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Can Relativity Explain Faster Than Light Particles?

Posted by timothy on from the old-woman-your-lap-for-a-minute dept.

gbrumfiel writes "Two weeks ago, researchers claimed particles called neutrinos were travelling faster-than-light and violating the laws of special relativity. But now it looks as though general relativity might be behind the experiment's unusual result. An independent analysis claims that the original experiment, known as OPERA, failed to take into account differences in earth's gravitational field between the neutrino source and the OPERA detector. As Nature News reports, gravity can distort time according to Einstein's theory, and the effect could explain why neutrinos appear to arrive 60 nanoseconds ahead of schedule. The OPERA team is now reviewing the new analysis."

6 of 315 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Seriously? by Surt · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They did consider it, the critic had a brain fail and misunderstood their paper. The researchers are doing him a kindness and 'clarifying' it for him, even though everyone else got that they had, in fact, accounted for this.

    --
    "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
  2. Re:I called it by MozeeToby · · Score: 4, Insightful

    E = mc^2 refers to rest energy, it is the amount of energy you get if you convert an unmoving mass directly into energy. Photons, having no mass, have no rest energy by definition. 0 * c * c = 0. E / 0 is undefined, not infinite. Literally the only line of your reply without a significant error is the first one. E=mc^2 has nothing to do with the assertion that massless particles must travel at c, that comes from other parts of special relativity.

  3. Re:Seriously? by Maritz · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yes. Contaldi has made a tit of himself with this critique. The real error is likely to be very subtle.

    --
    I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
  4. Re:I called it by maxwell+demon · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Santa Claus is completely imaginary, and therefore also has a completely imaginary mass. It is well known that objects with imaginary mass are tachyonic. Being tachyonic, Santa Claus can even be at two places at the same time!

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  5. Re:I'm impressed by bytesex · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Steve ?

    --
    Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
  6. Re:Dear CERN, by tftp · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Einstein was neither anonymous nor a coward.

    How can you prove that Einstein was never anonymous?