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New Paper Claims Neutrino Is Likely a Faster-Than-Light Particle
HughPickens.com writes Phys.org reports that in a new paper accepted by the journal Astroparticle Physics, Robert Ehrlich, a recently retired physicist from George Mason University, claims that the neutrino is very likely a tachyon or faster-than-light particle. Ehrlich's new claim of faster-than-light neutrinos is based on a much more sensitive method than measuring their speed, namely by finding their mass. The result relies on tachyons having an imaginary mass, or a negative mass squared. Imaginary mass particles have the weird property that they speed up as they lose energy – the value of their imaginary mass being defined by the rate at which this occurs. According to Ehrlich, the magnitude of the neutrino's imaginary mass is 0.33 electronvolts, or 2/3 of a millionth that of an electron. He deduces this value by showing that six different observations from cosmic rays, cosmology, and particle physics all yield this same value within their margin of error. One check on Ehrlich's claim could come from the experiment known as KATRIN, which should start taking data in 2015. In this experiment the mass of the neutrino could be revealed by looking at the shape of the spectrum in the beta decay of tritium, the heaviest isotope of hydrogen.
But be careful. There have been many such claims, the last being in 2011 when the "OPERA" experiment measured the speed of neutrinos and claimed they travelled a tiny amount faster than light. When their speed was measured again the original result was found to be in error – the result of a loose cable no less. "Before you try designing a "tachyon telephone" to send messages back in time to your earlier self it might be prudent to see if Ehrlich's claim is corroborated by others."
But be careful. There have been many such claims, the last being in 2011 when the "OPERA" experiment measured the speed of neutrinos and claimed they travelled a tiny amount faster than light. When their speed was measured again the original result was found to be in error – the result of a loose cable no less. "Before you try designing a "tachyon telephone" to send messages back in time to your earlier self it might be prudent to see if Ehrlich's claim is corroborated by others."
Yay!
No worries. I have peered review this paper and corroborate it.
Me too. I read it one week before it was published, and posted my comments last month. As I said tomorrow, there's no reason I can see that neutrinos aren't tachyons. In fact Prof. Robert Ehrlich agreed with me yesterday, after he accepted his Nobel prize for non-casual phenomena next year.
Since they travel back in time, you have to test the result before you do the experiment.
If your test was successful, you see little reason to do the experiment, which causes the test result to not have happened -- which can make your co-workers quite angry with you. The frustrating nature of this type of work requires extreme dedication.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
Nor did the Opera team claim any such thing, they observed faster than light tachyons, couldn't find why they had got those results and contacted another team to ensure their equipment was faulty. People in those positions don't just make wild speculations with corroborated evidence.
http://arxiv.org/abs/1408.2804
Complaints are better when you also tell us what the answers should be. How do you call a number when its square is negative?
0.645793919 != 2/3, but it's reasonably close.
Six observations based on data and fits to data from a variety of areas are consistent with the hypothesis that the electron neutrino is a m^2_v_e = 0.11±0.016eV 2 tachyon. The data are from areas including CMB fluctuations, gravitational lensing, cosmic ray spectra, neutrino oscillations, and 0v double beta decay. For each of the six observations it is possible under explicitly stated assumptions to compute a value for m^2_v_e , and it is found that the six values are remarkably consistent with the above cited _e mass (\Chi^2 = 2.73). There are no known observations in clear conflict with the claimed result. Three checks are proposed to test the validity of the claim, one of which could be performed using existing data.
Ummm...according to my calculator, 0.33 eV / 510998 eV = 0.646 x 10^-6, which is reasonably close to "two thirds of a millionth" quote
As for the imaginary mass, let's say that some particle had 0.33i eV as its mass. Then if you squared that, you would end up with -0.108 eV^2. How is that not "negative mass squared" ?
There are lots of potential problems with Erlich's theory, but the ideas you chose to nitpick are not at issue..
How many times have we been through this, if it has mass, ANY mass, it can't break the speed limit of light, end of!
...and contacted another team to ensure their equipment was faulty.
Ensuring equipment is faulty happens to be my specialty. Why didn't they contact me?
Imaginary isn't "negative mass squared"
The sentence is slightly ambiguous, however;
The result relies on tachyons having ... a negative (mass squared)
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
I think they mean the mass squared is negative.
You just need a thiotimoline target in your detector.
How is that not "negative mass squared" ?
A "negative mass squared" would be a positive-magnitude square mass, whatever that is.
You have the squaring backward - imaginary is the square root of a negative. But worse than that, it is completely ignoring the units. Square mass is not mass.
It sounds like an energy drink.
drdread66 doesn't have it backwards, the original article is unclear in its phrasing. It should have stated that the square of the mass is negative, which can be assumed when it accurately states that the mass is an imaginary number. Another commenter has linked back to the original paper on archiv.org; I always recommend going back to the source for science reporting anywhere online. As Einstein said when asked about his thoughts on a one page summary of the theory of relativity from a local paper, "things should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
- W. Blaine Dowler
http://www.bureau42.com
If it brakes causality, doesn't that disprove it right there?
When the phrasing is unclear, you don't always have to go back to the source. Applying the "principle of charity" often suffices.
A telephone to send messages back in time... but sending information back wouldn't change the time we are in now, it would simply cause a split, an alternate time line to occur, and nothing would change at the time we are in now.
Example: Sending information back to stop the assassination of Kennedy wouldn't change that fact in our time, its already occurred.
It would create a new time line, one of which we are unaware.
If multiple Universe, and multiple time lines exist, would changing a time line we could have no knowledge of be meaningful in any way?
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
In that supernova (the first observed in 1987 hence the name), the supernova was close enough that we were actually able to detect the neutrinos from it. The neutrinos arrived about three hours before the light from the supernova. But that's not evidence for faster than light neutrinos, since one actually expects this to happen. In the standard way of viewing things, the neutrinos move very very close to the speed of light, but during a core-collapse supernova like SN 1987A, the neutrinos are produced in the core at the beginning of the process. They then flee the star without interacting with the matter, whereas the light produced in the core is slowed down by all the matter in the way, so the neutrinos get a few hours head start.
The problem for FTL neutrinos is that if the neutrions were even a tiny bit faster than the speed of light they should have arrived much much earlier. This is strong evidence against FTL neutrinos. In the paper in question, he mentions SN 1987A in the context of testing his hypothesis in an alternate way using a supernova and the exact distribution of the neutrinos from one but doesn't discuss anywhere I can see the more basic issue of the neutrinos arriving at close to the same time as the light.
Two things:
1) Causality isn't necessarily a law of nature, so much as "the way our senses are wired to see things".
2) It is unlikely that tachyons have brakes. Cars have brakes, even bicycles have brakes. But probably not tachyons.
Of course Causality is a law of nature, in so much as all nature derives from it, period. And anything that says "Time Travel" into the "past" is possible, as if the "past" is some separate physical place other than right here in the present, is clearly a huge misinterpretation of something. Otherwise you would have to explain the amazing process by which the entire mass of the entire universe is recreated instantly over and over again at perhaps plank-time intervals and without any big-bangs... If anything ever required a MASSIVE amount of clear evidence to prove it that is one of them right there.
Why do I suspect this is horse crap?
The wording is clear, consider:
screen is blue
has a blue screen
has a negative mass squared
mass squared is negative
A hyphen between mass and squared would help.
Saying "has a negative mass squared" can be misinterpreted more easily than "the square of the mass is negative." One person read it as intended, and another read it as "you take a negative mass and square it." If the wording was completely clear, that misinterpretation couldn't have happened. Different brains will associate the words "negative mass" as a complete unit while others will associate "mass squared" as a complete unit.
- W. Blaine Dowler
http://www.bureau42.com
It is more evidence in support of Spring-And-Loop Theory, which has a model that, among many other things, explains why neutrinos can travel faster than light.
I come here for the love
Could tachyons be where the dark matter mass comes from?
Maybe you should read up on the large volume of work confirming that fundamental particles behave like point particles as far as we can test...
Saying "has a negative mass squared" can be misinterpreted more easily than "the square of the mass is negative." One person read it as intended, and another read it as "you take a negative mass and square it."
There is no way to validly misinterpret "has a negative mass squared" it clearly means "has the square of a negative mass" which is nonsense.
Different brains will associate the words "negative mass" as a complete unit while others will associate "mass squared" as a complete unit.
"Negative mass squared" is a complete unit.
There is no way to validly misinterpret "has a negative mass squared" and then you proceed to misinterpret it?
"The square of a negative mass" is a positive number. The square of an imaginary mass is negative, which is what they are talking about. It is clearly possible to misinterpret this. Before someone cries out that an imaginary mass is nonsense, I should point out that imaginary numbers appear in several legitimate places in science. I don't believe the results of this paper are correct, but I'm not about to dismiss them out of hand.
- W. Blaine Dowler
http://www.bureau42.com
"original result was found to be in error – the result of a loose cable"
That's what Comcast tells me to do every time I call.
What the OPERA collaboration claimed was that they had an anomaly in their data, which led to a possible interpretation of nneutrinos travelling faster-than-light. Since they found that a very extrordinary claim, they knew they needed extrordinary evidence, and after a few months of searching within, they opened up to the scientific community to help find their mistake, if any. They were very scientific about the whole thing, and didn't at any point claim "hey look here, we found neutrinos to go faster than lightspeed!".
In summary, TFS contains crap on the part I know about, so I'm not inclined to go read TFA... I'll hear it from a more reliable source if it turns out to be anything important.
Did any of you who moderated parent up actually look at the link posted? It's a personal website defending his pet crackpot theory of everything.
If the only valid interpretation of "A B C" is "C of A B", then I suppose that "liquid motor oil" is oil for liquid motors, and "downloadable computer software" is software for downloadable computers. I learned something today... that you're an idiot.
So, not only are neutrinos tachyons, but the whole thing is a formal phenomenon as well. Fascinating.
I'm waiting for the next episode of The Big Bang Theory to hear what Dr.Copper thinks of this paper before I take sides. He's the man...
The idea of a speed constant in such a vast universe, it is repulsive, ridiculous and unimaginative.
This is a scientific paper being written for the author's peers, none of whom would ever misinterpret it. I've seen this issue come up in a couple of places where laypeople are confused by the language of physics.
This is not a problem with the language of physics: it is a problem with laypeople.
I'm all for clear scientific communication, but at the end of the day, communication is hard and worrying about how some random person on the 'Net might misinterpret a term you use every day in your professional work is just not a good use of anyone's precious attention.
When I write poetry I do so in a pretty technical way. If people don't appreciate that, sucks to be them, because they are not my audience. I'm the same way in scientific communication: I write for my peers, and everyone else does the same. Let the popular science authors do the translation. They need the work.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
It is not a number, it is a number with units.
If you square an imaginary distance, you do _not_ get negative distance, you get negative area. Totally different, and an important one.
Actually, "mass squared" is a completely relevant concept in this context. The reason is that the equation everybody thinks they know as Einstein's special relativity equation is NOT E = mc^2. That is the simplified version for objects at rest. The version that includes particles in motion is E^2 = p^2c^2 + m^2c^4, where p is the momentum of the particle. Note the presence of an m^2 term in that equation. Thus, a negative mass squared -- which others have pointed out should be read as "negative (mass squared)" -- implies that the particle's energy is *decreased* by its mass rather than increased by it. This is a counterintuitive idea, but quite plausible mathematically.
One thing that I should point out is that it is possible that Erlich wrote this paper not because he actually believes it, but because he did the math. Got a surprising result that did not obviously contradict known principles of experiments, and is challenging the world to tell him where he went wrong. We used to do this all the time when I was in grad school. It was a lot of fun. The main difference is that when you stake out an outrageous position and your friends catch your mistake over some beer, no one calls you an idiot on Slashdot. When you publish a paper, the results can be less ... um .. . "civil."
There is no way to validly misinterpret "has a negative mass squared" it clearly means "has the square of a negative mass" which is nonsense.
Translation: "I am ignorant of what this term means to physicists, and I declare my ignorance trumps their knowledge."
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
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Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Or look at previous posts where people with physics backgrounds argued with him about it until they left from fatigue due to a lack of any cogent response on his part...
For those interested in time travel, the inaugural meeting of the International Time Travel Association will be held at the Perimeter
Institute last Tuesday at 20:00.
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
I'm curious how this syncs up with other neutrino mass measurements - which give lower bounds on the mass of the electron neutrino.
"Solar, atmospheric, and reactor experiments have all conclusively shown that neutrinos possess a small, yet finite, mass. Limits from previous experiments place the neutrino mass at less than 2 eV, while limits from oscillitory experiments place a lower bound of 50 meV on the neutrino mass. The effects of neutrino mass within this scale (50-2000 eV) will have a direct impact on galaxy evolution and cosmology."
http://www2.lns.mit.edu/neutrino/KATRIN.html
Author also recently put out these two...
93. Ehrlich, R., “Alien Conquistadors? Hawking is Right,” Journal of Cosmology, 2010, Vol 7 http://journalofcosmology.com/Aliens100.html
96. Ehrlich. R.” Optimizing the Efficacy of Intercessory Prayer: Results from a Quadruply-Blind Study,” WebmedCentral, http://www.webmedcentral.com/article_view/691
What is more likely to happen is that either a) no FTL particle, ever or b) the standard model will have to be amended. What makes some people think going back in time (and violating causality) is possible, is the elegance of the mathematics that fits what we know about physics. Would not be the first time that when more becomes known, the mathematics loses significantly in elegance. Just look at the mess of the current mathematical modeling (not: "foundation"!) quantum physics has.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I can already see some CTO at a high frequency trading data center putting together a proposal to use this information to reduce latency in trade orders from New Jersey to the exchange. Not sure they can do a little relativity backglip and get orders in before the information they're based on exists but they might get closer to zero than the guy with the shorter fiber optic cables down the road...
It took a few readings, but the fact is that an object with imaginary mass, would have a negative mass squared.
However, since E = mv^2, I don't see why you care about mass squared, it would seem you would want a negative mass. Or is that just me applying classical physics to quantum stuff.
I know. Sorry, I read the paper.
I'm not a physicist, either. Maybe someone can clear these questions up for me.
The paper cites neutrinoless double beta decay as one of its six observations, but from my understanding this phenomena has not yet been observed, and experiments that have claimed to observe it have not been "disputed", but unambiguously discredited.
Also - from my understanding - previous theoretical work stipulated that the FTL component would only be found in internal reference frames via quantum interactions, and the neutrino itself would not and need not travel FTL.
can also allow for backwards time travel. There is nothing in this universe and most likely any universe that would allow for backwards time travel because backwards time travel is impossible. You cannot return to an event that has already occurred unless you've recorded it and when I say event, I mean everything. The universe isn't a giant recording device. In order to move backwards in time, even a plank second, you would need to have recorded every iota of everything within the universe and run it backwards. Every particle, every atom, everything right down to quantum foam, would have to literally move backwards on the same path/vectors to where they were before to get to the event point you wanted too. That is not possible on any terms.
Time moves forward, never back. In fact, time has existed prior to the universes formation. It had too. Space/time is the envelopment of time with space. Time infused itself into space. Remove space, you still have time. Tachyons are FTL, but they only move forward, never back.
‘There are no known observations in clear conflict with the claimed result.’ is a lie.
Supernovae and earth-based measurements clearly contradict that neutrinos are tachyons. And compared to those, the data brought up in support of the tachyon theory is very indirect and prone to all kinds of sources of confusion.
If the connection between the measurement outcome and the neutrino's speed is relatively direct, the outcome has always been that neutrino's don't move faster than the speed of light. That alone should make us very suspicious of indirect measurements claiming the opposite.
One of the strange things about a tachyon is that it can be traveling in one direction for some real inertial reference frame, and be traveling in another direction for some other inertial reference frame. For yet another reference frame intermediate between those two, the tachyon is traveling at infinite speed, yet has zero dynamic mass and a finite momentum of +/- i mc, where i is the square root of -1, m is the imaginary rest mass of the tachyon, and c is the speed of light.
The direction of the momentum vector is ambiguous.
Since this is a total contradiction, I assume that tachyons cannot exist.
This link is about a theory I formulated after OPERA experiment: https://sites.google.com/site/factoruniversaldelorentz/einstein-versus-entrelazamiento-cuantico/einsteinorquantumentanglement
Supernovae and earth-based measurements clearly contradict that neutrinos are tachyons.
Clearly? Supernova results show neutrinos arriving before light signals, and this is attributed to the mechanics of stellar collapse, with the exact amount of delay heavily dependent on the model of such a collapse. This clearly contradicts that the neutrinos are a lot faster than the speed of light, but is not completely inconsistent with them being faster than light in any sense.
And I bet a beer he cares *deeply* about his reputation on Slashdot.
For God's sake will you guys just read the summary again?
"having an imaginary mass, or a negative mass squared"
NO AMBIGUITY, BECAUSE HE EXPLAINS IT TWICE.
Yeah. Thing is... idiomatic terminology shouldn't end up in popular accounts of science/technology because it causes this kind of confusion. I have often had this problem in taking some physics seriously, even though it was legit, because the jargon was suggestive of implausibilities.
In this mathmatical context, "imaginary number" means that the equation(s) are lacking a "dimension" or variable that is "at right angles" or orthogonal to all of the current variables. This is true in phase calculations and AC systems such as radio, where the missing variable is time. And also in several other fields.
So, what is the "missing varable" for the nutrinos? 8-)
(Damn slashdot should warn you that you are not signed in, before you start editing...)
There is no way to validly misinterpret "imaginary mass particle" it clearly means "an imaginary particle that has mass". "Imaginary mass particle" is a complete unit. So, TFA itself says these particles don't exist. Case closed.