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CERN: Neutrinos Respect Cosmic Speed Limit
An anonymous reader writes with news of a presentation from CERN Research Director Sergio Bertolucci about follow-up experiments trying to repeat the faster-than-light neutrino results from last year. Quoting the press release:
"The four [experiments], Borexino, ICARUS, LVD and OPERA all measure a neutrino time of flight consistent with the speed of light. This is at odds with a measurement that the OPERA collaboration put up for scrutiny last September, indicating that the original OPERA measurement can be attributed to a faulty element of the experiment's fibre optic timing system. 'Although this result isn't as exciting as some would have liked,' said Bertolucci, 'it is what we all expected deep down. The story captured the public imagination, and has given people the opportunity to see the scientific method in action – an unexpected result was put up for scrutiny, thoroughly investigated and resolved in part thanks to collaboration between normally competing experiments. That's how science moves forward.'"
...best avoid those pesky cosmic traffic cops.
I thought they fired the head scientist responsible for that result.
"That's how science moves forward." in the real world.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
If they were climate scientists then they would have been publicly ridiculed, had their funding called into question, had their email subpoenaed, been threatened over the internet and finally ended up as merely a footnote in "the debate". Instead, they are particle physicists, so good science was accomplished.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
Yes this is how science should be done. I would have loved a FTL violation as it would have opened up all kinds of new physics. But alas.
This is my worry with global warming; that good science is not being done. There are two sides arming themselves with "the truth". One of these sides is correct. But regardless of which side is right science is taking serious blows as people call for the firing / de-funding of any scientists who don't agree with them. If the side you don't like is lying or falsifying their data then that will be the end of their careers. Not liking scientific results has been sticking in the craw of religious types for 100 years with Darwin. They still haven't wished his results away. But what they have done is to damage generations of potential scientists as they mess with school curriculums.
With global warming one side will be right but people won't care as the public will believe that you can argue against science with opinion. I can't imagine a teacher trying to discuss both sides of Global Warming with their class for or against. At this point I would think a teacher would do just as well discussing the pros and cons of abortion in Arkansas.
The universe caught on we were watching, and quickly decided to toe the line on the whole laws-of-physics thing again.
Like when you're on the highway and see a cop car passing you by. Suddenly you're a model driver, five percent below the speed limit, signaling lane changes and everything, can-I-help-you-officer.
Turn that detector off and they'll be whizzing by like nobody's business again, violating causality just for the hell of it.
Had the error been in the opposite direction, indicating neutrinos slightly slower than previously thought, this experiment would never have been scrutinized so much. Then some theoretician might have even got a Nobel for explaining the result. That's how science moves backward.
If they were climate scientists then they would have been publicly ridiculed, had their funding called into question, had their email subpoenaed, been threatened over the internet and finally ended up as merely a footnote in "the debate". Instead, they are particle physicists, so good science was accomplished.
That's because particle physics doesn't (presently) threaten anyone's business model. If they give off even a whiff of costing companies money you can bet that their credibility will be questioned. Particularly if the companies threatened are extremely wealthy energy companies.
Nope. They were supposed to be measuring the mu-neutrino to tau-neutrino oscillation (a few events indeed happened). Which would indirectly hint at their respective mass ratio. The speed thing was just an anomaly on the side.
Couldn't they have just released the results without all the hyperbole and pontificating? Yea, everybody knew that most likely there was an issue with timing, rather than with the much-confirmed laws of space-time. We don't need a condescending lecture from the elites. Tell it to the journalists.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
It was a sad day when I learned that for all their training to think logically and to seek out truth...Scientist were just like everyone else. They want to stay in line, they don't want to buck trend... god forbid someone proves the great god Einstein wrong. That would be blasphemous!
When and how, exactly, did you learn that? In Imagination College from Professor Unicorn? Where did this idea that overturning Einstein would be "blasphemous" even enter your head? Paint me a picture. I want to know.
would any of them have the balls to step up and claim it?
Only if they could be sure it was really happening, and then FUCK YES THEY WOULD. It would be the most revolutionary experimental result in the last century, and they would become famous. Because that's how you become famous in science. Why do you think you know Einstein's name? Or any other scientist you happened to learn about in Actual School?
Are you erroneously assuming that because scientists are skeptical that the results would pan out due to the exceedingly successful record of Relativity -- which hey turned out to be the smart money bet -- that they would not be willing to accept a contrary result? Well, stop!
The enemies of Democracy are
Wrong. Values for the mass which would be observable with OPERA were ruled out by several experiments, long before OPERA was built.
The modification of the velocity is approximately v/c=1-m^2/E^2 =~ c*1e-18. OPERA has nowhere near a precision of 1e-18 on the velocity measurement. A large enough mass to be visible in the velocity measurement would be so large that certain radioactive decays would not occur, and it would be visible in the kinematics of others (such as Tritium decay).
OPERA does not directly measure mass. It measures mixing. The mass difference is then computed from the rate of mixing. The link you posted explains this very well. They added the velocity measurement just because they could, but there's no way that measurement could have any bearing on their mass (mixing) measurement.
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.