What are the advantages of running a power tool on 240 V vs 120 V? @Sklivvz: a massive particle moving faster than massless photons is what also happens in Cherenkov radiation. We could be seeing signs of exotic theories like string theories.. [2], This experiment doesn't use that sort of 'stopwatch' timing mechanism though. Weve measured neutrinos and antineutrinos produced by cosmic rays that interact with our atmosphere. Interpreting non-statistically significant results: Do we have "no evidence" or "insufficient evidence" to reject the null? 2 hours of sleep? Edit: The "problem" is solved: it was mainly a problem in the timing chain, due to a badly screwed optical fibre. One popular discussion is of "Faster than light propulsion". The different rotational velocity at Geneva vs. Central Italy gives diurnal abberation which must be corrected for to get an accurate absolute distance. If so, the observation would Whether right-handed neutrinos (and left-handed antineutrinos) are real or not is an unanswered question that could unlock many mysteries about the cosmos. It shows that the effect was not a statistical artifact as I proposed above. I really have a hard time imagining a plausible "goof" explanation at this point. @jonathan I'll delete my answer if neutrinos travelling faster than c is confirmed, big question or not ;). By clicking Accept all cookies, you agree Stack Exchange can store cookies on your device and disclose information in accordance with our Cookie Policy. A question of physics should be repeatedly be confirmed before a postulate or an inference can be derived. If we observe it, it will fundamentally change our perspective on the elusive neutrino. The only explanation is systematic errors in GPS position, GPS time, or bunching statistics. The mumblings that begin a few months after the initial report, that a loose cable caused a timing chain error, have been accepted by the experimenters. @Lagerbaer I think the trajectory is all underground it starts in a deep tunnel at CERN and ends under a mountain at Gran Sasso :-). For some long COVID patients, exercise is bad medicine, Radioactive dogs? Concerning a previous possible tachyon observation? "This is reassuring that it's not the end of the story.". In other words, the GPS clock is bang on the nose, but since the clock is in a different reference frame, you have to compensate for relativity if you're going to use it to make highly accurate measurements. "Crazy" neutrino find has many physicists skeptical, still backing Einstein. The issue we have is twofold: The only neutrino interactions we see are the ones coming from neutrinos moving indistinguishably close to the speed of light. Other experiments in the same neutrino beam (and elsewhere around the world) were unable to replicate the anomaly. The community was properly incredulous and the wide interest prompted a large number of other checks they could make. VideoOn board the worlds last surviving turntable ferry, I didnt think make-up was made for black girls, Why there is serious money in kitchen fumes. Of course, the current list only contains biases which are unlikely, but less unlikely than a causality violation. These are simple measurements that could be checked in an afternoon by a competent 2nd-year grad student. Neutrinos travel through 700km of rock before reaching Gran Sasso's underground laboratories, Science and technology reporter, BBC News. Create an account to read the full story and get unlimited access to hundreds of Nat Geo articles. It would mean that the antineutrino emitted by one nucleus could, hypothetically, be absorbed (as a neutrino) by the other nucleus, and youd be able to get a decay where: There are currently multiple experiments, including the MAJORANA experiment, looking specifically for this neutrinoless double beta decay. The Special Theory of Relativity (STR) of Einstein, through the principle of the speed limit, makes the magnetic force come from the electric one and the magnetic force is an electric force, as physicists know; an easy demonstration of that can be found in chapter 3 of my file at the following link (also English inside): http://www.fisicamente.net/FISICA_2/UNIFICAZIONE_GRAVITA_ELETTROMAGNETISMO.pdf. Ubuntu won't accept my choice of password. And through two independent sets of measurements from the large-scale structure of the Universe and the remnant light left over from the Big Bang we can conclude that approximately one billion neutrinos and antineutrinos were produced in the Big Bang for every proton in the Universe today. Moreover, as c=1/square root of(epsilon x ), if you change c with a c'>c, then you have to accept a '<, so you have to accept different intensities of magnetic fields from a given electric current, so you have to get rid of the electromagnetism, but it's describing so well the currents, the fields, the real world etc. But at this point nobody sober would be willing to say that this is right., Questions or comments on this article? WebThe neutrinos had apparently exceeded the speed of light . If you go to measure the neutrinos angular momentum, it will behave as though its spinning counterclockwise: the same as if you pointed your left hands thumb forward and watched your fingers curl around it. Standard Big Bang cosmology corresponds to =1. It is less important that the rotation of the Earth. Was Aristarchus the first to propose heliocentrism? The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. FTL OTOH is not just extremely improbable, but forbidden by the currently known laws of physics. @BenCrowell, if this were verified, what energy-dependent effects would we see in Nature? But if you could transform a neutrino into an antineutrino simply by changing your frame-of-reference, that would mean that neutrinos are a special, new type of particle that exists only in theory thus far: a Majorana fermion. intrinsic angular momentum exhibits either clockwise or counterclockwise spin, corresponding to whether the particle in question is a neutrino or antineutrino. Its possible to have an unstable atomic nucleus that doesnt just undergo beta decay, but double beta decay: where two neutrons in the nucleus simultaneously both undergo beta decay. @Ron, any (general) relativistic effect cannot make the speed superluminal, but it can make your length measurement based on GPS incorrect. Usually, you just lose some pulses travelling down the cable. First off, they cannot be zero. Consequences for causality if superluminal neutrinos were explained by extra dimensions, Distance and time measurement in the famous Superluminal Neutrinos Experiment. What we can learn from Chernobyl's strays. A bad cable connector can take a beautiful digital logic signal and reflect part of it back to the emitter, in a time-dependent way, turning the received signal into an analog mess with a complicated shape. But since they have mass, there is no reason that they couldnt travel at any speed. They account for the time it takes to process the signal and work backwards from their measurements to determine the time at which the neutrino actually interacted with the detector. and those interactions that do occur are so low in energy that we cannot presently detect them. I found that odd given that they do have a downstream muon detector system, but they may be concerned about backgrounds. This is a serious experiment, and these are serious people, says Smolin. According their calculations, theres only a one in a billion chance that what theyre seeing is a statistical fluke. This image shows multiple events, and is part of the suite of experiments paving our way to a greater understanding of neutrinos. We stop timing the neutrino when it arrives in Italy, and calculate that it moves at a speed that's comfortably below the speed of light. Neutrinos and antineutrinos both come in three different flavors: electron, mu, and tau. But light travels at a constant speed. Never rejected as being a fake effect. It is published by the Society for Science, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) membership organization dedicated to public engagement in scientific research and education (EIN 53-0196483). A version of this article appears in the October 22, 2011 issue of Science News. Meanwhile, the detector in Italy is moving just as fast as the rest of the Earth, and from our perspective it's moving towards the source. Neutrinos are tiny, electrically neutral particles produced in nuclear reactions. Last September, an experiment called OPERA turned up evidence that neutrinos travel faster than the speed of light (see ' Particles break light speed limit '). It only takes a minute to sign up. If this would however end up to be the explanation, it would be quite boring. (another interesting file, also related to this subject): http://www.mednat.org/new_scienza/strani_legami_numerici_universo.pdf. As an experimentalist I don't begrudge the OPERA guys their error at all. The wiggles themselves, shown with the non-wiggly part subtracted out (bottom), is dependent on the impact of the cosmic neutrinos theorized to be present by the Big Bang. In theory, however, neutrinos can absolutely travel at any speed at all, so long as its slower than the cosmic speed limit: the speed of light in a vacuum. They found that, on average, the Even after that derivation a sensitive experiment should be perceived to break it through further. Even though few believe that these results will ultimately hold up, their implications have stirred up quite a fuss. When a nucleus experiences a double neutron decay, two electrons and two neutrinos get emitted [+] conventionally. Neutrinos and antineutrinos can oscillate, or change flavor, from one type into another when they pass through matter. a neutrino) would we be able to measure a higher speed. In copper/poly coaxial cable it's slower, about six inches per nanosecond, and in optical fiber it's comparable. If you get rid of the speed limit principle, the magnetic field cannot exist anymore. If the neutrino always moved at the speed of light, it would be impossible to move faster than the neutrino. This article explains it in a very accessible way: To understand how relativity altered the neutrino experiment, it helps to pretend that we're hanging out on one of those GPS satellites, watching the Earth go by underneath you. This newfound behavior may offer a clue to how these reptiles will respond to a warming planet. Read again what i wrote, This probably should be a comment. Everybodys bias in responding to this is going to be that this is some sort of systematic uncertainty that they didnt figure out.. And every neutrino weve ever observed moves at speeds indistinguishable from the speed of light. What is detected is watermark patterns in the steady stream of particles. Science at its best. But anything with mass can travel at any speed.. The OPERA experiment data showed neutrinos arriving at the detector surprisingly quickly, supposedly traveling faster thanthe speed of light. That's why everyone is so excited about it. Create Your Free Account The distance seems to be known within 20cm and the synchronisation seems to be within 15ns (6.9 statistical and 7.4 systematic). The arXiv paper studied them, and seem to exclude it. I'm quite impressed that they had ~100ns timing resolution between the two laboratories; the "discovery" came about because they were trying to do ten times better than that. Whatever you are using as a timing signal, that has to travel down the cables to your computer and when you are talking about nanoseconds, you have to know exactly how quickly the current travels, and it is not instantaneous. And thats unfortunate, because detecting these low-energy neutrinos the ones that move slow compared to the speed of light would enable us to perform an important test that weve never performed before. New results, Sources: [1] (Associated Press), [2] (Guardian.co.uk), [3] (Original Publication - Cornell University). And yet, its angular momentum would have to be the same, in the counterclockwise direction, meaning youd have to use your right hand to represent it, rather than your left. In addition, this paper was signed by a large collaboration. @Sklivvz The mass of the neutrino is so small that it is irrelevant in the argument, if the refraction is of the order of magnitude of the measurement. The setup of CERN and OPERA is conceptually very simple, basically just two observers located a known distance apart with synchronized clocks. If you look at this neutrino, youll measure it moving straight ahead: forwards, in front of you. Given the sheer diversity of possible `goof-up' explanations on this page (all answers combined), I can't help feeling that we are trying to find one plausible way in which this can be MADE to look wrong. Next year, teams working on two other experiments at Gran Sasso experiments - Borexino and Icarus - will begin independent cross-checks of Opera's results. There is some uncertainty in exactly how much time this takes, but it's much smaller than the time difference they detected. Like most scientists, my guess is an unaccounted for systematic error (because they definitely have statistical significance and precision on their side) that has yet to be pointed out, but it probably won't take too long with all the theoretical physicists that will be pouring through this experiment. To subscribe to this RSS feed, copy and paste this URL into your RSS reader. We thought we knew turtles. Parabolic, suborbital and ballistic trajectories all follow elliptic paths. Whether right-handed neutrinos (and left-handed antineutrinos) are real or not is an unanswered question that could unlock many mysteries about the cosmos. An explanation was found. They have an incentive to lie, and they are incompetent, and incompetent people lie. Send in your Ask Ethan questions to startswithabang at gmail dot com! @celtschk right, but I'm accounting for the small probability that the known laws of physics are wrong. Neutrinos in the MINOS experiment cover 735 kilometers, about the same distance as CERNs experiment. Those bunches lasted 10 millionths of a second - 160 times longer than the discrepancy the team initially reported in the neutrinos' travel time. If the results from OPERA are accurate, this effect would be a full-blown real Lorentz violation, not just an apparent effect like Cerenkov radiation or astronomical superluminal motion. Independent measurements were performed. At Japans T2K experiment, where particles travel only 295 kilometers, the speed discrepancy would be smaller and more difficult to observe. Closing in on the speed of light (Image: Volker Steger/ Science Photo Library) The faster-than-light neutrino saga is officially over. WebA neutrino is an exponentially small particle with no electrical charge. Its one of the biggest open questions about neutrinos, and the capability to detect low-energy neutrinos the ones moving slow compared to the speed of light would answer that question. Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. The US Minos experiment and Japan's T2K experiment will also test the observations. The problem with the GPS position measurements (I think that the time measurements are accurate) is that the relative position is not subject to the same systematics as the aboslute position. I find it hard to believe its hardware. Note that the author of the pre-print you link in you edit has. The explanation for the error provided is cogent, clear, and almost certainly correct. You can see their analysis in section 6 of the paper. There are strong reasons for disbelieving this result. Exactly When, Where And How To See The Flower Moon Rise This WeekAnd Be Eclipsed By The Earth, A Psychologist Gives 3 Tips To Stop Your Anxiety From Sabotaging Your Love Life, Rare, Endangered Sicklefin Devil Rays Found Off The US Atlantic Coast, See The Flower Moon In Eclipse As Halleys Comet Spits Shooting Stars: The Night Sky This Week, Stargazing In May 2023: A Flower Moon, A Jupiter Eclipse And Meteors From Halleys Comet, In Photos: The Weird Geometry Of Last Weeks Total Solar Eclipse Produced Some Jaw-Dropping Images, A Psychologist Explains The Dangers Of Always Faking A Positive Attitude, Rice On Mars: Red Planets First Colonists Could Grow Genetically Modified Crops, Say Scientists, even measured a neutrino coming from the center of an active galaxy, the odds of having a neutrino interact with you increase with a neutrinos energy. WebNeutrinos dont interact with matter much so basically pass right through. Divide distance by time, and the particles must have been traveling 0.0025 percent faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. In addition, when you measured the momentum of electron and the post-decay nucleus, it didnt match the initial momentum of the pre-decay nucleus. Workers help build the neutrino-beam facility used at CERN to shoot particles to Italy in a 2005 picture. It seems to indicate that you could transform a matter particle (a neutrino) into an antimatter particle (an antineutrino) simply by changing your motion relative to the neutrino. Weve measured neutrinos produced by the closest supernova to occur in the past century: SN 1987A.
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