy funded the construction of a 'tunnel between the CERN [in Geneva] and Gran Sasso [the labs in Central Italy].' Google maps reports the distance between the two labs as over 900km — but of course once the tunnel is open to traffic the trip will be much faster."

Comments

Future tunnel

[goombah99]

He was speaking of the future tunnel that the faster than light neutrino's already know about so they can follow it.

Re:Future tunnel

[brindafella]

> He was speaking of the future tunnel that the faster than light neutrino's already know about so they can follow it.

How sexist are you?!? (Just kidding... but not:-)

Mariastella Gelmini -- the Italian Minister of Education -- is female, and quite 'feminine'.

Re:Future tunnel

[KingAlanI]

Also the female pronoun in sentence 2.
Maria(stella) should be a fairly obvious female name in the Western world anyway.

Re:Future tunnel

[SimonTheSoundMan]

Bartender "We do not serve neutrinos in here"

A neutrino walks in to a bar.

Re:Future tunnel

[Yohahn]

Bartender "We do not serve neutrinos in here"

A neutrino walks in to a bar.

and the last line:

Have you heard the joke about the faster than light neutrino?

Re:Future tunnel

[Lord Kano]

John Wayne's real name was Marion.

Maria could be a man.

LK

Re:Future tunnel

[KingAlanI]

Well, there are a few exceptions. :)

Re:Future tunnel

[ppanon]

Particularly in one of the few remaining countries in Western Europe with a strong Catholic presence. It used to be that it was very common, maybe practically requisite, for Joseph and Marie (Giuseppe/Maria) to be used as middle names for Catholics. A politician in Berlusconi's right wing government would be more likely to be from that tradition. That said, stella means star and is also typically a female name/postfix, so the combination made the minister's femininity quite likely.

Re:Future tunnel

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems to me that string theory would make that

Bartender: We do not serve strings in here. Are you a string?
String: A am afraid not!

Re:Future tunnel

[Anonymous Coward]

A neutrino passes through a bar.
The bartender didn't interact with it.

Re:Future tunnel

[Anonymous Coward]

Maria can be both a male and a female name, depending on your location and orientation.

Re:Future tunnel

[Anonymous Coward]

ATTENZIONE: blocco causa incidente al Km 485 del #tunnelgelmini. Si segnalano tempi di percorrenza allungati di 60 nanosecondi.

WARNING: block due to an accident at Km 485 of the # tunnelgelmini. There has been lengthened journey times of 60 nanoseconds.

Re:Future tunnel

[TeknoHog]

Did the neutrino have to pay for the drink, or did he get it free of charge?

Re:Future tunnel

[Anonymous Coward]

Who's there?
Nutrino
Knock knock

Re:Future tunnel

[_Shad0w_]

Erich Maria Remarque, for example (author of "All Quiet On The Western Front").

Re:Future tunnel

[Anonymous Coward]

Did the neutrino have to pay for the drink, or did he get it free of charge?

We're NEUTINO's
We don't need no stinkin' chargez!

Re:Future tunnel

[tehcyder]

Bartender "We do not serve neutrinos in here"

A neutrino walks in to a bar.

and the last line:

Have you heard the joke about the faster than light neutrino?

*whoosh*

Re:Future tunnel

[Kavafy]

*Double whoosh*

Re:Future tunnel

[Anonymous Coward]

+1: Coffee ejected from nostrils during reading

Re:Future tunnel

[opus_magnum]

Particularly in one of the few remaining countries in Western Europe with a strong Catholic presence. It used to be that it was very common, maybe practically requisite, for Joseph and Marie (Giuseppe/Maria) to be used as middle names for Catholics. A politician in Berlusconi's right wing government would be more likely to be from that tradition.

I can assure you PM Berlusconi didn't pick her for her piety.:-)

Re:Future tunnel

[catman]

ITYM String: I'm a frayed knot!

Re:Future tunnel

[Pope]

Neutron walks into a bar and asks the bartender for a beer.

Bartender says, "For you, no charge."

Re:Future tunnel

[Xacid]

I'm not sure myself but the proton said he was positive.

Re:Future tunnel

[Anonymous Coward]

Penultimate line: No.

Re:Future tunnel

[ppanon]

She wouldn't have to be, but her parents might have been and she could pretend to be as well to get the religious vote. However, even in Italy it's probably a much smaller voting block than the evangelists in the USA.

Re:Future tunnel

[tgd]

At first the bartender told him he had to pay, but then said "I'm just meson with you".

Re:Future tunnel

[KingAlanI]

some of our relatives are Italian-American Catholics, and it seems all the males in that family are named Joseph and/or Patrick, and all the females Mary and/or Teresa.

Re:Future tunnel

[Anonymous Coward]

First post.

Re:Future tunnel

[DrBob127]

Being a neutrino, I think it was free of charge

Re:Future tunnel

[kmoser]

Much simpler example: Marion Barry's real name is Marion Barry.

Re:Future tunnel

[kmoser]

The bartender looks at the neutrino's drivers license and says, "Is this a fake ID? You don't resemble the photon."

Re:Future tunnel

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm Italian, and unfortunately I have to confirm that the Minister for culture and Scientific Research, really said that a tunnel has been built...... Between Geneve and Gran Sasso!!! More than 900 kms!!! And the neutrinos, have been launched inside this tunnel wich of course doesn't exist!!!! More than this she also declared Italy has contributed to buy this tunnel with 45 mil €. Don't ask me please, how she could determinate this amount of money, for a tunnel that doesn't exist......
  Such a shame..... beeing Italian nowadays, between Berlusconi, Bunga Bunga, and now Gelmini, it's really difficult. But i'm still proud of my country, and really hope things will suddelny change....

Darkies

[Anonymous Coward]

Negroes speak this kind of pidgin that brainwashed liberal idiots like to call "ebonics". They pretend it is another dialect and not a low-class, gutter, illiterate bastardization of American English. Thats funny. You realize that no other racial or ethnic group still has a discernable "accent" after 3 natural-born generations? In 200+ years how many generations of negroes has there been in America? Oh and get this. It's not just American blacks. In Spanish-speaking countries the negroes don't speak correct Spanish either and have also been there for many generations. They're just stupid and less capable. Why not admit it?

Re:Darkies

[znerk]

I really do hate to appear to be supporting an obvious troll, but IQ tests bear the same "racial prejudice". Asians tend to score higher (on average) than other ethnic groups, while those of African descent tend to score lower than others. European ancestry puts one squarely in the middle of the curve. There is great debate and controversy over whether there is a "cultural bias" towards "differing skill sets", but no one has anything they can actually call a theory without sounding racist, so any discussion is moot.

Before you mod me into Flamebait/Troll oblivion along with the parent, please keep in mind that I can actually back my statements up with facts*., and I'm not actually being racist myself, merely pointing out that this particular racist misinformation has a basis in actual, factual for-really-reals facts. Of course, I will cheerfully accept an "Off-Topic" mod, because we're not commenting on the correct article. A better place for this discussion would have been here.

Keep in mind, moderation is anonymous, so no one will know if you mod this "Informative" or "Interesting" instead of "Troll" or "Flamebait".

* I could find something more informative than wikipedia, but it expresses the gist of the information I wish to convey, and I'm being lazy due to the lateness of the hour in my geographic location.

Re:Darkies

[KingAlanI]

http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/09/25/227228/accent-monitoring-innovation-or-rights-violation
racist troll would have been somewhat more on-topic in this thread

Re:Darkies

[KingAlanI]

Yes, being hypersensitive about race to the point of not being able to have legitimate scientific discussions about things like this is a problem.
Pissed-off people like this AC aren't helping the situation.

Re:Darkies

[Lord Kano]

I'm black and I score at least three standard deviations above the norm on IQ tests.I don't buy the culturally biased bullshit about the tests.
Unfortunately there's an anti-intellectual theme in much of African American culture. Through peer and societal pressure, black kids learn to under-perform.

If I'm black and I can do well academically, then others can too. Just pull your damned pants up and read a book.

LK

Re:Darkies

[grizzifus]

Honestly, when I think of why prejudice is bad, it's not because "all subgroups of society are equal on average", that's definitely not true socio-economically and it's probably not completely true genetically. The reason prejudice is bad is because within each subgroup the range of possible qualities a person can have are huge!, where as the differences between the averages of subgroups are almost negligible. So if you go around comparing everybody by the average of their subgroups your going to be right not much more than 50% of the time. Whereas, because of the huge differences between individuals, you only need to spend a small amount of effort to make decent comparisons on individual merit, which is what people should do.

Unfortunately I think this can be a bit hard to explain, so for the most part we just say "all subgroups of society are equal on average" and hope that the result is the same. :(

Re:Darkies

[deroby]

Don't get me wrong, but if you say
"I don't buy the culturally biased bullshit about the tests." and then add "black kids learn to under-perform."; isn't that kind of contradicting yourself ?

Personally I'm convinced that *on average* IQ (**) is pretty much equal amongst all people, regardless of their genetic inheritance but that culture (nurture if you like to make the time-line a bit shorter) is a major driver on whether people will score good on these tests.

(**: if there is such a thing... IMHO most of these tests are unreliable as THE TESTS are culturally biased too... )

Re:Darkies

[infolation]

I'm being lazy due to the lateness of the hour in my geographic location.

That's ok. I'm being lazy because of my skin colour.

I mean color.

Re:Darkies

[1s44c]

The thing is you are being racist therefore most people will disregard what you say as nonsense due to their social programming regardless of any possible truth in what you say. The problem is that the anti-racism programming disallows any discussion of difference between races.

Re:Darkies

[History's Coming To]

That particular quirk has been well documented, and it's simply down to the way IQ tests are designed. Those in the more intensive schooling systems of "the west" and parts of asia at the far end of the scale are more likely to be exposed to the kind of tests used in these things. It's well established that some cultural/racial/geographical demographics do badly in IQ tests not because they're less intelligent, but because IQ tests are usually badly designed and administered. As Einstein said, "IQ scores are very important. How else would we measure how good people are at IQ tests?"

Re:Darkies

[jbengt]

Don't get me wrong, but if you say "I don't buy the culturally biased bullshit about the tests." and then add "black kids learn to under-perform."; isn't that kind of contradicting yourself ?

No. Stating that a culture is biased against education does not contradict stating that an IQ test is not biased against that culture.

Re:Darkies

[PeterM from Berkeley]

You have a good point, there's statistics about a race, and then there's performance by the individual.

It may be that some ethnic groups are advantaged by genetics. Maybe not. It doesn't REALLY matter, if you look at things (in my opinion) correctly.

There's mountains of evidence that intelligence is very heritable. So therefore, if a person is intelligent, a large part of that is BY LUCK.

the point: IF YOU ARE SMART IT IS IN LARGE PART BECAUSE YOU ARE LUCKY.

How about we stop being snooty about having RAW brainpower and START repecting what people can control, meaning, HOW HARD THEY WORK, and HOW HARD THEY TRY, and HOW WELL THEY LISTEN TO THE WISDOM OF OTHERS.

That's the best way to get results for society anyway! Whoever a person is, if they're rewarded for working hard and trying hard, they'll make the MOST out of themselves. NOT if they achieve approbation for just "being smart".

I know I'm going to reward my kid for working and trying hard. As for her brains, she's got what she's got, we'll work on making the most of it!

--PM

Re:Darkies

[AJH16]

My first thought was wondering if the troll misposted or just figured it would make it even more troll like to write a troll post for one topic and post it to another. But yeah, I just finished reading that article and thought my Slashdot had screwed up somehow.

Re:Darkies

[tehcyder]

As there are self evidently stupid Asian people, clever black people and both clever and stupid white people, I don't see how this proves anything other than the pointlessness of IQ tests.

Re:Darkies

[NeutronCowboy]

I'll start looking into the link once people are a) controlling for economic environments, and b) able to define what a race is.

Apparently, a) has happened and reduced the difference to be almost within sampling error, and b) is nearly impossible, so I'm not holding my breath. In the meantime, I'll tag crap like this at least off-topic, and most likely flamebait.

Re:Darkies

[tehcyder]

Working hard is over-rated by people who like working hard. so that they do not have to sit back and contemplate the meaninglessness of their own existence.

Re:Darkies

[tehcyder]

The thing is you are being racist therefore most people will disregard what you say as nonsense due to their social programming regardless of any possible truth in what you say. The problem is that the anti-racism programming disallows any discussion of difference between races.

"Race" is only an important or meaningful distinction to racists. Most of the rest of us don't waste our time placing people into Nineteenth Century pigeonholes

Re:Darkies

[Anonymous Coward]

IQ tests are "supposed to be" a measure of intelligence independent of your level of study and reading. If "pulling up your pants and reading a book" helps you to score higher on IQ tests, this indicates that the IQ tests are indeed failing at their purported purpose of measuring some "fundamental" intelligence, and instead are measuring culturally-varying factors (e.g. what books you read and/or clothes you wear). This is not to say that culturally-related achievement measures are not important and may also indicate problems to be addressed, but in this case your assertions seem to prove rather than disprove that IQ tests can have significant cultural biases.

Re:Darkies

[1s44c]

The thing is you are being racist therefore most people will disregard what you say as nonsense due to their social programming regardless of any possible truth in what you say. The problem is that the anti-racism programming disallows any discussion of difference between races.

"Race" is only an important or meaningful distinction to racists. Most of the rest of us don't waste our time placing people into Nineteenth Century pigeonholes

Your statement demonstrates the problem, people have been told that the only difference between human races is skin color and any suggestion otherwise is deeply offensive. People have been told this so many times it has sunk in. Repetition does not establish, nor disprove, validity.

If you are assuming I'm trying to imply that one race is inherently 'better' than another I'm not. I'm just pointing out the the reverse argument that all races are absolutely identical that has been repeated throughout the entire western world for many years now isn't truthful.

Light skinned people are statistically more likely to get skin cancer given the same amount of sun exposure as dark skinned people, it's racist but it's a fact.

Dark skinned people are more likely to suffer from sickle cell. It's also racist but it's a fact.

Re:Darkies

[c6gunner]

How about we stop being snooty about having RAW brainpower and START repecting what people can control, meaning, HOW HARD THEY WORK, and HOW HARD THEY TRY

Yes, I agree - let's fire Stephen Hawking, and fill his position with a hard-working banjo-player with a 65 IQ.

and HOW WELL THEY LISTEN TO THE WISDOM OF OTHERS.

Yeah, there's enough "wisdom" being passed around out there that I'd be hesitant to hire anyone who listens to any of it. I like people who can think critically and come to rational conclusions which aren't based on "the wisdom of others".

Re:Darkies

[1s44c]

...a low-class, gutter, illiterate bastardization of American English...

Someone should have pointed out that American English is a low-class, gutter, illiterate bastardization of the British English it derived from.

As no-one has I'll have to do it.

No offense meant - the real point is that Languages change over time and it's common for social groups to alter language.

Re:Darkies

[DNS-and-BIND]

You are what the African-American community calls an "Uncle Tom" (A black man who will do anything to stay in good standing with "the white man" including betray his own people) or a "race traitor" (one who has turned against their race and/or ethnicity in favor of those who would persecute them. i.e. a self loather and/or one who is ashamed of their heritage.)

Are you in the Tea or Republican Party? That's a good way to self-diagnose. Were you the only black kid at your all-white school?

Re:Darkies

[znerk]

In the meantime, I'll tag crap like this at least off-topic, and most likely flamebait.

Seeing as you responded to it, you can't moderate it at all (I'm assuming you intended to write "moderate", rather than "tag"). However, my intent was not to be flamebait; I simply tire of seeing these ridiculously racist AC posts all over the place (usually at least one per article), and actually had a response for this one other than my usual "this isn't worth responding to".

I will cheerfully agree that this entire thread is off-topic. Thank you for contributing.

Re:Darkies

[Lord Kano]

Ah yes, the condescending, angry, white liberal douche. I knew you'd show up eventually. You know nothing of our internal politics or struggle.

What you have just illustrated is exemplar of what I was referring to.

When a black kid achieves academically, people who choose not to do so accuse him/her of "trying to be white" or "selling out". This continues into adulthood where success in academia or the professional world is treated much the same way. It's treated with scorn and derision, fueled by jealousy. But, this only comes from those who have failed to achieve on their own. When a black man or woman takes his or her God given abilities and works hard to use them to achieve success, it make a lot of people unhappy. Black people who could have, but didn't and white liberals who need black people to be dependent upon them.

It's more than that. It's two-fold. You need black people to be dependent upon you for the entitlement programs that you so generously give out and you need black people to fit into the model that you believe they should occupy. You need this because it's the only way to explain away your failure to achieve. When a black guy gets a job that you were hoping for, you need for it to be affirmative action because without that you have to face the hard truth that there are minorities that are better than you.

Take someone like Cornell West, or Skip Gates as an example, they don't engage in those sort of juvenile efforts to compel conformity of thought. Why? Because they are successful in their fields.

I've grown beyond schoolyard politics and social pressure.

LK

Faster, yes, but...

[dgatwood]

There's still the problem of all those pesky particles flying at high speed down the center stripe.

Re:Faster, yes, but...

[Keramos]

And constantly breaking the speed limit,

Re:Faster, yes, but...

[dgatwood]

There's still the problem of all those pesky particles flying at high speed down the center stripe.

Oh, and the best part is that you'll never see it coming.

Re:Faster, yes, but...

[JustOK]

You'll see it coming after it happens.

Re:Faster, yes, but...

[hamster_nz]

Which is why it must be all wrong - causality becomes inconsistent.... maybe gravity moves a the speed of massless neutrinos, and it is actually photons that have a very tiny rest mass? Has anybody measured the speed of gravity with equal precision?

If you have a neutrino emitter travelling at high speeds some distance away from you all the inconsistencies that general relativity irons out become problems again.

And what happens with red-shift... you can lower the wavelength of a photon due to red shift, but could you red-shift neutrinos?

All very exciting stuff for us "armchair physics" geeks.

Re:Faster, yes, but...

[symbolset]

Your argument has some issues. First, the speed of gravity is theoretically c. This can be proved experimentally sometime soon. Or was. I forget. Since entropy is ambiguous in this thread you forgave me I'm sure.

Neutrinos are believed to have mass of some kind, because they appear to experience time. Neutrinos are believed to cycle over time through electron, muon and tau neutrino flavors - and cycling at some time rate based on energy levels. If the mass of neutrinos is negative it becomes a different theoretical problem with neat solutions. The Neutrinos would be repelled by, rather than attracted by, gravity. Yes, causality remains a problem in this case if the speed of light is truly broken and the observation isn't an error, because of the potential for heavier particles of greater mass and potentially much greater speeds. The actualization of negative masses does help certain other aspects of the theory though. Perhaps the red-shift of neutrinos and their higher-order cousins caused the early FTL expansion of the universe, and they're what's now slowing it down. In that case the missing mass in the universe is the negative mass of the neutrinos that expanded the universe faster than c on their way out and are now opposing the expansion of the universe with their negative mass. That would make the net mass of the universe exactly zero, which would clean up a lot of mess in the math. Energy then becomes the potential between mass and negative mass, the speed of light the dividing line between (which makes sense, as light is massless energy). Energy becomes the attracting force that pulls the negative and positive masses together again in the end. The gravity force becomes the equivalent of energy shifted into the mass dimension. Our entire universe becomes a temporary twitch in higher-order math: a ripple in dimensions beyond our ken - a single bubble in a fleck of foam on the crest of a wave on an endless sea made turbulent by winds beyond our imagining, that blooms once and bursts or shrinks again, absorbed by an uncaring sea. Its duration would be the level of incursion of one higher-order plane on another.

Since the neutrinos and their higher-order negative mass FTL cousins experience time in what we would consider the reverse then naturally our big bang was their big crunch. Our big crunch will be their big bang. It would make sense that the positive masses exactly equal the negative masses, that the highest density of mass in this negative mass universe is exactly the same magnitude of ours (galactic core black holes with negative mass) and that though from our current view of time their mass inhibits ours by being outside our known universe's perimeter pressing it in, from their point of view we are the negative mass preventing the expansion of their universe, and presently pressing it in toward its end. Time starts and as the masses and negative masses disassociate on their grand loop, time slows until it reaches some apogee prescribed by its cause and stops, and then reverses gaining speed until it meets its opposite mirror and stops. It's grand symmetry, and it would make perfect sense if my perfect mirror were posting this comment on gro.todhsals out there somewhere, though it's not necessary for that to be true for the math to work out.

This may do away with the the cyclic inversion theory, or "string of beads" because time itself loops back with its opposite and the beginning is also the end. There may be exactly one, which cleans up a lot more math.

Really, who needs causality anyway? It's getting in the way of a lot of interesting stuff.

If the mass of neutrinos is an imaginary number, well, things get a little fractal from there as the picture gets more beautiful and more inscrutable.

Re:Faster, yes, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

First Gravity isn't a speed but an acceleration m/s vs m/s^2. Second, do we have any proof that anything that travels faster than light travels backwards in time? If you answered yes then you obviously don't understand the scientific method very well. The idea that movement through time drops to zero at the speed of light is unproven they only think they know this because it mathematically appears that way. This means that the idea that something would grow younger if it moved faster than the speed of light is also conjecture, and in reality something very different could happen. Heck the idea that where constant speed where time stops being defined as the speed of light seemed kind of backwards to me. Besides every time we think we understand nature, nature throws an exception into the mix.

Re:Faster, yes, but...

[locofungus]

"Which is why it must be all wrong - causality becomes inconsistent"

Or special relativity is wrong. Which seems more likely assuming that this is a real result. And I think that if special relativity is wrong then Maxwell's equations must be wrong too.

There's also the possibility of something akin to the alcubierre drive. Somehow, via physics we're getting our first glimpses at now, very high speed massive particles warp space in a way outside of general relativity.

Exciting times.

Tim.

Re:Faster, yes, but...

[Captain Hook]

he's talking about the speed of the influence of gravity, not the effect in terms of accelleration gravity has on an object.

For example, in our solar system, we have a number of planets orbitting the sun at various distances. What happens if the sun suddenly popped out of existence, how long before each of the planets stops following the previous orbital path because there is no longer a massive gravity well at the center of the system?

Re:Faster, yes, but...

[michelcolman]

I think you are the one who doesn't understand the science here. Einstein's theory of relativity includes relativity of simultaneity: two observers will not always agree whether or not two events happened simultaneously, if one happened before the other, or vice versa. This is not a problem as long as the events could not possibly communicate with each other in a way that violates causality. As long as information can only travel at the speed of light or slower, no observer will ever see something happen before its cause. But if neutrino's can travel faster than light, this means that in certain reference frames (that of a very fast moving space ship passing by the earth, for example), the neutrino will actually arrive before it left the detector. Now do the same experiment in the space ship, and those neutrino's will be traveling back in time (arriving before they left) in our own reference frame here on earth. With a suitable combination of space ships, you could predict tomorrow's stock prices and pay for the space ships.

All of this assumes that Einstein's theory is correct, and light travels at "the speed of light" ("c"), etc... Maybe some of those assumptions are slightly wrong, and the theory may have to be adjusted little bit, but it's definitely more serious than a simple "who says we can't go faster, watch this". It's a very fundamental problem. Many results of relativity have been proven by experiment, and the "back in time (in certain reference frames) if going faster than c" bit is a logical consequence.

Re:Faster, yes, but...

[michelcolman]

maybe (...) it is actually photons that have a very tiny rest mass?

I was wondering the same thing. How has "c" ever been measured? By using rays of light, right? What if it turns out they have never really measured c, only the speed of light which is slightly slower than c? And maybe the neutrinos are not faster than c, just faster than light because they have an even lower mass than the already tiny mass of photons? Maybe they have just shown that "speed of light" < "speed of neutrinos" <= "c".

Re:Faster, yes, but...

[V!NCENT]

So basically, what you're saying is is that energy stills equals mass times speed of light in a vacuum times speed of light in a vacuum, but that nobody has thought about negative time that neutrons experience in traveling (some conversions) and that negative time shaves time off of the total positive traveling time?

I better get hold of a GMC then :p

Re:Faster, yes, but...

[should_be_linear]

That, or their GPS is broken.

Re:Faster, yes, but...

[charon69]

I don't really care if you're talking out of your ass. You write beautifully. I want to hear this spoken, because it was great just with the voice in my head.

Re:Faster, yes, but...

[Another, completely]

Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:Faster, yes, but...

[Deadstick]

Sounds like Jack Sarfatti with a hangover...

rj

Re:Faster, yes, but...

[jc42]

For example, in our solar system, we have a number of planets orbitting the sun at various distances. What happens if the sun suddenly popped out of existence, how long before each of the planets stops following the previous orbital path because there is no longer a massive gravity well at the center of the system?

I'd think that we wouldn't need such a drastic "experiment" to measure the speed of gravity. A simpler approach that should be feasible now is: As two planets pass in their orbits, are the changes in their orbits a function of each other's actual (simultaneous) position, or of the other's position some time in the past. The easiest to measure would probably be a Mars/Jupiter conjunction. They would be several light minutes apart, and should "see" each other at a significantly earlier point in their orbits. Mars' effect on Jupiter may not be measurable, but I'd expect that we can measure Jupiter's effect on Mars. From this, we should be able to calculate where Mars "sees" Jupiter, which would give us the speed of gravity along the path between them.

So far, I haven't read of such measurements being done. Anyone know if it's actually feasible, and so, what the number may be?

Actually, I'd think that similar measurements might be possible with Earth and some of its satellites, such as the GPS satellites. Again, I haven't read of it; I've just seen comments that the GPS software does need to take into account relativistic effects to attain the precision needed. Some of the GPS orbits are quite eccentric, and reach a significant fraction of a light-second from Earth's center of mass, so it seems likely that the software in the GPS system might have to take the speed of gravity between Earth and the satellites into account. Anyone know? If so, that should give us the speed of gravity, to within some error interval.

Re:Faster, yes, but...

[Megane]

It's those Italian particle drivers.

Re:Faster, yes, but...

[Electricity Likes Me]

Were this the case then original Michelson-Mauley experiment, and it's repetitions, would not be accurate.

If light does not travel at c, then the orientation of an interferometer (and we can build very accurate interferometers) relative to the Earth's passage through space would show a slight difference depending on if it was parallel or perpendicular to the direction of travel. This would've identified the issue far earlier since it's a much easier experiment then measuring neutrino speeds.

i.e. Light parallel to Earth's travel would move at v(light) + v(earth-solar orbital velocity), and perpendicular it would be v(light) - thus giving different interference patterns based on rotation of the apparatus.

While if relativity applies the appropriate Lorentz transformations would be necessary, the net effect would still be a perceived difference in the speed of light along each vector.

Re:Faster, yes, but...

[Smallpond]

So far, I haven't read of such measurements being done. Anyone know if it's actually feasible, and so, what the number may be?

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

Re:Faster, yes, but...

[NeutronCowboy]

Another interesting aspect - by messing with signs, you can see that positrons could actually be electrons traveling back in time. All kinds of fun ensues. Doesn't work with matter-antimatter annihilation (unless we work out what that means in terms of time-anti-time annihilation), but it was an interesting revelation in physics class.

Re:Faster, yes, but...

[michelcolman]

OK, there goes my Nobel prize... Thanks for clearing that up, I didn't think of that.

Re:Faster, yes, but...

[werepants]

Doesn't work with matter-antimatter annihilation (unless we work out what that means in terms of time-anti-time annihilation), but it was an interesting revelation in physics class.

Sure it does - it's the mass-energy equivalence principle. If you look at matter-antimatter annihilation in reverse, you see two gamma rays colliding and producing an electron and positron. Momentum, energy, charge, and all the important parts are conserved. This idea is what makes particle accelerators work. If you get enough energy together, then any particle can be created, as long as it conserves where it matters.

Re:Faster, yes, but...

[V!NCENT]

This math-soup is getting pretty rediculous...

Re:Faster, yes, but...

[NeutronCowboy]

But that's the point: it's two particles colliding, one moving in one direction in time, the other in the other direction in time, but with the same charge. Charge would not be conserved, unless things work differently once you have time moving backwards. But again, as this is way above my paygrade in terms of the physics and math involved, I'll just stop here.

Re:Faster, yes, but...

[werepants]

Think about it this way - two like charges repel. But, if you look at repulsion in reverse, it looks just like attraction. So, an electron that is moving in backwards time will be attracted to the things it should be repulsed by and vice versa. Which means that for all intents and purposes, you have changed the sign of the charge. That's why electrons moving backwards in time are indistinguishable from a positron going forward in time - they would behave exactly the same, and there really is no way (mathematically at least) to distinguish between them.

So, I think when you do the charge conservation analysis, you consider the backwards-time negative to be a positive...? It would make sense since they have inverse effects.

dual it and have 2 one way tunnels

[Joe_Dragon]

dual it and have 2 one way tunnels

Re:dual it and have 2 one way tunnels

[Anonymous Coward]

looks great

Re:dual it and have 2 one way tunnels

[ShakaUVM]

>>dual it and have 2 one way tunnels

Just make sure you paint signal directional markings to provide optimal signal transfer, like a Denon ethernet cable.

The tubes were there...

[Thruen]

I thought they just sent it through the same tubes the internet uses? Aren't neutrinos almost as small as golf balls? They'd fit easy.

Re:The tubes were there...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, they are a LOT smaller than golf balls, they are about the size of your balls. That makes them nearly undetectable.

Re:The tubes were there...

[ozmanjusri]

they are about the size of your balls. That makes them nearly undetectable.

Neuterinos?

Re:The tubes were there...

[justforgetme]

German for new Terinos
Terino (Canis lupus familiaris): domestic dog breed know for their irritating barking at speeds faster than light (ie: you'll never see it comming and you never hear the end of it)

Re:The tubes were there...

[ShakaUVM]

>>German for new Terinos

This is Italy, they all drive Gran Terinos.

Re:The tubes were there...

[moronoxyd]

Damn. Over the weekend I had moderation point but didn't use them, and now that I would like to moderate I can't :(

Re:The tubes were there...

[Shompol]

A golf-ball-sized object at the speed of light would have (.2 kg * 299792458 m/s ^2) / 2 = 9 x10^15 Joules of energy. So, in the "library of congress" units, 1 TNT-Ton = 4E9 Joules.

9 x10^15 (Joules) / 4E9 (Joules/TNT-Ton) = 2 Megaton TNT.

Who needs nukes when you got golfball-sized neutrinos? Btw is CERN still standing?

sure looks like she was misinterpreted

[buddyglass]

Italy has contributed to the construction of the tunnel between CERN and Gran Sasso Laboratories, through which the experiment took place, with a sum now estimated at around 45 million euros.

It sounds like she's saying that Italy contributed to the tunnel, through which the experiment took place, by way of contributions from Gran Sasso Labs totalling 45 million euros. Bad translation into English, and possibly bad sentence structure in Italian. (I don't speak Italian so I can't judge.)

Re:sure looks like she was misinterpreted

[wes33]

so you really think this 900 km tunnel
exists, do you?

Re:sure looks like she was misinterpreted

[JeffSh]

From the italian press release: "Alla costruzione del tunnel tra il Cern ed i laboratori del Gran Sasso"

It seems the word "tunnel" is shared between English and Italian. That said, the cultural context and definition /could/ be different, meaning instead not a literal tunnel but ... ahh whatever.

Re:sure looks like she was misinterpreted

[whoever57]

It seems the word "tunnel" is shared between English and Italian.

Yes, but it is clearly an English word, used in Italian. While not an expert Italian speaker, to me the use of the word "tunnel" seems odd, since the word often used for a literal tunnel is "galleria". According to one website, there are some idiomatic uses of "tunnel" in relation to drugs, so perhaps it has some other meanings which may make more sense in the context of this quote.

Re:sure looks like she was misinterpreted

[buddyglass]

No, I don't. That was the point of my post. The experiment took place in a "tunnel" at the LHC. She's saying that Italy contributed financially, along with CERN, to the construction of that tunnel.

Re:sure looks like she was misinterpreted

[buddyglass]

Or, at least, I was assuming it took place in a tunnel at the LHC. She might have assumed the same, regardless of whether that is in fact the case.

Re:sure looks like she was misinterpreted

[SimonTheSoundMan]

Perhaps it's Engtalian rather than Italian. :D

You're always hearing odd English phrases and words in sentences, even when they have a word in their language for it already.

Re:sure looks like she was misinterpreted

[symbolset]

I believe in the tunnel. I just believe it's only a few neutrinos wide.

Re:sure looks like she was misinterpreted

[Jeremi]

I believe in the tunnel. I just believe it's only a few neutrinos wide.

Or perhaps to put it another way: for a neutrino, everywhere is a tunnel.

Re:sure looks like she was misinterpreted

[sconeu]

It's probably Italish rather than Engtalian.

Re:sure looks like she was misinterpreted

[Samantha Wright]

I'm confused. Italy funded that too, right?

Re:sure looks like she was misinterpreted

[Mindcontrolled]

My Italian is a bit rusty, and this is beside the point anyway, but wouldn't "galleria" more specifically refer to a road or railway tunnel? Something made for driving through, but not necessarily, say, a utility tunnel where you run cables through or something like that? Any native speaker around?

Re:sure looks like she was misinterpreted

[pmontra]

I'm Italian. We use either tunnel or galleria. They are almost the same to us, with tunnel possibly referring to longer gallerie (tunnels). The tunnels under the alps are all called tunnels or with the other Italian word traforo.

Re:sure looks like she was misinterpreted

[Anonymous Coward]

It's probably a network link, metaphorically a tunnel. CERN depends critically on distributed data storage and processing, using infrastructure descended from the European Data Grid project of years past. Italy has been very active in Grid research and has quite possibly contributed some of the networking cost as part of their CERN subscription.

Re:sure looks like she was misinterpreted

[sijj]

I am Italian. The original Italian sentence of the press release is very clear and the English translation is correct. :(

Re:sure looks like she was misinterpreted

[Anonymous Coward]

You actually stole this word from us, froggies. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=tunnel

And the translation of the sentence actually mentions a tunnel BETWEEN Gran Grasso and CERN. tra == between. We must conclude that this minister is scientifically illiterate, which is not surprising. Illiterate, not checking for facts and lying by trying to give merits to her government by claiming it helped in the construction of an imaginary tunnel. Makes you wonder how many other fictitious projects have been funded through a mix of ignorance and dishonesty.

Re:sure looks like she was misinterpreted

[Anonymous Coward]

Translation from an Italian with a degree in languages.
Original source: http://www.istruzione.it/web/ministero/cs230911

Original line: "Alla costruzione del tunnel tra il Cern ed i laboratori del Gran Sasso, attraverso il quale si è svolto l'esperimento, l'Italia ha contribuito con uno stanziamento oggi stimabile intorno ai 45 milioni di euro."

Translation: "Italy contributed to the construction of the tunnel between the CERN and the Gran Sasso Labs, where the experiment took place, by allocating about 45 millions of Euro."

Comment: "attraverso il quale si è svolto l'esperimento" could also mean that the experiment was carried out, in different stages, in the two labs.. BUT the part of the sentence ".. del tunnel tra il Cern ed i laboratori del Gran Sasso" means, with no exception, that there is a real tunnel which links the CERN and the Gran Sasso Labs. No surprise from a minister who took her final exam in an university of Southern Italy just because she wasn't able to pass it in her own university*.

* Here in Italy, and not only in southern Italy, there are some "universities" which provide "easier exams" in order to complete your course of studies and jump in the job market. You only have to pay...

Re:sure looks like she was misinterpreted

[michelcolman]

You're going way too fast for us there.

Re:sure looks like she was misinterpreted

[empty mind]

Wish I had mod points. Btw she is the minister who reduced drastically funds for universities (in Italy most unis are public... and very good in terms of teaching).

Re:sure looks like she was misinterpreted

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, it could be one thing or the other.

cit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6z0u5ScaaZY#t=3m35s

Re:sure looks like she was misinterpreted

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it's an italian word that derives from English language, but it's commonly used in Italian language since a long time.

Re:sure looks like she was misinterpreted

[angel'o'sphere]

In science and engineering the word tunnel is used e.g. like this: "tunnel aerodinamico" (flume or wind tunnel) or "effetto tunnel" a tunnel can be a "galleria" (more a cave) or a "traforo".

A good site for crosschecking various european languages is: http://dict.leo.org/

Re:sure looks like she was misinterpreted

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm Italian and read the official letter. She complimented for the construction of the tunnel that connects Geneva to Gran Sasso...there is no translation mistake...sigh...those are our politicians!

Re:sure looks like she was misinterpreted

[Anonymous Coward]

"Alla costruzione del tunnel tra il Cern ed i laboratori del Gran Sasso"

"tra" means "between", in this particular case is "between Cern and Gran Sasso lab".
It's quite common among italian politicians to say something stupid and than justify it with "it was a misunderstanding".
I can assure that to you. I'm italian ;)

Re:sure looks like she was misinterpreted

[Anonymous Coward]

THIS IS A TRUE NEWS, I'm Italian, in Italy we unfortunally have such as dump people at the government.
Gelminin,the Italian minister of Public Education, thinks there is a tunnel between the CERN and Gran Sasso, look at this
http://twitter.com/#!/search?q=%23tunnelgelmini

Re:sure looks like she was misinterpreted

[Anonymous Coward]

She is misinterpreted 99% of the time. That left aside, she infact said that she meant that Italy financed the LHC tunnel. But if you speak italian (it's my native tongue, as you can probably tell by my bad english) you can read exactly this (in the official statement her office made):

"Alla costruzione del tunnel tra il Cern e i laboratori del Gran Sasso, attraverso il quale si è svolto l'esperimento, l'Italia ha contribuito con uno stanziamento oggi stimabile in 45 milioni di euro"

There is no way this sentence can be misinterpreted. Either she does not speak italian properly or does not know much about physics (or geography for that matter, maybe she confused Gran Sasso with Gran San Bernardo). The sentence speaks clearly about a tunnel that has been BUILT between Cern and Gran Sasso labs and through which the experiment took place.

I would like to think that she was misinterpreted, I really would. But this is the kind of people we have nowadays in the government... people that need to move 800kms from their home town to get a degree because in their home town "it's just too difficult".

Re:sure looks like she was misinterpreted

[GameboyRMH]

That's okay, I used to bullseye womp rats in my T-16 back home, they're not much wider than two neutrinos.

Re:sure looks like she was misinterpreted

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, not so English in fact: the word English word "tunnel" derives from the French word "tonnelle" ca 1440 , later re-adopted in French and other languages as well.
src : http://dictionary.reference.com/etymology/tunnel
src: http://www.frenchinoxford.co.uk/saviezvousque.html

Just my 2 c ( of my God, I travel twice as fast as a humble photon in space).

Re:sure looks like she was misinterpreted

[sash]

There is no possible misinterpretation, and the phrase literally means "To the construction of the tunnel between CERN and the Gran Sasso laboratories". No cultural context, definition or whatever. "Tunnel" is a commonly used word in Italian, with the exact same meaning - an approximately horizontal hole in the ground.

Re:sure looks like she was misinterpreted

[sash]

What you say is what she is now claiming to have meant, after the whole of Italy has been laughing at her. Unfortunately for her, and for us all Italians, there is no possible denying, what was written in the press release literally and unequivocally means "tunnel between CERN and Gran Sasso, across which the experiment took place".

Re:sure looks like she was misinterpreted

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, at least, I was assuming it took place in a tunnel at the LHC. She might have assumed the same, regardless of whether that is in fact the case.

No, the phrase she said translates to "the tunnel BETWEEN CERN and the Gran Sasso Lab. She (or the unpaid slave they keep updating the ministry news feed) is definitely convinced there was a tunnel.

Since CERN is the leader in QM research

[waddgodd]

Would this be a Quantum Tunnel?

Re:Since CERN is the leader in QM research

[clyde_cadiddlehopper]

Would this be a Quantum Tunnel?

It might be. It might not be. And it might be and not be simultaneously.

Re:Since CERN is the leader in QM research

[Nethead]

Yes. They just forward biased a tunnel diode to cause quantum mechanical tunneling, which of course got through all the dirt and rock because they exhibit negative resistance.

Re:Since CERN is the leader in QM research

[Tomato42]

we have to be cautious, if the politicians learn about ambiguity of existence in quantum world, they may start getting "quantum brib^H^H^H^H campaign donations" that just happen to "not be" when the time to file a fiscal report comes and simultaneously "be and not be" during the trials...

No, it was not...

[feranick]

As an Italian speaker I can confirm that there is no mistranslation. She really said a tunnel was in place and Italy contributed the money to build it....

Re:No, it was not...

[icebike]

She wouldn't have been the first to assume there was a tunnel.
Many posters here on slashdott had to be reminded that there was no tunnel in the prior post on this subject.
Apparently the idea that you can send tiny particles thru the earth itself is a difficult concept to get across.

Re:No, it was not...

[mcelrath]

Now go back and read her title: "Italian minister of Education and Scientific Research".

Re:No, it was not...

[feranick]

No, she wouldn't have been. However that kind of assumption is somehow inappropriate for someone that is in charge of science research policy making. It shows the lack of competence or care (whatever you think it's more important). While we do not require that anybody need to know that neutrinos travel through matter (although we could make a better effort in trying to teach that), it's expected that scientific accuracy, competence and correct insight to be of the person in charge of deciding what and what not makes sense in Italian scientific research. If the concept of particle traveling through matter is too difficult for her to grasp, she should step down and leave to the job to people maybe less attractive (the main reason she's there) but more competent.

Re:No, it was not...

[icebike]

Translation : a politician.

If you think that's news, welcome to planet Earth.

Re:No, it was not...

[FrootLoops]

There's a good chance some poorly informed fluky wrote the letter and she just signed it. That is, she may have just been inattentive rather than stupid.

Re:No, it was not...

[Anonymous Coward]

*Whoosh* <-The sound of a neutrino flying over your head carrying the point of the GP's post (at the speed of light)

Re:No, it was not...

[icebike]

Every democracy has government department head who are politicians or professional administrators, and very few are professionals in the field. This is by design.

There is no swoosh here, except over the heads of people naive enough to think administrators work their way up from the ranks.

Re:No, it was not...

[symbolset]

There is a tunnel and Italy did contribute the money to build it. They drilled it with neutrinos. It's a very narrow tunnel.

Re:No, it was not...

[adamofgreyskull]

Inattentive, incompetent, ignorant or stupid? Neither of those options are great, are they?

Re:No, it was not...

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a good chance some poorly informed fluky wrote the letter and she just signed it. That is, she may have just been inattentive rather than stupid.

no, trust me, she is really stupid.

Re:No, it was not...

[FrootLoops]

No, but I'd rather have someone inattentively checking their press releases than an idiot.

Re:No, it was not...

[dotancohen]

if the concept of particle traveling through matter is too difficult for her to grasp, she should step down and leave to the job to people maybe less attractive (the main reason she's there) but more competent.

You got me to click through to TFA, but where's the pic?

Re:No, it was not...

[dotancohen]

Bad form, replying to self, but I found a pic!
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_OjHZJ0p3NPI/SwNY8JRh5XI/AAAAAAAAAIw/pMNkZxVeDlI/s1600/gelmini.jpg

She can stay!

Re:No, it was not...

[Cinnamon Whirl]

Remember, this is the country that is putting its scientists on trial for failing to predict and earthquake.

Re:No, it was not...

[rastos1]

She wouldn't have been the first to assume there was a tunnel.
Many posters here on slashdot had to be reminded that there was no tunnel in the prior post on this subject.

Even if I knew nothing of "nucular" physics, I would still have doubts about existence of man-made +700km long underground structure.

Re:No, it was not...

[ponchietto]

Unfortunately she is quite stupid and incompentent. As proved by many television appearances.
The only reason she is a minister can be found inside Berlusconi pants.

Re:No, it was not...

[bryan1945]

She looks like a horse.

Re:No, it was not...

[Anonymous Coward]

no: an Italian politician belonging to the present government, that's the exact translation.

Re:No, it was not...

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, now I understand, I 'm a bit slow on this. So there is a 900 km long tunnel , well hidden, and now all the EU (perhaps US, too) will have to pay ...

This reminds me this joke:
The US president and the USSR president meet in Camp David, then the Russian asks the US president ; Wow , you have money, how do you manage to get so much money? The US president thinks , then tells his Russian friend: look at the bridge in front of us , it costed $500 millions to taxpayers ...
Where is the bridge asks the Russian ? I don't see anything ... -- Well, look , this bridge , there ! -- Ah, this little wooden bridge ? ... -- Yes !
A few months later in Moscow, US president meet his russsian friend. Oh , what a wonderful palace, You 'll richer than me said the US president
The Russian then told: I 've understood your lesson. Look at this $2 billion bridge right ahead ! The US president looks, but nothing , not even a miniature bridge... :):):):):)

Re:No, it was not...

[Carewolf]

It is not unique to Italian politics. The former minister of education in Denmark, stated while he was visiting a physics tour for high school students that heavy objects fall faster than light objects. He was the minister for education for more than 10 years.

Re:No, it was not...

[Coren22]

I enjoy looking at her too. You mean that isn't reason enough to hire someone?

Re:No, it was not...

[RivenAleem]

Waitaminute! How did they shine the light through then?

Re:No, it was not...

[Anonymous Coward]

As an Italian speaker I can confirm that there is no mistranslation. She really said a tunnel was in place and Italy contributed the money to build it....

bravo bravo.. continua così, tu si che sei figo. Tu e tutti gli altri limitati.

what a shame

[giampy]

If that's what she said, it's tragic other than funny. This administration of sad clowns, old thieves, and incompetent assholes (except perhaps the finance minister) has to go. The sooner the better. And i say it as an Italian who lives in LA but goes back yearly and still loves his country.

Re:what a shame

[bill_mcgonigle]

These are the people who are prosecuting geologists for not predicting the earthquake.

As a man of reason, I'd advise you to flee, but it seems you already have. Good move.

Re:what a shame

[kulnor]

Obviously all these tunneling neutrinos are the cause for earthquakes.... turning the planet into a superposition of Swiss cheese or Pamesan

Re:what a shame

[Anonymous Coward]

All the scientists involved will now be prosecuted for breaking the laws of physics

Re:what a shame

[Hatta]

This administration of sad clowns, old thieves, and incompetent assholes (except perhaps the finance minister) has to go

The only way I could tell you were talking about Italy, and not the US, is that you excluded the finance minister from the above groups.

Re:sure looks like an americunt

[Anonymous Coward]

so you really think this 900 km tunnel exists, do you?

Why not? That's like 3 miles, right?

I must be missing something

[Narnie]

because all I get out of that release is:

- The neutrino can travel faster than light, good job scientists.

- We [Italy] spent a shitload of money to build a tunnel to make science happen, GOOD JOB US!!

- We continue to spend shittonnes of money to make science happen.

- All praise Italy!

I'm glad somebody out there is funding science, but why is she focusing on Italy's achievement to fund a science and not the scientists and the implication of their finding? I'm missing why Italy's contribution to CERN is worth 50% of that press release.

Re:I must be missing something

[Anonymous Coward]

"build a tunnel"

The tunnel doesn't exist. Fucking morons.

Re:I must be missing something

[c0lo]

"build a tunnel"

The tunnel doesn't exist. Fucking morons.

FTL travel without space warping will get you news from the future.

Re:I must be missing something

[FrootLoops]

Things you're missing:
1. No such tunnel exists.
2. It would have to be hundreds of miles long, so tens of millions of Euros wouldn't make a dent in construction costs.
3. Neutrinos interact weakly enough with matter that they can be beamed through solid rock without much trouble, so a tunnel is unnecessary (even undesirable).
4. Faster than light neutrinos have not been "discovered" per se. The guys published their results in hopes that someone will find an error, or (mmmaaaybbbeee) in hopes that their results will be reproducible.
5. Faster than light neutrinos would require huge revisions to modern physics. For instance, under special relativity a faster-than-light particle time travels and destroys causality.
6. In light of (5), extreme caution should be taken in accepting and verifying these results. Congratulating scientists for their amazing discovery now is, to say the least, premature.

Re:I must be missing something

[brindafella]

> - We [Italy] spent a shitload of money to build a tunnel to make science happen, GOOD JOB US!!
> I'm missing why Italy's contribution to CERN is worth 50% of that press release.

I agree.

What is missing is that the Italian economy is in a $#!+|0@& of trouble (but it's fixable), and this neutrino media release seems to make spending $#!+|0@&$ more into a virtue.

Re:I must be missing something

[Anonymous Coward]

aaaaand.... ladies and gentlemen, here's why Mariastella Gelmini sits up there in our parliament!

applause!

Re:I must be missing something

[tinkerton]

Actually from what I recall, special relativity can be seen as stating two things:

- there is a maximum speed and because it's not infinite you need the Lorentz transformation
- light travels with this maximum speed.
If for example there had been a discovery that light had mass, then light would not travel at the maximum speed. Now there have been very accurate measurements showing a ridiculously low upper limit for the mass of photons, but the idea of photons having mass does not contradict special relativity. It would mean Maxwells laws are not entirely accurate.

So if neutrinos travel faster than light then it would take a bit more work to show that they're also faster than the limit speed. Maybe some people on here have conclusive evidence that light speed is close enough to the limit speed.

Re:I must be missing something

[Anonymous Coward]

4. Faster than light neutrinos have not been "discovered" per se. The guys published their results in hopes that someone will find an error, or (mmmaaaybbbeee) in hopes that their results will be reproducible.

5. Faster than light neutrinos would require huge revisions to modern physics. For instance, under special relativity a faster-than-light particle time travels and destroys causality.

(4): The results seem pretty credible. Diclaimer: I work in condensed matter, and have no real clue about the neutrino decay stuff. Rest seems solid enough.
(5): Why? Maybe we should stop callign c "speed of light" and actually call it "speed of massless, noninteracting particle". Photons are the former, but mostly not the latter. Neturinos are (mostly) the former, and for all practical purposes the latter -> So maybe the speed of the neutrino is a better approximation of the geometrical constant c?

Always remember that this "correction" has the relative magnitude of 10^-5. That's not that bad...

Re:I must be missing something

[cc1984_]

I'm afraid current thinking is that neutrinos absolutely definitely 100% have mass, and that no matter how small that is, would mean that them travelling faster than c really is quite a big deal.

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

Re:I must be missing something

[Teun]

Speed is a factor of time and distance.

They've used the distance along the earth's surface and forgot the neutrinos elect to go in a (shorter) straight line...

Re:I must be missing something

[Anonymous Coward]

However, praising them for publishing impossible results because they can't reproduce the results (with the clear information "It isn't possible, but we cannot find what we have done wrong") is right. They are not afraid to admit they must have done something wrong and they are not dismissing the data because it's impossible. I assume they will be proven wrong, but they have gained my trust for not hiding the impossible data.

Re:I must be missing something

[tinkerton]

I recall the days when slashdot was solid as a rock. Now in between the error messages you manage to squeeze in a post and after a while you find out if the post succeeded or not.

Re:I must be missing something

[Anonymous Coward]

Things you're missing:
1. No such tunnel exists.
2. It would have to be hundreds of miles long, so tens of millions of Euros wouldn't make a dent in construction costs.

To be fair a tunnel was built for this experiement, and Italy contributed to funding it. It was 1 km long.

Despite all the "I'm not an expert in Italian, but I think I got this translation right" comments, it seems we are running with assumptions of what she might have meant that is more based on the assumption made in the summary than anything attributed to her.

Source: http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/Research/CNGS-en.html

Quote: "These particles are fed into a system of two magnetic lenses that focus the particles into a parallel beam in the direction of Gran Sasso. Next, in a 1 km long tunnel, the pions and kaons decay into muons and muon neutrinos. At the end of this decay tunnel, an 18 m thick block of graphite and metal absorbs the remaining protons, and pions and kaons that did not decay. The muons are stopped by the rock beyond. Only, the muon neutrinos remain to streak through the rock on their journey to Italy."

Re:I must be missing something

[Half-pint HAL]

Yes, but the parent's point was that we may just have misapproximated c up to now. Occam's Razor says that with a low order difference (such as 10^-5 -- that's a 0.001% difference) we should start by checking our numbers, not our theory. If we split Einstein's c from v(light), we can still assume the same equations... for now....

Re:I must be missing something

[Half-pint HAL]

Erm... is that a joke? If they'd done that it would have been noticed immediately....

Re:I must be missing something

[cc1984_]

Not that I disagree with anything you say, but I was just referring to the part

Neturinos are (mostly) the former, and for all practical purposes [a massless, noninteracting particle].

If the GGP wants to rename c to "speed of massless, noninteracting particle", by all means, but that particle would not be a neutrino.

Re:I must be missing something

[arthurh3535]

Or we are looking at the 'real' speed limit of Relativity. Since light is able to affect things far easier than neutrino, I bet they find that neutrinos are far closer to mass-less or has a lot less energy (and hence has less mass.) The lighter the mass of the particle function, the faster it should be able to reach the maximum speed of propagation.

Re:I must be missing something

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this mean we can use it to replace all those optic cables lying on the bottom of the ocean?

Re:I must be missing something

[FrootLoops]

Actually, the two axioms of special relativity you're probably referring to are
1. Light travels (through a vacuum) *from any source* at the same speed as measured by any inertial (non-accelerating) observer.
2. The laws of physics do not change when you switch to another inertial frame (the principle of relativity; there are more rigorous statements).
The speed of light is known accurately enough compared to this neutrino discrepancy that, if the discrepancy is real, there would be new physics going on. Saying that light travels slightly below this "speed limit" wouldn't be enough, since it is assumed throughout special relativity that the speed limit is in fact c, and those implications have been tested to higher precision than this discrepancy.

Re:I must be missing something

[FrootLoops]

Yeah, I think it's a joke (at least I chuckled). For one thing the magnitude of the effect would be in the percents, not in the millionths.

Re:I must be missing something

[Anonymous Coward]

about point 5), as far I understood, causality would be destroyed only if there is no "speed limit".
If the experiment will result to be accurate and reliable (and I do agree that it will need careful revision and independent replication) it would not automatically exclude that there is no such limit but just that light speed is not the limit. Maybe the limit is somewhere above it (1.000001c or 1000c, who knows...)

Re:I must be missing something

[FrootLoops]

A 10^-5 order difference is not that large when dealing with the speed of light. It's been measured to far more precision than that in a variety of experiments, even in the context of special relativity's predictions (eg. see this Wikipedia article).

Re:I must be missing something

[FrootLoops]

Good point. I agree, they should be lauded for their honesty. If only I wasn't participating, I would mod you up.

Re:I must be missing something

[FrootLoops]

This idea has been brought up a few times. The precisions don't work out. The effects of special relativity (where c is assumed to be the "speed limit") have been tested to higher precision than this result, so there should be legitimately new physics going on if this is true. Sure, you could just say "in all the equations that work, keep c there", but they were derived with the above equivalence in mind, so something would be very wrong indeed.

Re:I must be missing something

[tinkerton]

I'm not referring to axioms, I'm rearranging them. Physics is not axiomatic. The Lorentz transform is the result of enforcing a finite limit speed. The Lorentz transform was based on the Maxwell equations, hence the limit speed was exactly the speed of light from the start. It seems(or it just is) impossible to make the speed of light smaller than the limit speed. But it is not necessary that there be such a thing as light to create special relativity. You don't need electromagnetism. All you need is the finite limit speed.

Re:I must be missing something

[tinkerton]

and about axiom based theories, here's another rearrangment : it is possible to derive electromagnetism from electrostatics(Coulomb's law)+ special relativity.

Re:I must be missing something

[HiThere]

If I recall correctly, having a different fastest particle wouldn't affect the logic behind relativity. It *would* affect the boundary conditions. So if the neutrino can travel slightly faster than light, then our current detected limits are where they are because we are using electromagnetic widgets to accelerate them. But the actual limits would be somewhere slightly (not much!) higher.

So don't make too much out of this, until you start figuring out how to accelerate things with the weak force.

Most of the theory would remain untouched. The meaning of c would change slightly. It would refer to the speed of a neutrino rather than of a photon. Recalibrating the theory to experimental results would be lots of work, but not really significant. All current experimental results would remain good, but their meanings would alter very slightly.

This doesn't give us a faster than light anything....except neutrinos. Neutrinos would be the new clock establishing synchronicity measures. But neutrinos are so close to photons in speed that this wouldn't have much effect on any predictions. And they interact so poorly with ordinary matter that they wouldn't be a practical clock.

OTOH!!! I Am Not A Physicist. I'm a programmer who was interested in physics in high school and college (and to a much lesser extent since then). So if I'm wrong, please let me know.

Re:I must be missing something

[orgelspieler]

But neutrinos aren't photons, and don't propagate due to electromagnetic field. Isn't it possible that gravi-weak propagation happens at a slightly different speed than electromagnetic propagation? If it really is a massless particle, is there anything in special relativity that says it can't go faster than light?

The most interesting theory I've heard is that we only witness the highest energy neutrinos, because all the lower energy ones travel much faster than light. In other words, neutrinos have an imaginary rest mass, and are always tachyonic. Then the nest quest would be how we detect even lower and lower energy tachyons with speeds much greater than light. They wouldn't react with normal matter, and there'd be all sorts of causality problems.

I guess they could have negative mass and an imaginary velocity, but that makes my brain hurt even more. *checks maths* Nope, that wouldn't work.

Actually the more I read about this, here's what I think. Neutrinos are barely tachyonic. But since they are in Earth's gravity well, they loose energy through gravitational Cherenkov radiation. This makes them speed up even more. That's why the speed difference is so much greater than the ones from that supernova. They spent all that time in more-or-less empty space, and didn't accelerate due to loss of energy. (Don't forget tachyons have zero energy at infinite velocity)

Re:I must be missing something

[FrootLoops]

The mass of the particle doesn't have a bearing on the causality paradoxes I alluded to, ala this Wikipedia article. The "c" from special relativity would need to be revised (makes no sense; it's been tested very accurately), causality would need to break, or we would need a theory containing quite a bit of new physics to explain this result.

Re:I must be missing something

[FrootLoops]

There are a number of apparent misconceptions in your post. Some parts of physics are axiomatic (well, typically not in the formal logic sense, but in a way that would satisfy most mathematicians)--for instance, consider the Wightman axioms in quantum field theory. The Lorentz transform doesn't have to be "the result of enforcing a finite limit speed". It can be a rather natural consequence of frame-of-reference transformations derived from the two axioms I listed. That particles end up having a finite limit speed (moreover, the speed of light) becomes a requirement to preserve causality. You could "decouple" c from the speed of light, but the effects of special relativity have been verified (with c as it stands) to higher accuracy than this discrepancy. Decoupling isn't enough.

Re:I must be missing something

[tinkerton]

If I was thinking what you think I was thinking then there would be misconceptions in my post. Physics is very reductionist and mathematical, of course it comes close to an axiomatic system. But it's less so than is assumed, and I mean, amongst people who have studied it(and I did once, long ago).

For the rest I just agree with what you're saying. Yes, the Lorentz transform doesn't have to be the result of enforcing a finite limit speed , but it can be organized that way, and it's useful to be able to do so.
I gave the example of deriving maxwells law by going from a finite limit speed to Lorentz, and then applying this to any force with an inverse square law(as long as you don't use mass in it),. You don't have to do this, but there's value to it(apart from the fact that many will think it's not possible).

In fact it shows up pretty well the problem with c, because the speed of light c you end up with in the generated maxwell laws is exactly the limit speed you started up with for creating the Lorentz transform.

Re:I must be missing something

[Coren22]

They repeated the test some 2000 times. Personally though, if possible, I would have changed direction and seen if that changed the magnitude of the difference

what

[planimal]

i'm worried that i completely understand this, but still have no idea what i just read what did TFA just say

DANGER!!!!!! ALERT!

[For a Free Internet]

I warned you, but you laughed at my warnings and did not heed them. You mokced and called me a "trole" and an "offtopoc" ... BUT NOW IS THE HOUR OF TRUTH!!!!!!!!

THE ITALIAN ISLAMOCOMMUNIST TRAITORS ARE PLANNING TO BLOW UP OUR PLANET, POISON OUR WATER AND MAKE SEXY TO OUR WOMEN!

This tunnnel is hte proof of it! Americans, join the Campaign for a Free Internet now before it is too late, and help our fight to keep Italian infiltrators off our nation's internet and our nation's planet!!!!

Politicians should at least understand economics

[jrumney]

I don't know what is worse. That she believes the tunnel exists, or that she believes that 45 million euro is a significant contribution towards building a 900km long tunnel.

Translation looks accurate

[JoshuaZ]

(Disclaimer: I don't speak Italian)

The word used in the Italian is "tunnel". At first I thought that this might be an example of how one shouldn't always translate a word as the closest sounding word in the target language, since the most closely etymologically related word may not be the most semantically close. This is how we get Dante's Inferno rather than just calling it "Hell" which would be a more accurate English translation. At least once in science this has created a real problem in the past, about a hundred years ago. The canals of Mars were started by the translation of the Italian word "canali" as canals even though "canali" didn't have the same connotation of artificial construction.

However, in this case it looks accurate. I checked with multiple online dictionaries and Google translate to see how they would translate "tunnel" from Italian to English. Everyone gave the obvious one. Just in case, I picked likely possible semantically related words (path, connection, link, beam, bridge) and asked Google for the Italian words. In none of those cases did it hit on tunnel. So it looks like the translation is accurate.

Re:Translation looks accurate

[Anonymous Coward]

I am Italian and the translation is accurate. We use "tunnel" in exactly the same way. Sadly, our minister is no new to this kind of BS.

Re:Translation looks accurate

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I am sorry you're twice wrong: as an italian I can confirm that "tunnel" means "tunnel" exactly like in english, and also that "canale" means an artificial path exactly.
The part that everyone seems to be missing here, is that Mrs Gelmini is in charge of our ministry of public education for "special *services*" provided to the prime minister.

Re:Translation looks accurate

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, translation is perfectly accurate. From the original text it is absolutely clear that our ignorant minister thought we built a 730 km long tunnel between CERN and Gran Sasso. She is the laughing stock of all the Italian web.

Question

[Shortgeek]

I haven't been following these results too closely, but I gather from the response here that the neutrinos did not travel through a tunnel. So, then, did they just travel through the Earth? I guess this wouldn't cause any or much interference, so I'm assuming that's what was done, but I haven't found this directly stated.

Re:Question

[JoshuaZ]

Correct. The neutrinos traveled through solid rock. Neutrinos don't interact with much so as far as they are concerned solid rock isn't a big deal. And you actually want to have the solid rock there. You wouldn't want an open tunnel- the process that creates the neutrinos creates a lot of other particles of all sorts of different types. But all of those get blocked by the rock. The experimental setup in particular needs to block both the muons and tauons. These particles can normally penetrate a lot o the point where stray muons from cosmic ray collisions are a major nuisance for sensitive neutrino detectors even when the detectors are deep underground. The Japanese big neutrino detector Kamiokande has a lot of special equipment to deal with just this. So in this case, having many kilometers of rock is necessary to let the whole thing work otherwise the stray particles would make it impossible to detect neutrino interactions with all the noise.

Re:Question

[Kagura]

The common rule of thumb for neutrinos is that it take a sheet of lead one light-year thick in order to stop 50% of the neutrinos directed at it. Wow!

Re:Question

[gstrickler]

That's a heavy sheet. I'm betting it's not very good for making airplanes.

Re:Question

[cc1984_]

The common rule of thumb for neutrinos is that it take a sheet of lead one light-year thick in order to stop 50% of the neutrinos directed at it. Wow!

Sorry, I can't do that calculations. What's that in neutrino-years :)

Re:Question

[Xacid]

Holey sheet?!

Re:Question

[tgd]

At what point does a sheet turn into a block?

Re:Question

[avandesande]

That would make a heavy hat!

Re:Question

[SeanBlader]

I thought that read, "The common rule of thumb for neutrinos is that it take a shitload one light-year thick..."

Re:Question

[RivenAleem]

That explains it, neutrinos ignore leap years.

chip on board led module

[chiponboardled]

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Re:chip on board led module

[znerk]

Looks like someone doesn't understand how the slashdot effect can apply to email addresses, angry nerds, and mailbombs.

Re:chip on board led module

[Anonymous Coward]

Cue video of melting server in 3... 2...

What I get out of that release,

[Anonymous Coward]

Somebody's nephew in the construction business ("Friends of Silvio") made-off with the money!

So whatsa new about athat?

I think you've found the source of her confusion.

[reiisi]

I think you've probably pinpointed the source of her confusion.

There is a tunnel (kind of)

[Egdiroh]

Well there is a project which is used to send neutrinos and has a decay tunnel. The tunnel just doesn't go all the way, as that's not needed.

http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/Research/CNGS-en.html

Re:There is a tunnel (kind of)

[Anonymous Coward]

actually, the project u've mentioned is *exactly* the project Italy contributed money to, and the project that should have been cited by the incompetent counsellors hired by this lady who calls herself Minister of Public Education. Look at her CV, and guess why she was put there.

oh snap!

[Anonymous Coward]

ooooo... BURN! XD

Re:oh snap!

[rickb928]

Is it high school again in here? Damn those neutrinos...

um.. Not that Educated But...

[Forestwalker]

Regardless of 'who' built the 'what'.. does it not at least cause the mind to wonder.. " If we can find 'faster than light' neutrinos , that we could develop or find a way to Sail on such a thing? " FTL Sails for Space travel? What are the ramifications of this find ? What could this find mean to FTL travel. That was my first thought upon reading the above.. not .. WHO BUILT WHAT and HOW MUCH THEY DID or DID NOT SPEND.. and what is the Meaning of the Word 'TUNNEL' . Just the Uneducated , Wanna be , Space File here. Or would that be Cosmo-phile? Trek E ? Wanna Be Science Geek ? and No , I don't speak Italian either.

Re:um.. Not that Educated But...

[ColdWetDog]

Here, go read all 1036 comments.. You'll have a headache and some eyestrain but you will be much smarter.

fribst 4sot

[Anonymous Coward]

good mannerS

Tard Party is 70% Confederate, 100% Retarded

[Anonymous Coward]

Which confederate state are you from?

You sound like a slightly more educated version of Rick Perry, Tard Party poster-child, and the mentally retarded governor of America's dumbest state.

Then again, ignorant southerners all sound the same to me.

Re:Tard Party is 70% Confederate, 100% Retarded

[Anonymous Coward]

Which confederate state are you from?

You sound like a slightly more educated version of Rick Perry, Tard Party poster-child, and the mentally retarded governor of America's dumbest state.

Then again, ignorant southerners all sound the same to me.

You sound like a niggerlover. May your wife become a fat sow with tits on the back because of the rolls of fat hanging off her shoulder blades, and soon after may she give birth to a half-black kid she swears is yours. Then you will see what nigger is all about, honky!

Re:Tard Party is 70% Confederate, 100% Retarded

[Nadaka]

He obviously isn't from a confederate state. If he was, he would be aware that we all have ridiculous accents. "Ebonics" isn't any different than Creole, or the Tennessee twang.

Full disclosure: I am a gun toting progressive liberal atheist from Mississippi. Yall both have a lot of preconceived notions that are flat out wrong.

Re:Tard Party is 70% Confederate, 100% Retarded

[Anonymous Coward]

He obviously isn't from a confederate state. If he was, he would be aware that we all have ridiculous accents. "Ebonics" isn't any different than Creole, or the Tennessee twang.

Full disclosure: I am a gun toting progressive liberal atheist from Mississippi. Yall both have a lot of preconceived notions that are flat out wrong.

an accent is not the same thing as a failure to understand basic grammar. of one's own native language. when you know no other.

ever met Asian immigrants to America? maybe the parents speak heavily-accented English. if they speak English. their children? if you called them on the phone, if you were really sharp maybe you'd detect a little accent here or there but probably not. their children's children? you'd never know they are racially Asian if you called and they answered the phone. it works this way for everybody - except blacks.

so what happened to the blacks? 200+ years and they still can't overcome their tendency to speak pidgin. ebonics is not "different" it's inferior, it is a gutter language often found in ghettos, difference is blacks celebrate ghetto life instead of viewing it as something to overcome and transcend. even the highly educated blacks who didn't grow up in a ghetto often sound discernably black. it doesn't work this way for any other racial or ethnic group. it has to be genetic, and if it is, it's a genetic inability to adapt to new social conditions not found in any other racial group.

so no, it's not just an "accent". another flimsy excuse by liberal apologists: terminated.

PPTP saves the planet.

[hamster_nz]

I have a tunnel between my router in New Zealand and a customer in the US of A

Once I've finished with it you are more than welcome to drive your car through it...

Re:PPTP saves the planet.

[TheDugong]

But.... I wouldn't download a car.

Re:PPTP saves the planet.

[Coren22]

If I could, I would.

Re:Politicians should at least understand economic

[znerk]

I don't know what is worse. That she believes the tunnel exists, or that she believes that 45 million euro is a significant contribution towards building a 900km long tunnel that doesn't actually exist.

FTFY :)

kidding

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been waiting for the neutrino story to pop up on slashdot, and this is it? seriously? a bunch of lame tunnel jokes?

Re:kidding

[Anonymous Coward]

Other than the 1000 comments on the earlier story? You don't visit often enough, it seems.

Hi, I'm a faster-than-light nutrino!

[93 Escort Wagon]

And to me this story is old news.

Re:Hi, I'm a faster-than-light nutrino!

[Zontar The Mindless]

And to me this story is old news.

No, from your point of view, it hasn't happened yet.

Re:Hi, I'm a faster-than-light nutrino!

[jamesh]

The thing about Slashdot is that you could be a slower-than-stopped particle, and the news would still be old.

(if you can have a particle that goes faster than light, then a particle that goes slower than stopped is surely possible!)

Re:Hi, I'm a faster-than-light nutrino!

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing about Slashdot is that you could be a slower-than-stopped particle, and the news would still be old.

(if you can have a particle that goes faster than light, then a particle that goes slower than stopped is surely possible!)

That thought makes me colder then absolute zero

Re:Hi, I'm a faster-than-light nutrino!

[Half-pint HAL]

The thing about Slashdot is that you could be a slower-than-stopped particle, and the news would still be old.

(if you can have a particle that goes faster than light, then a particle that goes slower than stopped is surely possible!)

You could, but thanks to a recent amendment to the traffic laws of physics, it has to make an irritating beeping sound to warn you of its slower-than-stopped trajectory...

I'm confused

[tkel]

What happened?

Re:I'm confused

[adamofgreyskull]

An Italian politician has claimed responsibility for helping to fund a ~750km imaginary tunnel to the tune of 45 million Euro. There is no tunnel. Neutrinos (unlike cars) travel quite happily through the Earth without tunnels.

Being nice, and giving her the benefit of the doubt, you can forgive her for thinking a "tunnel" between the two places was necessary. Even if she's minister for Science, she is still just a politician. However, even more embarrassing is the failure of common sense that led her to believe that, should you build a 750km long tunnel, 45 million Euros would even begin to cover it. For comparison, the Channel Tunnel, between South-East England and Northern France is around 50 km long. That project came in over-budget at GBP£4650 million in 1986 money. (Around 5400 million Euro). Though, granted, cars are bigger than neutrinos :)

Secondly, in her eagerness to jump on the bandwagon and accept responsibility for the hard work of the scientists involved, she is being extremely premature in accepting the results of the experiment as absolute fact. "Exceeding the speed of light is an epochal victory for scientific research around the world."

Re:Politicians should at least understand economic

[adamofgreyskull]

I don't know what is worse. That she believes the tunnel exists, or that she believes that 45 million euro is a significant contribution towards building a 900km long tunnel that doesn't actually exist.

FTFY :)

Ah, but 45 Million euro is far too much for a 900km-long imaginary tunnel! I can build an imaginary tunnel 5 times as long for only 9.99 million Euro (99 cents).

Translated using google translate

[sartin]

Before criticizing the minister too harshly, you might want to consider that the linked blog is quotes the results of Google translate on the actual press release in Italian. It's just possible that the results of google translate are a little inaccurate.

Excellent reporting. The citizen reporter is doing a great job today.

Re:Translated using google translate

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, I'm from Italy, and the Italian sentence says just that (my translation) "To the construction of the tunnel between Cern and the Gran Sasso laboratories, through which the experiment took place, Italy contributed with a stance of around 45 million euros"
No way you can misinterpret it, even if they rushed to say that obviously they were referring to something else.

By the way, another inexact sentence in the press release is the one congratulating with the scientists for "breaking the speed of light", like they cured cancer or AIDS.

Re:Translated using google translate

[fph il quozientatore]

+1. And let me add that the relative pronoun "which" is singular in the Italian original, so you can be 100% sure that the relative clause refers to the tunnel (singular) and not to the labs (plural). (IAANativeItalianSpeaker).

Re:Translated using google translate

[Anonymous Coward]

Cazzata! (Bullshit! :-)...)

THEY CORRECT ENGLISH TRANSLATION... SHOULD BE:
"...for the construction of the Tunnel (ref: ...LHC...), (COMMA... here there it is the F... comma that is missing... :-)) for the Construction of the Cern Laboratories AND for the constructions of the Gran Sasso Laboratories, thanks from which... (both of them permtitted the...) the experiment took place, the Government of Italy... has contributed with the sum of 45M€... "

In summary:
"...for the construction of the Tunnel, for the Construction of the Cern Laboratories AND for the constructions of the Gran Sasso Laboratories, thanks from which the experiment took place, the Government of Italy has contributed with the sum of 45M€"

THIS IS IT!!!! ...

NOW stop wangering about... and get a Job! :-)

Please, remove this article and all comments

[aglider]

As it is offensive to Mariastella and all Italian women.
Moreover it is also a straight personal attack to the Italian PM.
This website is clearly directed and read by the Italian Left parties.
If you won't comply you'll be suded by our attoneys, have the website obscured in Italy and brought in prison for a year or two.
Sincerely yours
S.B.

Re:Please, remove this article and all comments

[Half-pint HAL]

Troll? It's satire, people! Note "SB" -- Silvio Berlusconi. It's A Joke!

Re:Please, remove this article and all comments

[aglider]

Sigh! :-(
I thought that Anglo-Americans were famous for their unparalleled humor.
Italians do it better, especially politicians!

Re:Politicians should at least understand economic

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not how government bidding works. All the other offers are in the 50 million Euro range, and since you don't have any experience in similar projects like our friends at established local corporations, your bid can obviously be eliminated as unrealistic. The project goes to the local corporation that delivered the previous tunnel -- unfortunately at twice the projected cost and with multi-year delays, but those were due to unforeseen circumstances, so now they clearly have the required experience to overcome the difficulties inherent in this kind of a tunnel project.

No big deal

[CptNerd]

The experiment's results are no big deal, one of the neutrinos just said "follow me, guys, I know a shortcut".

Mod up

[Anonymous Coward]

No, really. He's right and Mariastella Gelmini is right.

Yes, there's a tunnel!

[Anonymous Coward]

Gran Sasso is a mountain in eastern Italy. About 25 years ago, a tunnel (of the traffic kind) was made underneath the mountain. Physicists saw this as a great opportunity to build a particle physics lab, using the mountain as shielding from cosmic radiation. Usually such experiments (such as dark matter detectors) are placed deep underground in hard-to-get-to mines, but this lab is great since you can literally drive up to it. The lab is comprised of three (very) large sections that are right off of the main road.

Italy paid for this tunnel and the carving out of the lab space. Maybe she was confused or maybe the translation was poor, but Italy did indeed fund the construction of the tunnel underneath Gran Sasso as well as the laboratories underneath the mountain. So give them credit there.

Re:Yes, there's a tunnel!

[Mindcontrolled]

Now that my memory comes back to me - give the parent AC credit. He is 100% right - the Gran Sasso Lab is located in a road tunnel - and that, in all likelihood, is the tunnel referred to.

Re:Yes, there's a tunnel!

[peppepz]

The translation is correct and unambiguous. She indeed said that there is a tunnel "between the CERN and the Gran Sasso laboratories, through which the experiment has taken place". She probably got confused with the road tunnel when somebody of her staff explained the experiment to her.

Re:Yes, there's a tunnel!

[Anonymous Coward]

As a native speaker I can attest that the translation is correct, and there's no ambiguity here.

She clearly states that there is a tunnel BETWEEN CERN AND GRAN SASSO and that italy contributed to it.
No credit to give. Just the usual ignorant politician at the helm of the ministry of education.

Re:Yes, there's a tunnel!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope.

What she should have referred to is indeed the CNGS project that actually was funded by Italy (mentioned in a previous comment), and that actually has a decay tunnel.

Of course Italy has payed the labs and the tunnel (for traffic), but the traffic tunnel and the lab were there before these experiments were even thought of I guess.

Re:Yes, there's a tunnel!

[Cigarra]

It's also the place where one of the coolest commandos-on-gliders operations of WWII took place.

Re:Yes, there's a tunnel!

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up, there is a real tunnel ... but it looks like the press is confused.

Re:Yes, there's a tunnel!

[Anonymous Coward]

Again, as an italian, I assure you the translation is completely correct.
The 45 milion euros is not the amount spent on the gran sasso tunnel either, since the tunnel waas done way before euro came in Italy. And 45 milions is the sum given to the CERN.

This is not the first time an italian politician tries to exploit the news and makes a complete fool out of him/herself by showing completely ignorance on the subject.
Last time it appened to the Milan ex-mayor, who tought a joke about a clearly non-existant part of her city was serious.

Basically, they don't deserve half the respect people give them.

Re:Yes, there's a tunnel!

[avandesande]

Not knowing Italian, how difficult would it be to mis-interpret 'the particles tunneled from a to b' to 'the particles went through a tunnel from a to b'?

Re:Yes, there's a tunnel!

[Anonymous Coward]

But the text mentions explicitly a tunnel between Cern and Gran Sasso. I'm italian, so i'm quite sure about what the original text says :P

Re:Yes, there's a tunnel!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, il Massiccio del Gran Sasso is in southern Italy, in Abruzzo, it's a mountain range...
Loretta

Tu be or not tu be

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a tunnel between my router in New Zealand and a customer in the US of A

That would be a tube.

The Internet is a series of tubes (youtube, boobtube, screwtube, newbtube, schtumptube ...)

Correction: schtuptube

[Anonymous Coward]

My yiddish is rusty.

900 km?

[geogob]

Did the poster even read the neutrino-story he quotes? The key number of 732 km should be fairly clear in everyone's mind by now...
Why the 900 km figure? Is it just more sensational as a puny 732 km?

As for the translation which started this nice story, I would be careful. I learned enough foreign languages to know one thing: Every language has its own subtleties (which may vary from region to region or with social status or through any number of other factors). In this context the word tunnel may not be meant on the literal sense and the translator simply translated the words without understanding their meaning in the context.

Or maybe it explains why the coalition failed to build bridges between the Afghan people and America?

Re:900 km?

[ledow]

Given that all my Italian friends have already started laughing at this before this article even appeared, I'd guess the translation was accurate enough.

Yes, basically, the person in the article did honestly think there was a physical tunnel between the two, and didn't understand what neutrinos are anywhere (because they wouldn't exactly be "herded" in one direction by the walls of a tunnel).

Re:900 km?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, the translation is, sadly, correct, I can assure you. Now think for once that you're a professor and you have such a boss, how would you explain to students that culture is important?

Re:900 km?

[bcmm]

Either the neutrinos travelled by road, or somebody does not know how to use any of the numerous mapping packages that feature a ruler tool, and has not read the paper or, indeed, the news. In this day and age, the latter seems implausible, so I suggest the hypothesis that superluminal particles can drive.

Re:Politicians should at least understand economic

[adamofgreyskull]

...but those were due to unforeseen circumstances...

When building an imaginary tunnel, I imagine most circumstances are "unforeseen"; also "unseen".

Speed limits never bother Italians

[Anonymous Coward]

It's well known that all Italians exceed the speed limit.

BAD TRANSLATION

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey guys, when you post an article, just check the original source, read it, and ... understand it. The article refers to "http://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/2011/09/something-is-deeply-wrong-minister-and.html" , in this blog we can read the original text in Italian. The translation is bad , that's all.

Subspace...

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course now you have a transmitter and a detector the next step is for the geeks at CERN to work out how to use those pesky little neutrinos to transmit a message, it shouldn't be too difficult to achieve...

Contributions ...

[Anonymous Coward]

And you will never known how much Italy contributed to the painting of the "Sound Barrier" !
JCN-9000

What if speed of light is not the limit speed

[tinkerton]

from what I recall, special relativity can be seen as stating two things:

- there is a maximum speed and because it's not infinite you need the Lorentz transformation
- light travels with this maximum speed.

If for example there had been a later discovery that light had mass, then light would not travel at the maximum speed. Now there have been very accurate measurements showing a ridiculously low upper limit for the mass of photons, but the idea of photons having mass does not by itself contradict special relativity. It would mean Maxwells laws are not entirely accurate.

There should be data somewhere that shows an upper limit for the difference between speed of light and limit speed.

Re:What if speed of light is not the limit speed

[angel'o'sphere]

Photons have a mass, they just don't have a "rest mass".
Not sure if the special relativity in this case is so interesting anyway. Isn't the general theory of relativity more conclusive?

Re:What if speed of light is not the limit speed

[tinkerton]

I mean rest mass obviously. And no, general relativity is not going to tell you more than special relativity. One way you could look at it is as a generalization in steps

- take special relativity in general coordinate systems. No new concepts here. Keep space flat. You could still call this special relativity really, but it'll depend on who you ask.

- take even more general coordinate systems with curvature. Here there's a new idea being introduced but without a cause for curvature.

- now link gravity to coordinate systems with curvature.

Re:What if speed of light is not the limit speed

[Rising Ape]

Whenever physicists say mass these days, it means "rest mass". Since relativistic mass is related to a particle's total energy by a factor of c^2, it's rather a redundant quantity and not useful to think about. Relativistic mass leads to confused ideas such as things getting heavier when they travel quickly, as though the object doing the travelling has somehow changed its properties.

It's far less confusing to think of only rest mass, momentum and energy.

Re:I think you've found the source of her confusio

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you've probably pinpointed the source of her confusion.

Her vagina?

Correction even worse than initial press release

[Anonymous Coward]

After the gigantic gaffe, she replied with an even more ridiculous press release: "Obviously ["obviously"?? LOL] the tunnel we are referring to is the tunnel of protons neutrinos travel in". Seriously.

The tunnel of intertubes?

[bryan1945]

Maybe she is thinking of the tunnel that carries all the internet tubes?

I am Italian. This is the correct meaning.

[GhigoRenzulli]

Our minister Mariastella Gelmini is both totally ignorant and unable to write in italian.

The original sentence is here:

http://www.istruzione.it/web/ministero/cs230911

The correct translation is:

Italy contributed to the construction of the tunnel between Cern and Gran Sasso laboratory, used for the experiment, giving about 45 million euros.

The tunnel is used for the experiment. The tunnel was build between Cern and Gran Sasso. There is no other interpretation possible: someone built a 750KM underground tunnel between Ginevra and Gran Sasso, in order to make the experiment.
And Italy proudly participated to the construction of this tunnel.

Since after ignorance always follow arrogance, our precious minister Gelmini promptly replied:

http://www.istruzione.it/web/ministero/cs240911

The tunnel to which I was referring is the one where protons runs. From protons collisions originates a neutrinos stream that through the earth reaches Gran Sasso.

It's a ridiculous attempt to fix a very stupid sentence, trying to masking her abyssal ignorance.

Welcome to Italy!!!

Re:I am Italian. This is the correct meaning.

[Anonymous Coward]

...

Cazzata! (Bullshit! :-)...)

THEY CORRECT ENGLISH TRANSLATION... SHOULD BE:
"...for the construction of the Tunnel (ref: ...LHC...), (COMMA... here there it is the F... comma that is missing... :-)) for the Construction of the Cern Laboratories AND for the constructions of the Gran Sasso Laboratories, thanks from which... (both of them permtitted the...) the experiment took place, the Government of Italy... has contributed with the sum of 45M€... "

In summary:
"...for the construction of the Tunnel, for the Construction of the Cern Laboratories AND for the constructions of the Gran Sasso Laboratories, thanks from which the experiment took place, the Government of Italy has contributed with the sum of 45M€"

THIS IS IT!!!! ...

NOW stop wangering about... and get a Job! :-)

Well of course! 732km < 900km

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a 168km saving in distance traveled, the tunnel being a straight line through the Earth, whereas you have to travel 900km along the curved surface.

Of course, digging the tunnel did cause some financial troubles for Italy, but I'm sure it will pay off in increased trade with Switzerland, especially once they figure out how to do high-frequency stock-market trades in the few billionths of a second before the trade actually happens. I just hope the Italian scientists patented the method before publishing.

To fair to the Italian funding agency...

[msevior]

This experiment required creating a new proton extraction point, target, meson focussing magnet and meson decay tunnel. The focussing element and tunnel were pointed in the direction of the Gran Sasso laboratory. The Italian funding agency paid a large fraction of these including the meson decay tunnel. The tunnel provides time for the mesons to decay to the neutrinos and is a few hundred meters long and directed downwards towards Gran Sasso. The experiment would not have been successful without the decay tunnel.

I don't speak Italian so I don't know this is what was meant...

Re:To fair to the Italian funding agency...

[RogerWilco]

A little googling found this picture of the tunnel:

http://www.srpsko-dnf.com/CMS/uploaded/CERN-Switzerland-to-Grand-Sasso-730-km-tunnel-plan.jpg

Which isotope?

[Kupfernigk]

There are different average atomic weights for lead deposits based on the radionucleide sequence that led to them. So which one do you mean? After all, if we're fussing over 60ns in 900km, we obviously need some precision.

Re:Which isotope?

[Hatta]

60ns and 900km are both precise to only one significant figure.

Re:Which isotope?

[Kagura]

60ns and 900km are both precise to only one significant figure.

They're not. You're making assumptions.

Re:Which isotope?

[Hatta]

The figures, as expressed, are precise to only one significant figure. They may have more precise figures, but when written that way only one digit is significant.

In ITALIAN, BETWEEN and IN are similar. NOW REREAD

[Anonymous Coward]

Save yourself the hours of translating Italian forums I just went through.

Re:In ITALIAN, BETWEEN and IN are similar. NOW RER

[aybiss]

Yes, thank you. This is why it is funny and sad, but not riot-worthy.

Political-speak.

[camelrider]

A tunnel is a large tube, right?

"I have a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple."

[Thud457]

Could this merely be a weak attempt at a joke rather than gross incompetence from the minister of Public Education and Scientific Research?

But yeah, she's a politician, let's just twist everything around until we find some way to make it sound bad.

Re: IQ test biases

[AJH16]

That is actually supporting himself. The fact is that IQ tests give worse scores to the black community than the rest of the world. Some indicate they feel this shows that the test must be biased (under the assumption that culture doesn't impact intelligence, and therefore a uniform distribution should be seen.) The previous poster was using himself as evidence that if someone shakes off the cultural anti-intellectualism, then they score just fine. While a single individual doesn't make or break a statistical norm, I tend to agree with him since I have seen the same thing. It also makes sense that in the academic obsessed cultures like Asian ones, people do better because they work harder.

Re:Darkies -- note

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing is you are being racist therefore most people will disregard what you say as nonsense due to their social programming regardless of any possible truth in what you say. The problem is that the anti-racism programming disallows any discussion of difference between races.

The subject says it all. The people making these general statements are assuming dark skin == something measurable other than skin color. What does "race" mean? Are you assuming people with dark skin all have the same genetic makeup? Come from the same part of the world? Have the same culture? Have the same differences in intelligence? Sorry, that's pretty much the definition of racism.

Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

I am Italian, enjoy my translation of the full statement: she's far more dimwitted than you may think.
She didn't even bother to read the statement from the scientists and she went ahead already to declare a historical discovery.
This is the kind of people that are running my country.

"The discovery at CERN in Geneva and the Institute of Physics is a scientific event of the utmost importance.

I congratulate to the authors of a historical experiment. I am deeply grateful to all the Italian researchers who contributed to this event that will change the face of modern physics.
Exceeding the speed of light is a momentous victory for scientific research around the world.

For the construction of the tunnel between CERN and Gran Sasso Laboratories, through which the experiment took place, Italy has contributed a sum now estimated at around 45 million euros.

In addition, Italy today supports CERN with absolute conviction, with a contribution of more than 80 million euros per year and the events we are experiencing are confirming that it is a correct and far-sighted choice".

who cares if she's got a Sc. D. ?!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you see those paparazzi bikini pics on GIS? MILF-tastic!

Re:who cares if she's got a Sc. D. ?!!

[bryan1945]

OK, those are much, much better. The guy above me picked pretty much the worst picture out there.

WWII tunnels

[b4upoo]

I would believe the tunnel remark if we had Hitler or Mussolini or even Stalin in control. Hitler loved tunnels. He simply could not tunnel enough. We still don't know the extent of Nazi tunneling and Stalin was no slouch either when it came to secret tunnels. Since they had so much slave labor at hand it is a wonder that they didn't whip up a few record height paramids while they were at it.

Re: IQ test biases

[Nadaka]

Poverty and affluence have a far stronger correlation to average performance on IQ tests than race or "culture".

What's the big deal?

[wsanders]

Speaking as a civil engineer, a 750 km tunnel is no problem. Doing it for $45 million is probably harder than getting an elephant to travel faster than the speed of light, however.

Re:Darkies -- note

[1s44c]

The thing is you are being racist therefore most people will disregard what you say as nonsense due to their social programming regardless of any possible truth in what you say. The problem is that the anti-racism programming disallows any discussion of difference between races.

The subject says it all. The people making these general statements are assuming dark skin == something measurable other than skin color. What does "race" mean? Are you assuming people with dark skin all have the same genetic makeup? Come from the same part of the world? Have the same culture? Have the same differences in intelligence? Sorry, that's pretty much the definition of racism.

Yes the subject appears to be intended to be offensive. However all I'm saying is that the anti-racist brainwashing that the western world has put itself though has blinded people to the obvious fact that not all people are equal and interchangeable. It's quite possible for a viewpoint to be totally wrong and its opposite to also be wrong. I never suggested that all people of any given skin color are identical to each other, clearly they are not.

There's a real explanaton

[banda]

The receiving site in the experiment IS in a mountain tunnel. The tunnel construction was widened to accommodate the laboratory as well as the road traffic. Italy paid for that. The tunnel does not connect the two sites. One lane of the tunnel traffic was stopped for the duration of the experiment to improve the accuracy of the measurements. Italian tunnel money made this science possible. Stop hating, yo?

Re: IQ test biases

[deroby]

Replying to myself as I can't quite choose whom of the other people to reply to.

Seems I must have misinterpreted the statement above... apologies.

        "I don't buy the culturally biased bullshit about the tests."

Frankly, I'm still not 100% sure how to interpret that sentence, probably part of its meaning gets lost in translation somewhere ..( you don't happen to speak Dutch ? =)

That said, I think all who replied to my post all more or less agree on the fact that IQ tests simply are not capable of measuring intelligence objectively... IMHO these tests are VERY biased towards those that have been in contact with the way these tests work and/or what they use for testing. In my experience they are mostly geared towards logic and insights but rely on 3D thinking and basic mathematics to work with. If you're familiar with the latter, and you've gone through a system where tests and quizzes are everyday stuff you're bound to score higher than anyone who didn't. (**) Whether you're part of that group has IMHO nothing to do with race or genetics directly but rather with 'chances' and yes culture. One culture simply doesn't push (willingly ,circumstantially or forcedly) towards that goal as the next one.

(** In all honesty I've never had much "respect" for IQ-test results in the first place, they're way overrated. Although I always scored high on them I find myself lacking severely on things like language and creative arts & crafts... maybe I'm good at solving things, I'd give an arm and a leg to be able to re-play some tune I just heard or simply be able to captivate an audience over some random subject. IMHO IQ-scores don't correlate to "being smarter" in general and it surely does not come close to "being better". )

Probably a bad analogy, but I think Shakespeare would have scored below Newton, yet the former gets quoted quite more often, that should count for something too, not ? =)

I am sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

As an Italian member of the research community, I apologize for my brain-dead minister.
My government sucks. I didn't vote for these people.
Thanks for your understanding.

Gelmini Tunnel

[Anonymous Coward]

No man, I Am italian and I can guarantee you that the minister meant exactly what is written here. In the ministry note she released she totally mentioned a tunnel, physically connecting the CERN labs in Geneva with the Gran Sasso labs in central Italy, through which the experiment should have been carried out. Now, such a tunnel would cross a lenght of approximately 732 km, and even considering the fact that the minister has no chance to know anything about neutrinos, and in particular that they are so small they can easily pass through matter, it is absolutely mental to think we could have made such an effort, building a gallery underneath half Italy.. Furthermore spending just about 45 mln euros. Mariastella Gelmini (it's female, by the way) was just trying to take part in the division of merit of the experiment, showing how much her ministry contributed, hence talking about something she understands absolutely nothing about, and simply resulting in a mind-blowing, pant-wetting international gaffe. The minister herself (whose recognition as a complete ignorant and incompetent is widespread) is responsible for the last season of reforms of Italian schools and universities, through which Berlusconi's government is trying to put down public instruction, making Knowledge useless and impossible to reach, so to have a mindless, unconscious and stupid people to rule.

The translation

[Anonymous Coward]

The exact translation:

Alla costruzione
To the construction

del tunnel *tra* il Cern ed i laboratori del Gran Sasso,
of the tunnel *between* CERN and Gran Sasso Laboratories,

attraverso il quale si è svolto l'esperimento,
through which the experiment took place,

l'Italia ha contribuito con uno stanziamento oggi stimabile intorno ai 45 milioni di euro.
Italy has contributed with a sum now estimated at around 45 million euros.

The official declaration of Italian minister of Education and Scientific Research:
http://www.istruzione.it/web/ministero/cs230911

Please use google translation if you have any doubt or if you are not Italian tongue like me.
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=it&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&sl=auto&tl=en&twu=1&u=http://www.istruzione.it/web/ministero/cs230911

Re: IQ test biases

[Lord Kano]

Seems I must have misinterpreted the statement above... apologies.

It happens.

Frankly, I'm still not 100% sure how to interpret that sentence, probably part of its meaning gets lost in translation somewhere ..( you don't happen to speak Dutch ? =)

Sorry, English and a little French & Arabic. I'll try rephrasing,

I do not believe that the tests are culturally biased. I believe that the idea of them being culturally biased is bullshit. I was also pointing out that in African-American culture, there is a strong theme of anti-intellectualism. Look at some of the later responses to my post and you'll see what I'm talking about.

An example of cultural bias would be if there were questions that only one group of people are likely to know the correct answer. An example of this would be to ask the student to name four brands of sunscreen. Black and brown people don't use sunscreen and would therefore be less likely to be able to name four brands of a product that they never need. Or a word associations where you must take a word and select the one that is least related such as taking the term "Beach" and the potentially related items "Tanning", "Swimming", "Surfing" and "Whale". In this hypothetical example, the correct answer is "Whale", but a black person doesn't go to the beach to tan so for him/her "Tanning" is the word least associated with a beach.

LK