Particles faster than light measured

CERN says a neutrino beam fired from a particle accelerator near Geneva to a lab 730 kilometres away in Italy travelled 60 nanoseconds faster than the speed of light. Scientists calculated the margin of error at just 10 nanoseconds, making the difference statistically significant. But given the enormous implications of the find, they still spent months checking and rechecking their results to make sure there was no flaws in the experiment.

"We have not found any instrumental effect that could explain the result of the measurement," said Antonio Ereditato, a physicist at the University of Bern, Switzerland, who was involved in the experiment known as OPERA.

The researchers are now looking to the United States and Japan to confirm the results.

DevilsReject said:
*sigh*

Most of the major news outlets have picked up on this without really understanding what they are reporting on.

The "particles" that most of the media are referring to are neutrinos that commonly travel at just under the speed of light normally, they are also a sub atomic particle not a particle. A sub atomic particle also known as an elementary particle, is one of the basic building blocks of the universe.

The neutrino in question is very, very tiny. Neutrinos also have the ability to travel through other objects of greater mass. Neutrinos pass through the Earth all the time. The neutrinos being used in this experiment aren't naturally occurring, they're man-made neutrinos. Errors in measurement, instrumentation and general human error have commonly resulted in scientists and physicists claiming that neutrinos travel at the speed of light. This isn't the first time this has happened, it's just the first time it's happened at CERN. CERN physicists are claiming that the neutrino beat a Photon (the basic unit of light) in the race to Italy by 60 nanoseconds.

They're measuring time in nanoseconds, which is one-billionth of a second. 60 nanoseconds sounds like an immense of time, but it's 0.00000006 seconds. They're claiming a timing accuracy of +/- 10 nanoseconds (0.00000010 seconds). It takes the average human between 150 to 300 milliseconds to blink their eye (three thousandths of a second 0.300 seconds).

The timing in this, the measurements, the instrumentation and the the math need to be scrutinized intensely before any of this is verified. How they made the neutrino needs to be closely examined. What makes this even worse is that the scientists and physicists have not published any of their results. They have opened them up for peer review and criticism to the scientific community.

What that basically means is that they performed the test, got results, haven't verified their results, haven't duplicated their results, haven't had the man-made neutrino verified and overall haven't had anything verified at all. It's all just numbers at this point, no proof-positive results.

If they are wrong, the media will probably print another story about how the scientific community made a giant mistake, which they didn't, they just were doing what they normally do. The media picked up on this long before they should have and reported it as a true fact, which it sincerely hasn't even been close to being deemed true by the scientific community.

If the scientists at CERN are right, everything we know about physics has now changed, including Einstein's theory of relativity. It has been long theorized that anything with even the slightest amount of mass cannot travel faster than light.

Despite the large significance of the measurement reported here and the stability of the
analysis, the potentially great impact of the result motivates the continuation of our studies in
order to investigate possible still unknown systematic effects that could explain the observed
anomaly. We deliberately do not attempt any theoretical or phenomenological interpretation of
the results.

DevilsReject said:
The Paper has been published (PDF)

Holy fuck! Warp-speed possibility theoretically proved! ZOMGWTFBBQLOLZ!

TheFuckOffKid said:
TL;DR version.

Coyotemike said:
NERDS!!!

Cassiel said:
How can we monetize this to help the economy?

Cassiel said:
How can we monetize this to help the economy?

NateHevens said:
It would be damn nice if science reporters had... you know... studied science and understood what the hell it all meant. They're just as sensational as every other reporter and they are a huge reason public faith in science is so bad right now.

DevilsReject said:
*sigh*

Most of the major news outlets have picked up on this without really understanding what they are reporting on.

The "particles" that most of the media are referring to are neutrinos that commonly travel at just under the speed of light normally, they are also a sub atomic particle not a particle. A sub atomic particle also known as an elementary particle, is one of the basic building blocks of the universe.

The neutrino in question is very, very tiny. Neutrinos also have the ability to travel through other objects of greater mass. Neutrinos pass through the Earth all the time. The neutrinos being used in this experiment aren't naturally occurring, they're man-made neutrinos. Errors in measurement, instrumentation and general human error have commonly resulted in scientists and physicists claiming that neutrinos travel at the speed of light. This isn't the first time this has happened, it's just the first time it's happened at CERN. CERN physicists are claiming that the neutrino beat a Photon (the basic unit of light) in the race to Italy by 60 nanoseconds.

They're measuring time in nanoseconds, which is one-billionth of a second. 60 nanoseconds sounds like an immense of time, but it's 0.00000006 seconds. They're claiming a timing accuracy of +/- 10 nanoseconds (0.00000010 seconds). It takes the average human between 150 to 300 milliseconds to blink their eye (three thousandths of a second 0.300 seconds).

The timing in this, the measurements, the instrumentation and the the math need to be scrutinized intensely before any of this is verified. How they made the neutrino needs to be closely examined. What makes this even worse is that the scientists and physicists have not published any of their results. They have opened them up for peer review and criticism to the scientific community.

What that basically means is that they performed the test, got results, haven't verified their results, haven't duplicated their results, haven't had the man-made neutrino verified and overall haven't had anything verified at all. It's all just numbers at this point, no proof-positive results.

If they are wrong, the media will probably print another story about how the scientific community made a giant mistake, which they didn't, they just were doing what they normally do. The media picked up on this long before they should have and reported it as a true fact, which it sincerely hasn't even been close to being deemed true by the scientific community.

If the scientists at CERN are right, everything we know about physics has now changed, including Einstein's theory of relativity. It has been long theorized that anything with even the slightest amount of mass cannot travel faster than light.

Urban_Explorer said:
I got to see part of the webinar that CERN had but missed as to whether or not they had confirmed the results. Is this the case that this is preliminary data?

DevilsReject said:
The United States and Japan are playing ball now, they're getting involved with the intentions of repeating the test at CERN. Biggest problem being funding and time at CERN. The LHC is absolutely amazing, i love it even though it creates black holes that are going to swallow the planet and destroy us all.

Cassiel said:
How can we monetize this to help the economy?

ckdexterhaven said:

I don't know, but the need to use it to send Jean Claude Van Damme back in time. Ron Silver is up to no good.

NateHevens said:
Thank you, DevilsReject. The reporting and general over-exaggeration of all this has been pissing me off.

Yes, it's cool. But it's impossible to calculate the chances of this being actually true right now, though I'd venture that they're really small.

This is why I hate science reporting and have taught myself to just read the published papers when I can get my hands on them. It would be damn nice if science reporters had... you know... studied science and understood what the hell it all meant. They're just as sensational as every other reporter and they are a huge reason public faith in science is so bad right now.

In an attempt to measure the speed of the neutrinos again, the Fermilab team will be using similar equipment -- called MINOS -- used in 2007 to conduct the same experiment.

"We're updating the [MINOS] to measure more precisely the time that it takes the neutrinos to travel from Fermilab to the detector in Minnesota," a spokesperson said.

MINOS (or Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search) is a particle physics experiment designed to study the phenomena of neutrino oscillations, first discovered by a Super-Kamiokande (Super-K) experiment in 1998. Neutrinos produced by the NuMI ("Neutrinos at Main Injector") beamline at Fermilab near Chicago are observed at two detectors, one very close to where the beam is produced (the near detector), and another much larger detector 735 km away in northern Minnesota (the far detector).

TheFuckOffKid said:

Well, last I looked, he was trying to get Alan Alda elected president. As a Republican! Take that, space-time continuum!