Speed-of-light experiments yield baffling result at LHC • Hacker News Board

Re: Speed-of-light experiments yield baffling result at LHC

#151

Post by afiler » Thu, Sep 22, 2011, 11:18 PM UTC

RickHull wrote: post #74

felipemnoa wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I say you are incorrect. Read this: http://physlink.com/Education/AskExperts/ae509.cfm Here is a relevant piece: When light enters a material, photons are absorbed by the atoms in that material, increasing the energy of the atom. The atom will then lose energy after some tiny fraction of time, emitting a photon in the process. This photon, which is identical to the first, travels at the speed of light until it is abs…

> The delay between the time that the atom absorbs the photon and the excited atom releases as photon causes it to appear that light is slowing down. If the photon is traveling less D over the same amount of T, I am ok with saying the velocity is lower, and it has slowed down.

"Well, actually, no, officer, I wasn't speeding. You see, while you clocked me at 90mph [c] between toll booths [atoms], once you factor in time at the booth, you'll see that I am actually driving much more slowly."

Re: Speed-of-light experiments yield baffling result at LHC

#152

Post by mkramlich » Thu, Sep 22, 2011, 11:24 PM UTC

Andys wrote: post #150

mkramlich wrote: post #145

I bet Fox News and the Republican Party leadership in general are going to somehow spin this into their anti-climate-change, anti-science, anti-intellectual, pro-religion messaging.

If all climate research was as honest as this it might be harder to put a spin on it.

and so it begins :)

Re: Speed-of-light experiments yield baffling result at LHC

#153

Post by aperiodic » Thu, Sep 22, 2011, 11:26 PM UTC

arcdrag wrote: post #122

bestes wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not secret then, but to be released at a later date. Or released in one of those journals that most of cannot access.

There's often cases of the data literally being measured in tera or peta bytes. Releasing the raw data isn't always feasible.

The mother of one of my friends works with the Zooniverse[1] project, a citizen science effort. She was saying that one of their biggest problems is how to distribute their data to the public. I naïvely suggested BitTorrent, figuring the sets were in the 10s of gigabytes at most. She laughed and said that that wasn't a great way to distribute terabytes of data every few weeks.

[1]: http://www.zooniverse.org/

Re: Speed-of-light experiments yield baffling result at LHC

#154

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Sep 22, 2011, 11:34 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Speed-of-light experiments yield baffling result at LHC

#155

Post by _nist » Thu, Sep 22, 2011, 11:42 PM UTC

I'm very skeptical about this. It seems like every time a "supposed" scientific discovery gets published in the media before a peer-reviewed journal, it's almost always wrong. The same thing happened with cold fusion, Ida (aka. Darwinius) the supposed "missing link" between human and ape, and NASA's "supposed" discovery of bacterium growth through arsenic instead of phosphorus.

It's always disheartening when science gets reported to the media at such an early age of discovery (i.e. the point where it hasn't been criticised and the lead investigator himself says he isn't so sure). It just opens the flood gates for the retarded news to make of moronic headlines like: "Roll over Einstein: Law of physics challenged"

Re: Speed-of-light experiments yield baffling result at LHC

#156

Post by kul » Thu, Sep 22, 2011, 11:47 PM UTC

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #3

A news article where both the scientists and the reporter understate the claims, publish the data, and ask other teams to please prove them wrong. I like this. Most of the time the reporters overstate the research, the scientists keep the data secret, and the general public is left scratching their heads.

The beauty of state-funded news, no?

Re: Speed-of-light experiments yield baffling result at LHC

#157

Post by powertower » Thu, Sep 22, 2011, 11:47 PM UTC

Even if the neutrinos arrived faster than light could travel (that distance), it does not mean the neutrinos traveled that fast, only that far...

For example: when muon-neutrinos transform into tau-neutrinos, in that moment they could "tunnel" through space-time in some fashion that appears as faster-than-light travel. Or something happens to their probability waves to make them go from existing at point A, to point B.

Re: Speed-of-light experiments yield baffling result at LHC

#158

Post by VladRussian » Thu, Sep 22, 2011, 11:52 PM UTC

fleitz wrote: post #47

Keep in mind that given that they said a few billionths of a second that the adjustment to c would be on the order of: (5 nanoseconds) / ((732 km) / c) = 0.000204776269 percent update: AP says it's 60 nanoseconds so (60 nanoseconds) / ((732 km) / c) = 0.00245731523 percent Also in different units: ((60 nanoseconds) / ((732 km) / c)) * c = 16 479.1646 miles per hour Interestingly, the earth moves about 60,000 miles pe…

as the CERN to Gran Sasso is direction from North-West to South-East, it would be interesting to see the full data as during nighttime the neutrinos would travel in the direction of the Earth traveling around Sun - thus slowed in the CERN/Gran Sasso frame - and during the day they would be moving in the opposite direction - thus they will be boosted in the CERN/Gran Sasso frame. May it be that they run experiments only during business hours ? :)

Re: Speed-of-light experiments yield baffling result at LHC

#159

Post by jarin » Thu, Sep 22, 2011, 11:53 PM UTC

fleitz wrote: post #47

Keep in mind that given that they said a few billionths of a second that the adjustment to c would be on the order of: (5 nanoseconds) / ((732 km) / c) = 0.000204776269 percent update: AP says it's 60 nanoseconds so (60 nanoseconds) / ((732 km) / c) = 0.00245731523 percent Also in different units: ((60 nanoseconds) / ((732 km) / c)) * c = 16 479.1646 miles per hour Interestingly, the earth moves about 60,000 miles pe…

Reading around a bit I believe they used GPS to correct for anything like that. Presumably, if there were frame dragging effects they would be measurable via the GPS satellites, although that could also be the source of an error.

Re: Speed-of-light experiments yield baffling result at LHC

#160

Post by pitchups » Thu, Sep 22, 2011, 11:58 PM UTC

Just for reference Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity - does not strictly prohibit the existence of particles that travel faster than the speed of light, it only prohibits acceleration in an inertial frame to reach the speed of light :

As per Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light )

"In special relativity, while it is impossible in an inertial frame to accelerate an object to the speed of light, or for a massive object to move at the speed of light, it is not impossible for an object to exist which always moves faster than light."