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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!
Imaginary isn't "negative mass squared", and 0.33 electronvolts isn't "2/3 of a millionth of an electronic".. This is inconsis and makes me suspicious about the truth of the article.
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
http://arxiv.org/abs/1408.2804
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!
You just need a thiotimoline target in your detector.
It sounds like an energy drink.
If it brakes causality, doesn't that disprove it right there?
Watch starlings fly, they fly faster than light sometimes, even head backwards in time.
Oh hang on, I meant to say "the flock of starlings" do that. If they're far enough away that you can only see the flock and not the individual birds, then you get weird effects where the flock appears to jump from one place to another faster than light, or heads left to right, and jumps back left as if it went backwards in time.
Of course you're viewing a perception and not the reality. It's only that your eyes are not capable of seeing the smaller birds that makeup the flock, and you only see it when its in a clump. The clump doesn't actually jump around like that, its the density of the birds that does that.
So to my point?
Particle physics is a bunch of equations describing how flocks of starlings fly. It *does* scale, it *is* consistent with the rest of physics. The only issue with it is that they're not particles, the particle is far smaller. Its the perception of a particle, a flock you are seeing and describing in equations.
So the neutrino flock travels faster than light?
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?
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?
"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.
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.
REDUCTION OF OXYGEN CONTENT TO BELOW TWO PARTS PER MILLION WITHIN FIFTY KILOMETER RADIUS OF SOURCE AFTER DIATOM BLOOM MANIFESTS AEMRUDYCO PEZQEASKL MINOR POLLUTANTS PRESENT IN DEITRICH POLYXTROPE 174A ONE
SEVEN FOUR A COMBINES IN LATTITINE CHAIN WITH HERBICIDES SPRINGFIELD AD45 AD FOUR FIVE OR DU PONT ANALAGAN 58 FIVE EIGHT EMITTING FROM REPEATED AGRICULTURAL USE AMAZON BASIN OTHER SITES OTHER LONG CHAIN MOLECULAR SYNERGISTS POSSIBLE IN TROPICAL ENVIRONS OXYGEN COLUMN SUBJECT TO
CONVECTIVE SPREADING RATE ALZSNRUD ASMA WSUEXIO 829 CMXDROQ VIRUS XM-PRINTING STAGE RESULTS 3 THREE WEEK DELAY IF DENSITY OF SPRINGHELD AD45 AD FOUR FIVE EXCEEDS 158 ONE FIVE EIGHT PARTS PER MILLION THEN ENTERS
MOLECULAR SIMULATION REGIME BEGINS IMITATING HOST CAN THEN CONVERT PLANKTON NEURO JACKET INTO ITS OWN CHEMICAL FORM USING AMBIENT OXYGEN CONTENT UNTIL OXYGEN LEVEL FALLS TO VALUES FATAL TO MOST OF THE HIGHER
FOOD CHAIN WTESJDKU AGAIN AMMA YS ACTION OF ULTRAVIOLET SUNLIGHT ON CHAINS APPEARS TO RETARD DIFFUSION IN SURFACE LAYERS OF THE OCEAN BUT GROWTH CONTINUES LOWER DOWN DESPITE CONVECTIVE CELLS FORMING
WHICH TEND TO MIX LAYERS IN XMC AHSU URGENT MADUDLO 374 ONLY SEGMENT AMZLSOUDP ALYN YOU MUST STOP ABOVE NAMED SUBSTANCES FROM ENTERING OCEAN LIFE CHAIN AMZSUY RDUCDK BY PROHIBITIONS OF FOLLOWING SUBSTANCES
CALLANAN B471 FOUR SEVEN ONE MESTOFITE SALEN MARINE COMPOUND ALPHA THROUGH DELTA YDEMCLW URGENT YXU CONDUCT TITRATION ANALYSIS ON METASTABLE INGREDIENTS PWMXSJR ALSUDNCH
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...
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.
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
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...)