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Faulty Cable To Blame For Superluminal Neutrino Results
smolloy writes "It would appear that the hotly debated faster-than-light neutrino observation at CERN is the result of a fault in the connection between a GPS unit and a computer. This connection was used to correct for time delays in the neutrino flight, and after fixing the correction the researchers have found that the time discrepancy appears to have vanished."
I am glad they went through the proper process of verifying all the hardware and have gotten to the bottom of this little fiasco - but wow, they have to be biting their lips in frustration.
I also expect a cable manufacturer is likely to be getting a strongly worded email in the near future.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
It should read "Faulty Cable Most Likely To Blame For Superluminal Neutrino Results". They haven't proved anything yet. They just found a problem that's very suggestive and they need to re-run the experiment after fixing/accounting for the problem.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
There's no definite statement from OPERA or CERN yet. Right now this is just a rumor. This also is definitely not the first suggested explanation. Let's wait and see.
lags!
Not as fast as me though :P
By my watch...
Nullius in verba
Did they remember to plug it in with the direction marks pointing to the computer?
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
A neutrino walks into a bar. The bartender says, "We still don't serve neutrinos here".
Science isn't broken after all! Or at least, thousands of experiments are still fundamentally "correct" to the best of our current scientific knowledge.
(note however that they still need to re-do the neutrino test, according to the last sentence of TFA; at the moment they have merely found out that "data" sent over the fiber-optic cable arrives 60ns earlier then assumed)
Is there any way we can pin this on Julian Assange?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
That's why I use Monster Cables for my neutrino experiments. It increases the roundness of the bass end, creates a punchier mid-range, and makes my neutrinos less superluminal.
Can't be true, it's such a boring explanation
>Minding my own business and setting up the next neutrino experiment
>The director of CERN has me on the phone
>"What is it mein fuhrer?"
>"SERGIO! EL EXPERIMENT NO WORKO! NO GUSTA! NEUTRINO TOO FAST!"
>Go to Italy, find that there is spaghetti sauce on the detector, ravioli on the the reflectors, pizza in the mass spectrometer, pepperoncini in the heatsink, wine cooling the magnets, langostini in the computer refrigerant, beans cooking on the laser, and olive oil in the PSU.
>Fuck it, I'm going to Greece.
>Go to Greece.
>Considering marrying a Greek girl
>Berlusconi is there
>Talks to me about Greek girls
>I get really hyped about Greek girls
>Decide to marry one on the spot
>Reach for the wedding ring
>Suddenly, spaghetti spills out of my pocket
>There's spaghetti on the floor
>Everybody walk the dinosaur
>Try to clean it all up
>I look down
>There's fur in the spaghetti, leading to the realization that I am a bear
Yeah, 300 baud needs parity bits for the speeds they're working with!
The headline should read: "Faulty Cable May Be To Blame". We shouldn't be reporting rumor or even preliminary results as fact.
This is why you should always buy gold-plated Monster cables.
We will never get off this rock. Interstellar travel is impossible, and always will be.
We will all grow old and die here, and that's it.
Oh, is THAT why we haven't yet coalesced into a tiny ball of infinitely dense matter awaiting the next bang! Did you hear they're planning the next faster-than-light experiment for December 21, 2012?
GeekDad, TED speaker, Wipeout loser, author of Brain Trust
Called it as wrong from the beginning. Relativity has undergone many trials and tribulations, none of which has proven it wrong.
WTF is wrong with you?
Everyone knows pizza isn't Italian.
Stupid ursine...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
you're no fun anymore..
Really, guys? the N and R are not that close together unless you're using the Dvorak layout or something.
bah.
n/t
Most problems with hardware are from faulty connectors!
I love the 'Faster than light neutrino' story. It shows something about how science works... an unconfirmed but sensational result captures our imagination. Though fascinating, it is treated with skepticism by scientists including the group publishing the results. Alternative hypotheses challenging the result are examined, and many discarded.
Eventually the result will be supported by more experiments or found to be incorrect... maybe even the result of a loose cable.
The neutrino story also shows something about how science is reported in much of the press... Unconfirmed but sensational results are presented as true. Preliminary challenges to the result are also reported as true. By the time the story is done, news outlets have misreported a number of contradictory claims as fact. No wonder a significant subset of the population doesn't understand or even believe science.
>Fuck it, I'm going to Greece.
>Go to Greece.
>Considering marrying a Greek girl
>Berlusconi is there
You missed a golden opportunity for "My big fat greek superluminal experiment" jokes. You know, the one where the groom gets slapped by his future mother in law, then his future cousin in law tricks the groom into telling his mother in law that she has a nice pair of superluminal neutrinos... get it, she slaps him superluminally before he gets tricked?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
With the massive economic meltdown, prices on Greek slave girls have never been lower.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Maybe faster-than-light neutrinos damage cables.
Even the off-shored level1 tech support guy could have figured it out by reading step 2 of his manual.
that it would be something like this?
Right on the money ... http://xkcd.com/955/
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
OK neutrino have to follow the law but god particles can travel at any speed they god dam feel like!
I got to the chocolate box before you, that's why the hard ones have teeth marks.
It's cute how you think there's some responsible way to inform the press of an anomalous experimental result.
The scientists just did the same thing you'd do if you got some weird result on a browser-based application, and the preliminary obvious steps didn't fix the problem: check to see if everyone else is seeing the same thing on their browsers, so to speak.
It's not their fault if someone in Marketing hears what's going on and writes a company-wide email saying "BROWSERS CAPABLE OF MAGIC!!! Film at eleven!!!"
I just love how XKCD pretty much said this was rather bogus right from the start: http://xkcd.com/955/
I use a Monster HDMI cable.
If a faulty cable is the culprit here, wouldn't any experiment relying on the system using that cable be subjected to similar effects in thier results? They're talking about the cable between the GPS unit and a computer, communicating timing synchronization, resulting in a delay of the 'expected' time by nano-seconds ... Is the neutrino experiment the ONLY one using that part of the system where the blamed faulty cable is?
The results could be wrong, but for another reason. When trouble shooting you usually think of dozens of potential way things could have cause the problem before tracking down the actual root cause. Jumping to conclusions simply gets everyone's hopes up that the mystery has been solved.
It was a bad cable.
Period.
So if you were in charge, you would just stop looking for the root cause which may go on to taint other results at CERN for years to come? Nothing is certain until it has been confirmed.
With all due respect, nothing personal, but the ideas you expressed are completely wrong. Kids need to learn that science is experimenting and debating and arguing and trying things that mostly don't work but sometimes they do. There is no cabal and smart people sometimes disagree, most importantly they disagree in a civilized manner. And getting excited and theorizing and double checking your work and then triple checking your work and lots of sweat and effort and long hours. Initial results are sometimes wrong. Where do errors come from? And sometimes how you deal with "failure" defines who you are, more than how you deal with "success".
Science is not (or should not be) a scholastic endeavor that we should try to make as boring and authoritarian and slow and uninteresting as possible. If anything try to make it the opposite, at least a little bit.
If this whole story makes one kid think, just a little bit, about physics, that makes it OK. This is the best thing thats happened to physics in years.
If science were as flaky as a reality TV show, then I'd support your position because somewhere in between is the greek ideal. But... there's a long way to go before we have to worry about that.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
These scientists were irresponsible in their dealings with their press.
I never saw a single irresposible statement from them. They were very clear that there was likely to be an error in their experiment. The press wasn't irresponsible either. Every article I read was balanced and careful to state that there may be a simple explaination.
They should have kept it strictly within the community ...
Who exactly is "the community"? Scientists are not a priesthood, and the public does not need to be "protected" from scientific debate.
You tell me, how do you engage the particle physics community without something like this becoming public? The proper way to do science is to get peer review by publishing your results, but there isn't any secret handshake that only physicists know, nor do all physicist take a sacred oath of secrecy. When you publish results to the community, then you are publishing them to everyone who is interested, and that includes the media.
Irresponsible use of press is hyping things to the media without providing details to scientists. They didn't do that, in fact that talked down their results as much as possible. Furthermore, trying to keep it a secret would have just made things worse, as the media would have picked up on rumors and ran that, so you end up with even more misinformation being spread. The smart thing to do is to engage the press at the same time as the details are released to the scientific community in order cut down on the rumor mill, and do as much damage control as necessary. Which is exactly what they did.
Bollocks, I am pretty sure it was always explained as an unexpected result, not a new discovery.
How would they do that?
It is far better for the public to see scientists acting openly, showing their data and asking for help. Science is a process, not a result. Trying to get the public to trust science by hiding things from them is precisely the wrong way to go about it. It is akin to suggesting they should trust the scientist because the scientist is always right rather than because the process of science works.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Do the neutrinos travel through the mountain in a straight line? (nothing much interacts with them, right?)
But if the cable used to measure light follows the curve of the earth, the distances traveled would be different.
Is that difference accounted for?
please enlighten me.
Monster cable?
Just wait for the new Monster cable GPS link cable for only $99.99
Then Re-run the experiment and hand out the mass value for the neutrino already so it can replace the "Non-Zero" mass entry.
ooooooh... a faulty cable. What a cheap excuse!! (like the cable itself)
Yeah, 300 baud needs parity bits for the speeds they're working with!
Baud awful.
... always :-)
Aaaaand the inner workings of Star Trek's Heisenberg Uncertainty Compensator is now discovered... it's just a mass of poorly connected wires and circuits! Next step - teleportation...
... there's a good chance that it will get a lot less attention from the media than the original report. On the other hand, it may also be seized upon by those who will see this new development as "proof" that scientists are just out to get attention and are therefore not to be trusted. *sigh*
While GPS sats have 1 nanosecond atomic clocks I'm not feeling the usefulness of these sats for these sort of experiments, it seems a hinky way to get this high a granularity in time measurements.
I call bullshit.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Look at the positive side, we already got one of the pieces of the time machine, a faulty cable, there is always a faulty cable!!
They should've been using a Beowulf cluster.
My excuse for the day was "It's the Power Cable!"
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I'm pregnant!
Oh, wait, that was just a fart.
The bartender says "We don't allow your kind in here".
A faster-than-light neutrino walks into a bar.
Have gnu, will travel.
I'm George W. Bush, and you're hired.
However the way to deal with this is to have several different models GPS units connected to several different computers and verify synchronization. That is not easy at the level of precision we are talking about here, though. So I do not blame them. And they wisely never did a sensationalist press=release, just "this is what we see and we do not understand it". Now they do. These things can happen.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
...they made sure their fiber optic connectors were tightened before they challenged relativity.
FTFA: "According to sources familiar with the experiment, the 60 nanoseconds discrepancy appears to come from a bad connection between a fiber optic cable that connects to the GPS receiver used to correct the timing of the neutrinos' flight and an electronic card in a computer. After tightening the connection and then measuring the time it takes data to travel the length of the fiber, researchers found that the data arrive 60 nanoseconds earlier than assumed. Since this time is subtracted from the overall time of flight, it appears to explain the early arrival of the neutrinos."
Really? It took two independent research teams months to determine that the extra delay was due to an uncalculated-for air gap in a fiber optic connector on the timing system?
If their timing system is this sensitive to things like air gap tolerances in the connectors, then how the hell do you calibrate it properly? OK, a top-of-the-line Trimble Acutime Gold claims 15ns accuracy, but that's +/- 15ns, and presumably if you've got CERN's budget for neutrino measurement you're not going to make the claim that faster-than-light travel is possible based on the timing data close to the margin of error of your COTS GPS timing unit?
So, it seems that the previously calculated stddev was -5.9/+8.3ns, which is about double the certainty of the best COTS systems (it had better be, they're plugged directly into atomic clocks). Basically:
"A loose connection between the fiber link from a GPS receiver to a computer is thought to cause the 60 nanosecond delay; tightening the connection makes the delay through the fiber decrease. However, additional data has to be taken to test the hypothesis. A second error with the crystal oscillator is expected to have lengthened the reported flight-time of neutrinos. Repeat tests with short pulsed beams have been scheduled for May. The two errors affect the result in opposite ways. The OPERA collaboration has not released quantitative estimates of how the errors affect the results, and expect to check the effects directly when a bunched beam is available later in 2012."
So this thing is far from over...
Right again!
Seriously though - we need a Physics result or two that defies the theory (at macro level) - a real problem - so that we can progress past Einstein.
Who exactly is "the community"? Scientists are not a priesthood, and the public does not need to be "protected" from scientific debate.
As a scientist, yes, I agree with you.
On the other hand, how many millions of kids have suffered due to one BS article linking vaccines to autism?
I think their support engineers failed them. Then again, an on-site support engineer in this economy might be too much to ask.
most importantly they disagree in a civilized manner
I take it you've never submitted a paper to a blind review conference.
I bet the people at monster are working up a slew of new ads...
Einstein's God
I always smile a little at Einstein's utter confidence in his connection to what makes the universe tick. I guess you would have to be that confident to overturn two centuries of Newtonian Physics.
The relativists hold control of the physics community, suggesting anything can travel faster than light is the physics equivalent of blasphemy.
The results brought into question the unquestionable doctrine, and hence they had to be explained away. It is considered as unacceptable as the idea that the Earth wasn't flat or that the Earth orbited the Sun was.
Just like the Roswell incident was explained away as due to a "weather balloon".
Einstein's theory may have been a refinement over Newton, but it still isn't the Truth!
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Tachyon Tachyon Tachyon
I just like saying "tachyon". It should be in every day usage. Maybe they could name a car "TACHYON".
Don't listen to the haters that modded you down. Could have used a bit more fermi though.
Einstein was seen chuckling to himself and mumbling under his breath "you didn't think it was going to be that easy, did you?"
60 nanoseconds is a huge cable error, equivalent to about 10 meters of cable. It is possible that there was some internal reflection in the loose cable which caused such a big error, but I suspect that the real problem was the system latched onto the trailing edge of the 1 pps timing signal - this is more likely to happen when something (like a bad cable) is screwing up the timing pulse, and it can cause a considerable excess delay (order 100 nanoseconds or more). In many systems the width of the 1 pps pulse is not controlled, and so it will vary. This leads to the common symptom of this problem - the timing becomes erratic at the nanosecond level.
If something like this was the cause of their error then they deserve the bad PR they will get, as they really should have included a timing professional as part of the experiment (as opposed to a consultant role). I have had several discussions with timing professionals about this, and each time the trailing edge issue has come up.
I thought they also did the whole travelling sneeizum clock thing to verify GPS timing? If the GPS was broke wouldn't they have detected that earlier? I'm really confused...
"After tightening the connection and then measuring the time it takes data to travel the length of the fiber, researchers found that the data arrive 60 nanoseconds earlier than assumed."
Even more confused... Did they not take the index of refraction of the cable into account?
They tightened a cable and then the measured delay was 60ns less than expected? If that was true wouldn't increase the problem by another 60ns? Since it is now faster?
I'm hopelessly confused...
As an Electronics Engineer, I wish I could have all the time back that I've lost over the last 20 years because of faulty cables. The fault always looks obvious afterwards, but while you're struggling with it, it is not. And cable always seem to be OK when you check it, but then go intermittent when it matters. Sigh...
most importantly they disagree in a civilized manner
I take it you've never submitted a paper to a blind review conference.
Did they leave you feeling rejected?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
polieceman: How fast did you send the pulse, cable?
cable: A speed limit Sir, e no faster, no faster; promise!
-- no sig today
Rest assured the results weren't the result of a "faulty cable."
Furthermore, after hundreds of tests and after checking and rechecking the results and their equipment the scientists behind this experiment didn't find any problems in their experimental setup.
More than likely these physicists were under pressure or decided to come up with results that comported with established physics theory regarding the special theory of relativity and decided that a "faulty cable" would get them out of this controversy regarding superluminal neutrinos and went with it.
Not a well thought out plan though because now they look incompetent and inept instead of being at the cutting edge of revolutionary physics.
But though these physicists were unwilling to do what is right and stand behind their initial results, others will perform similar experiments and find the same results regarding superluminal neutrinos.
Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahaa!!!!!
(Holds stomach and rolls on floor, wiping tears from eyes)
Yeah, whatever!!!
And AFAIK, there is not any fibre optic connection in it. It has TNC connections for xPPS and 10MHz reference signals, Lemo connections for Ethernet (CAT 5), RS232 and GPIO. Antenna connector is TNC.
So take the rumors with a grain of salt, please.
First image that came to my head when reading the news: Einstein stucking out his tongue!
Your likelihood of making a technical mistake here or there in a supremely complex experiment is far, far higher than the likelihood of special relativity being wrong
The likelyhood that special relativity is wrong is 1. That's why the LHC was build in the first place: to find a better model that doesn't contradict observations like special relativity does.
They should have kept it strictly within the community rather than embarrass themselves, and physics, in this manner.
The only embarrasing thing here is you.
There is a faulty assumption underlying the notion of the infeasibility of civilization off this planet. That faulty assumption has a name -- planetary chauvanism ... Planetary Chauvinism
... Space Habitat
...L5 - A Hard Science Fiction Series
No breakthroughs in physics or engineering would be needed to build O'Neill cylinders that could eventually create habitable land areas several times that of the earth.
So we can't claim it's impossible. Maybe we'll never do it because, as a species, we can't seem to stop wasting talent and energy on killing each other over borders and religions -- But not because it's impossible.
By the way, an O'Neill cylinder is used in the new hard science fiction web series "L5". They only tease you with a few glimpses in the opening episode, but if they get enough support, they'll make more.
A cable-fault can produce positive (additive) and negative (subtractive) interference.
There are three outcomes to this:
1. if the cable-fault was positive, the velocity anomaly favors positive (too fast).
2. if the cable-fault was negative, the velocity anomaly favors negative (too slow),
3. if the cable-fault was positive and negative (dangling juggling cable), then the velocity anomaly favors 0, no reduction or increase in velocity.
Therefore there is a 66% probability that the results will be confirmed, as in outcome 3, or possible increased, as in outcome 2.
There is only a 33% probability that the results will be demoted.
Buckaroo Bonzai
Even if you could use an x-ray laser you would be stuck with a 1 E12 s upload, assuming you could pass 1 bit per wave.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Angry Irish Guy shouting into a phone:
"Have you tried rebooting your computer?"
"Reboot your computer and call me back."
"It didn't work? Is it plugged in?"
"Is there a cable running from your computer to the wall?"
"Try plugging your computer in."
"...
As for the likelihood of a "loose cable between GPS and computer" causing delays leading to the result of FTL travel, I am gonna go out on a limb and say, probably not. I think it is far more likely that someone else just screwed up, and is trying to make up some plausible excuse to move on without ending his career.
These scientists were irresponsible in their dealings with their press.
I never saw a single irresposible statement from them. They were very clear that there was likely to be an error in their experiment. The press wasn't irresponsible either. Every article I read was balanced and careful to state that there may be a simple explaination.
They should have kept it strictly within the community ...
Who exactly is "the community"? Scientists are not a priesthood, and the public does not need to be "protected" from scientific debate.
Most scientists rely on public funding to eat. The community of scientists is exactly like a priesthood in that respect. In fact, scientists have to make the same kind of unfulfillable promises to the people that financially support them that any other priest does -- you know, the kind that require a long time and (ideally) a lot of money to fulfill. Priests tell people god moves in mysterious ways when the promises don't appear to be working out; the scientist says, "You wouldn't understand the math."
So yeah, a case can be made that that the community of scientists is, in many ways, like a priesthood. High barriers to entry? Check. Cloistered life? Double check. A formal distinction drawn between the anointed and the laity? Check. Subject only to the the laws of their society, and above the mundane courts? Oh, you better believe that's a check.
But back on point. Like priests, scientists are human, so somebody is going to have to be blamed for this. The people who funded this Italian experiment are not going to be as generous the next time around, if the scientists can't find a plausible place to put the blame that leaves them in the clear. This isn't about the scientific method anymore, it is about CYA - the scientists have to make sure that it has the right spin on it so that their funding doesn't completely dry up on them amid charges of incompetency. I would not want to be that project manager the next time he has to go begging for funding. (And that one Italian project of yours, a loose connection? Really? In this day and age? Thank you for your presentation, Professor, I'm sure you know how to find the exit.)