Science Brian Cox on Cern's baffling light-speed find

[Lamp]

BBC News - Brian Cox on Cern's baffling light-speed find

lol @ Prof Jim:

BBC News - Newsnight - Physicist vows to 'eat shorts' over light speed claims

If anything exceeds light speed then there will always be some moving observer who will see it travelling backwards in time. Urgh!

CERN:

http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2011/PR19.11E.html

 

[chipper]

mind boggling stuff but theres still alot of testing to do before it becomes accepted i personally think its just an anomaly, otherwise theres the possibility it turns physics on its head

 

[Tom]

I think its fantastic news and if correct represents an extremely important discovery.

Also, warp drives and green bitches.

 

[Zarjazz]

CERN says it has squashed 40,000 bugs in the C++ framework it is relied upon to store, crunch and help analyse petabytes of data.

Not exactly a good sign when it comes to making any kind of predictions from CERN data ...

 

[ileks]

Very very likely to be some sort of systematic error I would have thought.

edit: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/09/neutrinos-faster-than-light/

 

[Kryten]

If it's true, I'm patenting "uber-fibre broadband". No wires needed, just a receptive brick wall and a super neutrino-firer. BT can go fuck themselves with their Fibre to the Cabinet Infinity, as can Virgin. Krytenet will offer gamers negative pings!

 

[Zenith.UK]

The first thing I thought when I heard about this was "systematic error", followed by "unconsidered motion".

The neutrinos were created at CERN and aimed at the lab in Italy. That's a straight-line chord of 730km as opposed to the great-circle distance along the Earth's surface. The travel time was given as 2.43 msec, as measured against GPS clocks.
The Earth's rotational velocity is 465.1 m/s (thx Wiki), so the Earth will have turned 1.13m in that time.
The Earth's average orbital velocity is 29.78 km/s, so the Earth will moved 72.3654m in space in that time.

It's not a huge amount, and I'm sure that those clever people will have considered Earth's motion in the timing. My personal opinion would be inaccuracy in the GPS constellation due to the uneven gravity geoid of the Earth, but I'm just a layman in these things.

 

[Nate]

Pre-owned is my new gaming term

 

[Cadelin]

The first thing I thought when I heard about this was "systematic error", followed by "unconsidered motion".

Before making stuff up you could always try reading the actual paper:
[1109.4897] Measurement of the neutrino velocity with the OPERA detector in the CNGS beam

or listening to the webcast:
CERN Document Server: New results from OPERA on neutrino properties

Having listened to it myself it was a very careful measurement. If there is an error it not obvious. However the only real way to validate this result will be if another experiment can make a measurement of similar precision.

 

[TdC]

Also, warp drives and green bitches.

friggin hot

CERN says it has squashed 40,000 bugs in the C++ framework it is relied upon to store, crunch and help analyse petabytes of data.

Not exactly a good sign when it comes to making any kind of predictions from CERN data ...

dude, surely you know as well as I do that when one is on the cutting edge, then bugs are equally as cool and intresting as results? what happens when the results stay valid?

dammit Zarjazz, d'you know the last time I actually spoke to you was at the first barrybeer? dammit dude, we're getting old man

 

[rynnor]

Its not very scientific for scientists to become so enamoured of any theory that they emotionally reject data that contradicts it.

I for one hope its true - would make the universe a far more interesting place and would probably also be the final nail in the coffin of nonsense like dark energy and dark matter.

 

[ileks]

Before making stuff up you could always try reading the actual paper:
[1109.4897] Measurement of the neutrino velocity with the OPERA detector in the CNGS beam

Unless you have (at the very least) a decent physics degree you aren't going to get much from that.

 

[Kryten]

Unless you have (at the very least) a decent physics degree you aren't going to get much from that.

Oh I dunno, if you have a long word fetish you'll definitely get a boner from it.

 

[taB]

Stolen:

"We don't allow faster than light neutrinos in here" said the bartender.

A neutrino walks into a bar.

 

[Ch3tan]

Stolen:

Heh

 

[Lamp]

Why are quantum physicists so poor at sex?
Because when they find the position, they can't find the momentum, and when they have the momentum, they can't find the position.

 

[Zenith.UK]

Before making stuff up you could always try reading the actual paper:
[1109.4897] Measurement of the neutrino velocity with the OPERA detector in the CNGS beam

or listening to the webcast:
CERN Document Server: New results from OPERA on neutrino properties

Having listened to it myself it was a very careful measurement. If there is an error it not obvious. However the only real way to validate this result will be if another experiment can make a measurement of similar precision.

I didn't make stuff up. That Arxiv document's last paragraph essentially says "We've tried to find systemic effects, but not found any. We're not going to make any speculation yet"... everyone else has done the speculation for them. They're implicitly saying "Can someone else run this again and check the results please".

I've spent 40mins on the webcast.
My main point of consideration was some systematic error in the timing signal. I see now that offline analysis of GPS data from both locations allows for about 1ns sync in timing. This accuracy allows the geodesy measurement at each location be accurate to within 20cm in each axis. So while the computed accuracy (~1ns) is very good when the data is analysed together, the individual readings are still only accurate to ~10ns. The caesium clocks also have a difference of 60ns across a measurement period which looks like it follows a wave period.

Slide 33 was what made me think "Okay, no need to worry about time or distance measurement". When they look at the historical data, they see the effect of an earthquake in 2009. The entire lab shifted 7cm in a north and east direction. That implies nothing wrong with the sensitivity or accuracy of the setup. In fact CERN should try selling this tech to geological surveyers. It may help with detecting small crustal changes prior to earthquakes.

Coming back to the paper, they say the difference in time between c and the neutrino measurements is "(2.48 ± 0.28 (stat.) ± 0.30 (sys.)) ×10^-5 with an overall significance of 6.0 σ". 6σ significance is like saying the chance of the observed effect happening at random is 3.4 in a million, or 1 in 294117.6.

Like I said, these are clever people. They've exhausted the obvious effects, and now need more brains on board to try to either find a tiny systemic error, or confirm the results.

 

[Scouse]

Its not very scientific for scientists to become so enamoured of any theory that they emotionally reject data that contradicts it.

I for one hope its true - would make the universe a far more interesting place and would probably also be the final nail in the coffin of nonsense like dark energy and dark matter.

It's not very scientific of you to emotionally embrace the idea that a particular theory is dead

Seriously, of course there's an emotional reaction. But the scientists will use the tool of science to remove their emotions and test the results.


I wondered about the motion of the earth thing too - but I also wonder if the distance between the emitter and detector isn't really constant. We float on a swirling underground sea of magma - maybe the crust flexes. It may be imperceptible to us but maybe on a 700+ mile scale it's important?


Anyway, more importantly - where are all the fucking religionists in this thread - aren't they supposed to be moaning about how science is only "theory" and that scientists make it all up and there's no such thing as evidence, or something.

This is science in action. This is an example of the most precious ideas coming under attack from its own followers.

I don't see 'em fucking the pope over despite him presiding over an organisation with ingrained institutional child abuse....

 

[old.Tohtori]

Well you're right there. You're not preaching the word of a magical unicorn in a tutu, but you're bringing the cat, dressing it as a molested choirboy and lifting it on the table none the less

 

[Lamp]

Eh?

 

[Job]

All this talk of time travel and cause-effect, how does faster than light actually
relate to these things.
If you travel faster than light you may 'see' things in reverse, but they aren't actually doing this, it's just a frickin illusion caused by the pecularity of your speed, an observer near the object will see no change.
You can't break the cause-effect, it just 'looks' like you have, neutrinos arrivng before they supernova has occured, no they won't, all this means nothing to someone who is blind, it's just light tricks in a very ordinary universe.

 

[Scouse]

Eh?

You don't understand him 'cause he was talking bollocks

 

[Kryten]

Why are quantum physicists so poor at sex?
Because when they find the position, they can't find the momentum, and when they have the momentum, they can't find the position.

In the spirit of the subject, surely the punchline would be "they come before they start?"

 

[old.Tohtori]

Eh?

It was rather clear i thought; there are no other people bringing religious bollocks into the thread, except the one hating religious bollocks.

You know, irony.

 

[rynnor]

You can't break the cause-effect,

That would be more believable if there was a nice pat explanation for the big bang because that looks a lot like something for nothing or an effect before its cause.

I personally find the multiple dimensions idea's the most plausible.

 

[chipper]

its got to be either some extra dimension or some sort of micro wormhole that who knows could have been created by the neutrinos interacting with another particle.

 

[Nate]

I have been told my arse can create black holes to new dimensions of stench before...maybe I went too far this time?!

 

[Job]

I should have said youre not going to break cause effect in a universe where breaking the speef of light is an issue i dont think you can postulate exotic consequences derived from a 3 dimensional viewpoint

 

[rynnor]

I should have said youre not going to break cause effect in a universe where breaking the speef of light is an issue i dont think you can postulate exotic consequences derived from a 3 dimensional viewpoint

But if the result is correct breaking the speed of light isnt an issue.

 

[old.user4556]

Does this mean that this will allow men to know what women want before women know themselves what they want?

Last time I checked, women seemed to think that this faster-than-light-'future-predicting' particle has always existed...