OPERA Group Repeats Faster-Than-Light Neutrino Results

gbrumfiel writes "Earlier this year, the OPERA experiment made the extraordinary claim that they had seen neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light. The experiment, located at Gran Sasso in Italy, saw neutrinos arrive 60 nanoseconds earlier than expected from their starting point at CERN in Switzerland. Others have doubted OPERA's claim, but in a new paper, the group reaffirms its commitment to the measurement. 'It's slightly better than the previous result,' OPERA's physics coordinator Dario Autiero told Nature News. Most members of the collaboration who didn't sign the original paper out of skepticism have now come on board. But scientists outside the group still aren't sure. 'Independent checks are the way to go,' says Rob Plunkett, co-spokesman of a rival experiment called MINOS."

Comments

Re:Supernovas

[Anonymous Coward]

He's speaking religion because he refuses to accept that his God Einstein's theory (Special Theory of Relativity in this case) can be wrong. It's sad, but very human.

Or the other option is... they're just wrong

[MickLinux]

It was in Ayn Rand's book "Atlas Shrugged"... but there as the economy crashed and intellectualizated fakes replaced those who knew what they were doing, the invention was a magic motor that defied the 2nd law of thermo. As things go crash, people sometimes are more eager to publicise their magic machines, when they don't even understand what they are doing.

Not to overly accuse the physicists of CERN of being unqualified to do physics research, but...

    (1) Hadn't there been something about the relativistic effects of the GPS satellites messing with the data?
    (2) Hadn't they just swapped out their differentiators, possibly doing the calculations at the point of impact, instead of 20' up the cable, at the cable mount?

I'd think that a smart physicist would do anything he could to avoid FTL claims, because FTL claims also violate 2nd Thermo, and 2nd Thermo is a mathematical law -- it applies even to such things as data compression. To put it shortly, if you can do FTL particles, then you can send information back in time. If you can send information back in time, you an set up contradictions (overdefinition of equations, 3 equations 2 unknowns kind of thing). The contradictions themselves, by quantum mechanics, cancel themselves out.

Moreover, sending information back in time itself violates the 2nd law of thermo.

If you're going to violate FTL, you have to set up a system where contradictions are conceptually impossible. Whether or not that is ever going to be concievably possible, I doubt. But if you're just going to throw a particle FTL... I'd say no.