Live data from Hacker News

Speed-of-light experiments yield baffling result at LHC

bbc.co.uk

191–200 of 255 posts

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

#192
post #80
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scientist rarely keep the data secret. It's the basis of peer review. There's a reason why open access journals (PLoS One) are getting so popular, scientists want to be known and publish. In my experience, ego is a currency much more valuable than money in academic circles.

The vast majority of the world's petroleum geologists keep their data secret.

In related news most gold prospectors keep their gold strikes secret until they lodge the claim....

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

#193
post #62
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the time ... the scientists keep the data secret Um, no. There are plenty of data being released, and in even more cases the scientists are happy to give you the data if you ask. It's very dependent on discipline, though. In astronomy, pretty much all data obtained with publicly funded facilities (e.g. including all large space instruments) are accessible by anyone after a proprietary period of 1 year.

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

Most journals can be accessed by those working professionally in the field.

Some argue this isn't good enough (and I have some sympathy for those arguments). But it's very different to a deliberate action to hide or obscure information.

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

#194
post #62
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the time ... the scientists keep the data secret Um, no. There are plenty of data being released, and in even more cases the scientists are happy to give you the data if you ask. It's very dependent on discipline, though. In astronomy, pretty much all data obtained with publicly funded facilities (e.g. including all large space instruments) are accessible by anyone after a proprietary period of 1 year.

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

>Or released in one of those journals that most of cannot access

Go down to your local university library. Go over to one of the computers (or hop on the wifi). Read the article. Email it to yourself. Not that hard now was it?

This is not ideal, but it's not that you _cannot_ access it, it's just not convenient.

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

#195
post #76
post #4

I desperately want to believe that this will somehow enable us to live in a Star-Trek future, even though I'm sure it won't. Would someone with some knowledge of physics care to break down the ramifications of this (if it's not some sort of measurement error)? Please?

In any case, I'd like to submit my resume to the Time Travel Bureau. I am a computer collector and I am very familiar with many of the technologies time travelers from the future may want to procure. ;-)

Mr. Titor, is that you?

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

#196
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that is what it means. :)

That can't be it because the error wouldn't straddle the speed of light. It would put the range at 1.000022 c to 1.000080 c, both of which exceed c, so they wouldn't have written it off as error.

But that doesn't indicate a hard error bound; this is a statistical matter, after all. Most likely it's just an expected standard deviation.

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

#197
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. In this world, it is true that scientists rarely keep the data secret, more often than not, silly conspiracy theorist views notwithstanding. Business-sponsored science is very often secret, but please don't attempt to paint, as the parent commenter disingenuously attempts to do, that scientists are the root of data secrecy. There have been now six separate inquiries into the misguided, corporation driven, politic…

I don't know about scienctists in general, but at least in climate science it is not true that scientists rarely keep the data secret. You can review untold number of cases of this on climateaudit.org and the justifications by the stonewallers are extremely poor. Given the high profile and sweeping consequences of their work, this attitude is giving science a black eye.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Steve_McIntyre

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

#198
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

am i the only one that has come to love the scientific method simply because it creates more questions than it answers. there is just so much that we do not and cannot understand. the more we learn, the less we know. fantastic. on the flipside, i would be certain that certainty is a particular kind of hell, if having such knowledge didn't condemn me to it. excuse me while i proceed to consume my tail http://en.wikipe…

The Scientific Method could be boiled down to: 10: Question Reality 20: Verify Results 30: GOTO 10

Line numbers. Awww yeah!

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

#199
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

am i the only one that has come to love the scientific method simply because it creates more questions than it answers. there is just so much that we do not and cannot understand. the more we learn, the less we know. fantastic. on the flipside, i would be certain that certainty is a particular kind of hell, if having such knowledge didn't condemn me to it. excuse me while i proceed to consume my tail http://en.wikipe…

The Scientific Method could be boiled down to: 10: Question Reality 20: Verify Results 30: GOTO 10

10: Question (the currently accepted model of) Reality

20: Verify Results

30: GOTO 10

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

#200
post #50

If this result is valid then it would mean that neutrinos are capable of traveling .0025% faster than light. There was a supernova that we observed in 1987 (SN 1987) that occurred 168,000 light years away from us. A neutrino burst was observed in 3 different labs about 3 hours before the light was observed. If neutrinos are capable of traveling .0025% faster than the speed of light then why would we observe these neu…

If you're not looking for something, it's hard to find it.

If you assume nothing travels faster than light and you have a burst of neutrinos a couple of years before an event, you'll look for other explanations or maybe simply ignore the readings. Generally they expect the neutrinos burst a couple of hours before the photons arrive.

Now it's suspected that a flavor of neutrinos can travel faster than light, maybe there's going to be some data digging to find correlations...

The universe if full of mysteries and it's highly likely Einstein's theory although verified and correct in many cases is incomplete not to say totally incorrect in other cases, as Newton's theory was.

Let's not assume anything.

Post reply on HN