Do they at any time say how much faster than light are those neutrinos moving? 1% faster? 100 times faster? I couldn't see that info anywhere.
a velocity 20 parts per million above the speed of light
CERN press release regarding neutrino experiment
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Re: CERN press release regarding neutrino experiment
#22Guys, I'm sorry I missed this recent news but I've a question that I hope some people can answer for me. So does this mean that Einstein's theory might not hold? Do we see any well-established theories break as result of this? I'm totally naive about this but curious so any answers will be appreciated.
I'm not the best to answer this, but I'll briefly say that if Einstein's theories don't hold, it will be in the same sense that Newton's theories didn't hold post-Einstein. Newton's theories still apply, for all practical purposes, to all every-day life situations, and Einstein's theories will still apply, for all practical purposes, to every fringe case seen so far ("every-day" nuclear physics, etc) until this exper…
The half-century after Einstein's pioneering work saw the world's basic conceptions of energy resources and of armed conflict transformed. One can only imagine the prospect of living in a post-FTL world.
Re: CERN press release regarding neutrino experiment
#23A great article on various disagreements between Tesla's and Einstein's view of the physical world. http://www.writingriffs.com/2009/09/13/tesla-vs-einstein-tra... Will Tesla have the last laugh?
Not based on the linked article, which is horrible. I gave up when it was simultaneously trying to claim that the ether exists but space can have no properties.
claiming what? who?
Re: CERN press release regarding neutrino experiment
#24Do they at any time say how much faster than light are those neutrinos moving? 1% faster? 100 times faster? I couldn't see that info anywhere.
0.002% faster.
Re: CERN press release regarding neutrino experiment
#25This result is from a legitimate experimental group. It's much more likely to be experimental error than new physics, though: previous observations of neutrinos coincident with the light emitted by supernova 1987a (much, much farther away) indicate that neutrinos travel at light speed to 1 part in 10^8 [1,2]
[1] http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1989ARA%26A..27..629A [2] http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/09/22/fa...
Re: CERN press release regarding neutrino experiment
#26Guys, I'm sorry I missed this recent news but I've a question that I hope some people can answer for me. So does this mean that Einstein's theory might not hold? Do we see any well-established theories break as result of this? I'm totally naive about this but curious so any answers will be appreciated.
My background is in physics and one of my first programming jobs was writing code for a lab of international importance. At the time, I would engage the other members of the lab in an ongoing debate about Einstein, where I'd take the position that Einstein was wrong (About anything, or everything, whatever the handy topic was.) I was, and am, an Einsteinian skeptic.
I learned a lot in that, and one thing that actually surprised me is that in many cases, I was able to make a good argument that Einstein was wrong, and there was no empirical evidence to support his view on the particular point we were discussing.
The point of that is not that I believe Einstein was wrong. It is that this is not a situation where any single experimental result can show that the theory doesn't hold, or does hold. There are many experiments where his theories do seem to hold (though I enjoyed poking holes in them). If this result is repeatable and turns out to be correct, it will cause many physicists to re-evaluate many theories, and have huge implications.
Einsteins work resulted in many theories, and of course a grand set of them called relativity (and special relativity)... the media simplifies this to "nothing can move faster than the speed of light".
I can see the situation where this causes an adjustment in the specific interpretations of his theories. Or it could turn out that these results are both true, and consistent with his theories. For instance, prior to the understanding of matter there were many theories about mass that are essentially true on the macroscopic scale, though once you understand that matter is made up of atoms you see where they don't hold on the microscopic scale.
This result could reveal a level of reality beyond what Einstein understood, such that he's right from our macroscopic scale, but there's a whole other branch of physics in there.
So, I'm not declaring victory. I think this is good news, though, because it might be the beginning of the revelation of an error in understanding that, when resolved, results in a big jump forward in physics.
PS- I'm not interested in getting into a physics debate. Its been too many years, and I've spoken vaguely because the specifics are not what I'm addressing.
Re: CERN press release regarding neutrino experiment
#27My SWAG: the relativist effect of time being slowed down in Earth's gravity was not taken into account. (Time is slowed down, therefore neutrinos appear to arrive 60ns "early".)
They spent a lot of time triple checking the accuracy of their instruments without seemingly thinking about higher level factors such as the Theory of relativity... http://static.arxiv.org/pdf/1109.4897.pdf Of course there are 99% chances I am wrong, but just throwing this out there :)
Re: CERN press release regarding neutrino experiment
#28My SWAG: the relativist effect of time being slowed down in Earth's gravity was not taken into account. (Time is slowed down, therefore neutrinos appear to arrive 60ns "early".) They spent a lot of time triple checking the accuracy of their instruments without seemingly thinking about higher level factors such as the Theory of relativity... http://static.arxiv.org/pdf/1109.4897.pdf Of course there are 99% chances I a…
There is a 100% chance that you are wrong. Do you honestly believe that they wouldn't think of taking that into account, if it could be relevant? That you can immediately think of it, but not an entire group of physicists; let alone a group trained and experienced in performing time-critical experiments? How far removed from reality do you believe physicists to be?
Anyway, relativity cannot possibly be relevant in explaining the time difference. I will not explain why: please actually read what they published. It will be crystal clear why it isn't relevant.
Re: CERN press release regarding neutrino experiment
#29A great article on various disagreements between Tesla's and Einstein's view of the physical world. http://www.writingriffs.com/2009/09/13/tesla-vs-einstein-tra... Will Tesla have the last laugh?
Not based on the linked article, which is horrible. I gave up when it was simultaneously trying to claim that the ether exists but space can have no properties.
The author could have done a better job of explaining this, if he would have said "Einsteinian Space" rather than "space" in that section. That's fairly easy to infer from the context, but it could have been explained better. Einstein viewed "space" as a vacuum. Tesla argues that view is flawed, that nothingness by definition can't have any properties, and as a result can't bend, because there's nothing to bend. He proposes aether/ether as an alternative explanation of "space".
Re: CERN press release regarding neutrino experiment
#30Guys, I'm sorry I missed this recent news but I've a question that I hope some people can answer for me. So does this mean that Einstein's theory might not hold? Do we see any well-established theories break as result of this? I'm totally naive about this but curious so any answers will be appreciated.
My background is in physics and one of my first programming jobs was writing code for a lab of international importance. At the time, I would engage the other members of the lab in an ongoing debate about Einstein, where I'd take the position that Einstein was wrong (About anything, or everything, whatever the handy topic was.) I was, and am, an Einsteinian skeptic. I learned a lot in that, and one thing that actuall…
You say:
> I learned a lot in that, and one thing that actually surprised me is that in many cases, I was able to make a good argument that Einstein was wrong, and there was no empirical evidence to support his view on the particular point we were discussing.
Then:
> I'm not interested in getting into a physics debate. Its been too many years, and I've spoken vaguely because the specifics are not what I'm addressing.
You can't go making a claim like "there was no empirical evidence to support his view" about nearly any of Einstein's physics papers and then not want to debate it.
That's like saying "I have proof that bigfoot exists, but it's been too many years and I don't want to actually present that proof, so just believe me because my background is in being a bigfoot expert".
In any case, your assertion is false - there is a great deal of empirical evidence for all of Einstein's important theories.
Sure none of this evidence is proof, but it is good evidence. We know that if Einstein's theories of relativity are not true they are at least very good approximations over a very wide range of scales. It would take truly extraordinary evidence to justify a conclusion about the falsehood of relativistic theories at large scales. Some of this has been done (physics, like all science, is an ongoing debate), but many of those original theories are still believed to hold.
> So, I'm not declaring victory. I think this is good news, though, because it might be the beginning of the revelation of an error in understanding that, when resolved, results in a big jump forward in physics.
Taking the position that a piece of science will be eventually proven wrong and gloating when it is proven wrong isn't big or clever. Every theory of the past has gone the way of Phlogiston, and we can reasonably expect every theory of today to go the same way. However, saying "I think this is wrong" isn't contributing until you say "and here is my evidence".
By the way, "I'm not declaring victory, but" is the same as "I'm not a racist, but".