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A Small Glimmer of Hope For Faster-Than-Light Neutrinos
sciencehabit writes "The CERN particle physics laboratory in Geneva has confirmed Wednesday's report that a loose fiber-optic cable may be behind measurements that seemed to show neutrinos outpacing the speed of light. But the lab also says another glitch could have caused the experiment to underestimate the particles' speed. The other effect concerns an oscillator that gives its readings time stamps synchronized to GPS signals. Researchers think correcting for an error in this device would actually increase the anomaly in neutrino velocity, making the particles even speedier than the earlier measurements seemed to show."
Well, if FTL works, it will have gone back in time to be sooner than that.
Only on Slashdot would arn armchair critic post crap about CERN's 'workmanship' late on a Friday night.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I should also add that I will be conducting my own experiments in my basement with a neutrino cannon, flashlight and stop watch. If I see anything interesting, I'll post the results here.
If you want anything done right, you have to do it yourself!
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
E = MC^2 * (1 + ($M - $P ) / L ) + ( Ic/Ir )
Where:
E = Energy
M = Mass
C = Speed of light
M = Monster cable
P = PC Warehouse cable
L = Length of cable
Ic = Interval between calibration scheduled
Ir = Interval calibration required
Doing measurements like this is extremely tricky, as it exceeds the usual equipment precision by a lot. I expect that confirmation either way will at least require months, possibly years. I would not be surprised if they need to recalibrate a lot of equipment and may have to build some especially for this experiment. Anyways. in the course of doing so, they will learn a lot and the improved measurement techniques developed will be available in the future. This is science at work. I do not find any fault with the researchers, just the press coverage. But the press has never understood how science works or what scientists do.
Extraordinary claims also require extraordinary proof. So the original measurement would not have been enough anyways, even if no flaws were found. I also seem to remember that they never claimed FTL neutrinos, but an effect they could not explain, leaving it open whether this was a measurement error or something not consistent with current physical theory.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The fault is not with CERN but the press coverage. The claims out of CERN was an effect they could not explain, and that was the literal truth. Now they are getting deeper into it and finding flaws, which is not a surprise when working this close to what is possible with current technology. Before they can reliably say either way, they will need to do a lot more experiments and have independent verification. The scientists never claimed otherwise. Who you should stop taking seriously is journalists writing nonsense about things they do not understand.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Just to clarify, the FTL claim was bordering on a measurement error from the very start, it was painfully obvious that they were using a skewed meter and measured the same error many times with it, for me, this confirms more then it contradicts the constant.
sarcasm meter must be on the fritz again - all i pick up is asshole.
CS majors know the time/space tradeoff, but they never get taught the 3rd, crucial, tradeoff of the set: comprehension!
I think that at this point they ought to establish two different links using different technologies, for the data, in parallel, if they can. There they'll be able to say "Oh. now we're not sure which one is correct." :)
I believe Wizard Tim would say "Three links, I say three. No more and no less is the number." And something about swallows, coconuts, and neutrinos.
Regardless of the outcome, there is a good side effect of all this. All the equipment will be checked like crazy. Everything is going to be blueprinted to perfection. We might even advance the whole science of measurement. We might come up with better procedures for QA that could be transferred to other experiments. I hope influential people are taking notes and applying what they learn to other situations.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
What matters is what's real, not whether you 'buy' it.
In this case, it's win-win for science. Either we get knowledge of FTL neutrinos, or we improve our measuring techniques/instruments. Who can complain about either scenario, merely because we don't come up with the answer immediately?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Just reverse the tachyon field on your deflector array, and then inject a stream of polarons into the positronic matrix.
Jeez, do I have to do everything around here?
Actually, that's just the current paradigm. It's certainly not the only paradigm.
Science begets technology which begets economic growth. If scientists wanted to make money, they wouldn't have any problems... they'd just have to start doing things differently. A lot of research is done by grants that end up being public knowledge that is published in peer-reviewed journals and it's all academia. If they wanted to privatize and get out of the academic world, it would probably be bad for society as a whole, but pretty damn good for scientists.
It's basically the idea of peace on earth, goodwill to all men, and that kind of thing. Pretty much our whole economic engine has been created by scientists. They should really be lauded as heroes for all that they do and how little they do it for.
"That which does not kill us makes us stranger." -Trevor Goodchild
They didn't say the theory was wrong. What they said is we have a weird result and we can't find out why its showing up. You're mad at science writers who blow things out of proportion instead of saying the blunt truth. They had a weird result and were trying to find out what went wrong, period. Of course speculation about 'what if' it was right would happen, but that's starkly different from you're claim that they released a *statement* that current theory was *wrong*.
I want to believe in extreme possiblities
Science doesn't work that way. It's not "should we believe him that there was a wolf", it's "is his account plausible as a real wolf sighting, is there any wolf traces and should we expend resources to try and confirm/disprove his claim"
Yes, they found one result "too good to be true" and now they're checking that result. If you'd RTFA (outlandish, I know) you'd notice this snippet at the end:
The two effects will get a new round of tests in May, when the two labs are scheduled to make velocity measurements with short-pulsed beams designed to give readings much more precise than scientists have achieved so far.
It's more like CERN isn't going to pull any punches and will release all the information they have about things instead of holding it back to make themselves look good.
Hell, some people seem to think CERN only did one experiment then screamed about faster than light. Instead, they did hundreds if not THOUSANDS of experiments before releasing a paper with a cautioning tone, asking for others to attempt replication or determine what could be the issue.
The fact that they found two *potential* issues, doesn't detract from the fact that they're an extremely cautious and skeptical group.
Simple versions are actually quite easy to make. All you need is some aluminum (i.e. foil), a weak radioactive source (available by mail order), a controllable current source (probably the most expensive bit), and something to give it shape. A cardboard tube would work fine. Now just point the tube towards the sun, throw the rest of that shit away, and voila! Hundreds of billions of neutrinos will be coming out the end of it every second, for you to do with as you please!
Only on Slashdot do you find scientists reading forums from their labs at 1AM on Saturday mornings while waiting for experiments to finish up.
*Looks over at refluxing reaction vessel*
Dammit.
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
You know how I know you don't know what their original paper said or how people associated with CERN work? Because you seem to think they took one measurement with uncalibrated instruments and then ran to the presses to publish "zomg, ftl neutrinos!" For crying out loud, do you actually think they would have originally made an announcement like this if there weren't a considerable number of standard deviations between expectation and result?
This recurring trope of "Armchair quarterback posits that people who have spent their entire adult lives studying X made a mistake because they missed some obvious thing the quarterback noticed after 15 seconds of thinking about X" really baffles me. One would think the (ostensibly) smart and educated inhabitants of slashdot would know better.
Actually Cern did not claim it. It said that it had found some results that it could not account for yet. At no point did cern go "We have found FTL neutrinos".
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
If they're effectively communicating to you that they feel the result is 'too good to be true', then you really don't have a lot to really complain about, do you?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
The original article is way, way misleading. It makes it sound like the people in CERN are to blame. However, CERN is just the source of the neutrinos. The detectors in the other end is the Gran Sasso lab in Italy. The whole shebang is called the OPERA experiment.
Now, the problem(s) were found in the Gran Sasso side. For a slightly more accurate reporting, see http://profmattstrassler.com/2012/02/24/finally-an-opera-plot-that-makes-some-sense/, especially the first comment.
Quoting ArcherB:
> "I should also add that I will be conducting
> my own experiments in my basement with a neutrino cannon,
> flashlight and stop watch. If I see anything interesting,
> I'll post the results here."
Actually, if you get any results, please put them in the first post so everyone can see them.
If I get any interesting results, I'll post them yesterday.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
I bet their networking engineers are frantically trying to distance themselves from such a basic mistake.
"It's the cleaning lady! She must have bumped into it!"
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
"This result is probably wrong" != "fertilize your lawn with motor oil"
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
How many gratuitous errors and claimed impossibilities do you generally consider acceptable in your version of science?
Yeah, they should have hired an audiophile. They surely know how important high quality cables are.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Uh, new science stopped costing "$20" a long time ago.
No one is debating that. The original press release said that they were checking results elsewhere to ensure that they were correct. Broken / miscalibrated equipment is the bane of every scientist, and with-holding of results until after several of your friends confirm things is always a good idea (it helps prevent publications of perpetual motion machines and what not).
I am John Hurt.
First of all, they're not making "demonstrably insane claims". They published the data they collected during experiments and are looking for explanation - which might be "experimental error". Discarding anything as "demonstrably insane" before you investigate the reasons for data you got is just the other side of accepting anything you hear as true without investigation. Sadly, latter is modus operandi for modern journalism, which is why this all got blown out of proportion.
Second, you sound like you personally invested in development of FTL engine at CERN and now found out it was a fraud.
OPERA was looking for tau neutrinos and found them, AFAIK, and FTL neutrino sighting was just a strange data point they will now try and reproduce to shut this case.
Mr. Relativistic Physics appears to be having an affair with Ms. Soap Opera. Therefore, please don't be surprised by any outcome.
Trust those who find errors in their own processes and report them openly. Do not trust those who hide errors, or don't even find them in the first place. Everybody makes errors.
How many gratuitous errors and claimed impossibilities do you generally consider acceptable in your version of science?
All of them, at least in a provisional sense. The provision being that each is promptly acknowledged as an error as soon as it becomes known that it was an error. Science progresses through the discovery of inconsistency or inaccuracy in existing explanations, and this means there will be occasional false positive. Science is not a fixed body of dogma independent of truth (that would describe most religions).
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
If you read the original paper, you'll find that they did NOT claim the "too good to be true" result. It was reported that way by a lot of press agents, but the original source basically says "we think there's a systematic error at work we haven't identified. Can you see the problem?" Do not blame CERN for the way the press misrepresented them.
I worked at CERN for six months doing my M.Sc. (in 2000, on ATLAS, not OPERA which is the experiment reporting the result.) Having seen the actual systems and the level of complexity and sensitivity involved, I think assembling them with two small errors identified this quickly is actually pretty damned impressive. Most tech companies dream of CERN's quality control.
- W. Blaine Dowler
http://www.bureau42.com
I guess science works more like: Oh shit, every experiment we've ever done has been affected by not one, but TWO incorrect setups. Fuck it.. our research must be fine.
There is a glimmer of hope for interesting new physics.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I love how the idea that anything running counter to the concepts of mass / length / time dilation happening at high speeds with relative simultaneity is considered insane. Oh, that's demonstrably insane, but Heisenberg and light-speed limitations on information transmittal, THOSE are the new rational. And that's not even getting into quantum effects.
I don't mean to pick on the science behind any of that. But Science long ago left the realm of anything that could be considered judgable based upon common sense. Any normal person from 300 years ago would consider science off its rocker, except for the fact that it's provably true (at least, the provably true parts are). We're firmly in a world where proof and experiments are more important.
Also considering the dead end we've had with strings, it's about time for a major sub-quantum theoretical shakeup.
The ______ Agenda
I believe what he was saying is a figure of speech. As most other types of science today can be done at multiple locations even if the price tag is a lot higher then a mere $20. While anything out of CERN cannot be independently verified so it doesn't matter if their project costs $20 billion dollars, or $1, if it cannot be done in controlled conditions somewhere else it fails the ability to have a peer evaluation with independent testing procedures.