Slashdot Mirror
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.
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"
A real problem with this line of thinking "this is how science moves forward" is that the public at large has no idea how science actually works. they view it as another religion. "well stephen hawking said this, so it must be true"
A disturbing number of people see this sort of situation not as a validation of scientific method, but as an indication of failure.
The discussion goes as follows:
"remember when they told us that they'd discovered particles that went faster than lightspeed?"
"yeah, there were all these press releases and stories in the newspaper and on cnn and shit about how they could go back in time now and maybe warp speed is possible"
"right, and then they were all like 'oops, our bad, we fucked up, we can't go warp speed after all'. i wonde rhow often they're fucking up like this and we just don't know it. I bet it happens a lot. I wonder how much other shit the scientists told us was true where they're doing bad experiments"
There are a frightening number of these people, and you can't tell me I'm wrong because you know them too.
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.
It's worse when you meet them at parties.
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.
I am usually quick to criticize the irrational thinking and the complete lack of scientific literacy found in many people, but in this case I feel journalists should be blamed more than anyone.
What the scientists said: We have a strange result from one of our experiments, it indicates that neutrinos went faster than light. We know that's not supposed to be possible and we don't think we discovered FTL, but we haven't been able to find the error in our experiment so far. Can anyone help?
What half-decent journalists wrote: Experiment surprisingly observes neutrinos possibly exceeding the speed of light
What typical journalists wrote: Speed of light exceeded by neutrinos in an experiment
What bad journalists wrote: Scientists break the speed of light - neutrinos are faster
What horrid journalists wrote: Modern physics invalidated, speed of light not a limit after all
It's generally known that scientific journalism isn't, at least mainstream in media, but in this case the journalists really outdid themselves.