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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.
But a lot of discoveries border on the measurement error initially, otherwise the discovery would have been made earlier with even cruder instruments.
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?
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.
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.
In teaching engineering, I'm told, part of the experience is learning how engineering projects failed.
Perhaps science needs to include the same. Perhaps we should be teaching why experiments got the wrong result, or why an effect was not detected when it should have been. It could be anything from equipment malfunctions to sampling and interpretation bias.
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.