Speed Of Light May Be Challenged?

[knocker]

Well I watched the very interesting programme and I now have a severe headache and I'm keeping a sharp eye on my sliced loaf.

[NorthNorfolkWeather]

Well I watched the very interesting programme and I now have a severe headache and I'm keeping a sharp eye on my sliced loaf.

Yes, what with branes, the bulk and the loaf of bread analogy, thought it was a good programme, still too much music in it, but the analogies they used were spot on.

[Alan Robinson]

Might a poor ex-pat request from those at home a brief synopsis of the BBC program yesterday?

[toggerob]

This is all very stupid imho. Its the same hypothesis when those who said the sound barrier couldn't be broken, as humans wouldn't be able to withstand the forces. Or when nuclear experiments/CERN was about to herald the end of the world. One day humans will travel beyond the speed of light and it'll just be as normal as getting in a car or train, we'll be laughing at how ridiculous we all looked millenia ago with all these fancy mathematical equasions and formulas. When the same time and effort could have gone into actually building something to get us to that speed.

[knocker]

Might a poor ex-pat request from those at home a brief synopsis of the BBC program yesterday?

You can watch it here Alan.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b016bys2

[NorthNorfolkWeather]

Might a poor ex-pat request from those at home a brief synopsis of the BBC program yesterday?

I think you can't get iPlayer, so here is the gist.

From an experiment which has been running between CERN and a lab buried in the Appenines in Italy, it appears that some neutrino's have traveled faster than light, arriving in Italy sooner than expected.

A fair chunk of the program followed the idea that

A) Einstein saying that the speed of light is absolute was correct

and

B) anything with mass cannot achieve the speed of light.

there was then an interesting discussion on how neutrino's are so small and chargeless they are very difficult to detect.

the possible solutions they came up with were to do with "String Theory" with our universe being (effectively) on a membrane (shortened to "brane") with other branes, which normal matter (us) cannot interact with. However there are other branes, the analogy being each brane is a slice of bread in a sliced loaf, which together make up "the Bulk".

The final hypothesis was that neutrino's MAY be able to move across branes (I've read books that feel the same may apply to Gravitons - the theoretical gravity particle) and therefore may jump out of our universe and then jump back in again. Doing this they could appear to travel faster (in this case) or slower than light (as in the case of some neutrino's from a supernova)

Or it could all be experimental error

[Alan Robinson]

You can watch it here Alan.

http://www.bbc.co.uk...rammes/b016bys2

Thanks for the link, but they don't show programs overseas.

I think you can't get iPlayer, so here is the gist.

From an experiment which has been running between CERN and a lab buried in the Appenines in Italy, it appears that some neutrino's have traveled faster than light, arriving in Italy sooner than expected.

A fair chunk of the program followed the idea that

A) Einstein saying that the speed of light is absolute was correct

and

anything with mass cannot achieve the speed of light.

there was then an interesting discussion on how neutrino's are so small and chargeless they are very difficult to detect.

the possible solutions they came up with were to do with "String Theory" with our universe being (effectively) on a membrane (shortened to "brane") with other branes, which normal matter (us) cannot interact with. However there are other branes, the analogy being each brane is a slice of bread in a sliced loaf, which together make up "the Bulk".

The final hypothesis was that neutrino's MAY be able to move across branes (I've read books that feel the same may apply to Gravitons - the theoretical gravity particle) and therefore may jump out of our universe and then jump back in again. Doing this they could appear to travel faster (in this case) or slower than light (as in the case of some neutrino's from a supernova)

Or it could all be experimental error

Thanks for that.

[Snowyowl9]

Came across this.

http://www.awitness.org/unified/pages/faster_than_the_speed_of_light.html

[Coast]

Neutrino experiment repeat at Cern finds same result

The team behind the finding in September that neutrinos may travel faster than light has carried out an improved version of their experiment - and found the same result. If confirmed by other experiments, the find could undermine one of the basic principles of modern physics. Critics of the first report had said that the long bunches of neutrinos used could introduce an error into the test.

The new work, posted to the Arxiv repository, used much shorter bunches. It has been submitted to the Journal of High Energy Physics, but has not yet been reviewed by the scientific community. The experiments have been carried out by the Opera collaboration - short for Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus.

It hinges on sending bunches of neutrinos created at the Cern facility (actually produced as decays within a long bunch of protons produced at Cern) through 730km of rock to a giant detector at the Gran Sasso laboratory in Italy. The initial series of experiments, comprising 16,000 separate measurements spread out over three years, found that the neutrinos arrives 60 billionths of a second faster than light would have, travelling unimpeded over the same distance. The idea that nothing can exceed the speed of light in a vacuum forms a cornerstone in physics - first laid out by James Clerk Maxwell and later incorporated into Albert Einstein's theory of special relativity.

Initial analysis of the work by the wider scientific community argued that the relatively long bunches of neutrinos could introduce a significant error into the measurement. Those bunches lasted 10 millionths of a second - 160 times longer than the discrepancy the team initially reported in the neutrinos' travel time. To address that, scientists at Cern adjusted the way in which the proton beams were produced, resulting in bunches just three billionths of a second long, so the Opera collaboration could repeat the measurements.

'Profound implication'

The first announcement of evidently faster-than-light neutrinos caused a stir world-wide; the Opera collaboration is very aware of its implications if eventually proved correct. The error in the length of the bunches, however, is just the largest among several potential sources of uncertainty in the measurement that must all now be addressed in turn; these mostly centre on the precise departure and arrival times of the bunches.

"A measurement so delicate and carrying a profound implication on physics requires an extraordinary level of scrutiny," said Fernando Ferroni, president of Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics in a statement. "The experiment Opera, thanks to a specially adapted Cern beam, has made an important test of consistency of its result. The positive outcome of the test makes us more confident in the result, although a final word can only be said by analogous measurements performed elsewhere in the world."

Those measurements may be much longer in coming, as only a few facilities worldwide have the detectors needed to catch the notoriously flighty neutrinos - which interact with matter so rarely as to have earned the nickname "ghost particles". Next year, teams working on two other experiments at Gran Sasso experiments - Borexino and Icarus - will begin independent cross-checks of Opera's results. The US Minos experiment and Japan's T2K experiment will also test the observations. It is likely to be several months before they report back.

http://www.bbc.co.uk...onment-15791236

[A.J]

http://www.bbc.co.uk...onment-15791236

Yep, exciting stuff, and from my perspective, another tick in the box for M-Theory

[Konstantinos]

Speed of light broken again as scientists test neutrino result

The speed of light appears to have been broken again after scientists carried out a new set of experiments to test measurements that could require the laws of physics to be rewritten.

Scientists have posted new results that confirm measurements made in September that a beam of subatomic particles had travelled faster than the speed of light.

The initial result caused widespread debate as it appeared to break one of the most fundamental laws of physics – that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.

The findings have proved troubling for scientists as it goes against Albert Einstein's law of special relativity and opens up the possibility of being able to send information back in time.

The researchers behind the experiments, which involved sending neutrino particles 450 miles through the ground from the CERN facility in Geneva to the Gran Sasso laboratory in Italy, have now attempted to rule out one possible source of error.

By tweaking the experiment in an attempt to address a potential flaw in their original experiment, they again showed that the neutrons arrived at the Italian site some 60 billionths of a second faster than if they had been travelling at the speed of light.

The European Organisation for Nuclear Research, or CERN as it is known, said: "This test confirms the accuracy of the timing measurement, ruling out one potential source of systematic error.

"The new measurements do not change the initial conclusion.

"Nevertheless, the observed anomaly in the neutrinos time of flight from CERN to Gran Sasso still needs further scrutiny and independent measurement before it can be refuted or confirmed."

When scientists announced they had measured neutrinos apparently breaking the speed of light in September the result drew mixed reactions from scientists.

Professor Brian Cox, a particle physicist at the University of Manchester and TV presenter, said it would be the most profound discovery in physics for more than a century.

Fellow TV presenter Professor Jim Al-Khalili, a physicist at University of Surrey, said that if the findings were proved to be correct, "I will eat my boxer shorts on live TV".

Speaking after the most recent announcement, Professor Al-Khalili said: "I am not yet ready to get out my knife and fork.

"The results have dealt with some possible errors. There are still a number of other possible errors and uncertainties that they are working on ruling out."

The scientists behind the experiments, who are part of the Oscillation Project with Emulsion Tracking Apparatus, or Opera, collaboration, had conducted more than 15,000 measurements over three years before announcing their results.

They used 10 microsecond long pulses of neutrinos in the initial experiment, but other scientists pointed out that this could be a potential source of error as the pulses were relatively long compared to the difference in time being measured.

In the new test they used shorter pulses of neutrinos, at around three nanoseconds, so they could time the arrival of the neutrinos with greater accuracy.

When the Opera team ran the improved experiment 20 times, they found almost exactly the same result.

It has been posted to the Arxiv repository and submitted to the Journal of High Energy Physics, but has not yet been reviewed by the scientific community.

Fernando Ferroni, president of Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics and spokesman for the Opera consortium, said: "A measurement so delicate and carrying a profound implication on physics requires an extraordinary level of scrutiny.

"The positive outcome of the test makes us more confident in the result, although a final word can only be said by analogous measurements performed elsewhere in the world."

Other groups of scientists are now also working to repeat the findings independently and a consortium of American, Russian and British scientists are planning to send neutrinos from a laboratory in Chicago to the Canadian border to test the results.

Dr Giles Barr, a physicist at Oxford University who is involved the experiments in the US, said: "It's a very intriguing result. The thing that is needed is for more physicists to independently verify what is happening.

"They have done a very careful job of this and trying to look at all the individual details that could fake this effect. They couldn't find anything. It is fantastic.

"They have brought up some other tests they can do to check what is happening and the checks have shown what you might expect if the neutrinos are travelling faster than the speed of light.

"We are going to try to do it ourselves."

He added that if proved correct it could have some profound implications for the current understanding of how the universe works.

He said: "We have this notion from Einstein himself that particles cannot travel faster than the speed of light – that light itself is the thing that travels the fastest.

"The profound thing that could happen here is that some people in a very fast spaceship could actually observe these neutrinos leaving after they have arrived in the place where we have seen them.

"In other words time could be travelling in reverse. It is a very mind boggling thing."

http://www.telegraph...ino-result.html

Edited November 19, 2011 by Konstantinos

[Coast]

Yep, exciting stuff, and from my perspective, another tick in the box for M-Theory

Or not now???

Startling claims that the speed of light has been broken for a second time have been rejected by a group of scientists. Physicists from Cern, the Swiss home of the Large Hadron Collider, announced last week that for the second time in a matter of months they had proved Albert Einstein's theories wrong.

If true, the findings would revolutionise the world of science and change more than a century of thinking on modern physics.

However, scientists studying the same neutrino particles that their colleagues say appear to have travelled faster than light have this weekend rejected their claims, saying tests had shown it must be wrong. It was first announced in September by a team working on the OPERA experiment at the Gran Sasso underground laboratory near Rome that they had recorded the faster-than-light finding. The scientists said they had recorded neutrinos beamed to them from the CERN research center in Switzerland as arriving 60 nanoseconds before light would have done.

The same team revealed last week that after running a modified follow-up test, they recorded exactly the same results as before. However, a different team of physicists involved in ICARUS, an experiment also at Gran Sasso, this weekend disputed the claims. Huge: Underground detectors at Gran Sasso in Italy which receive neutrinos beamed from CERN in Switzerland They argue that their measurements of the neutrinos energy on arrival contradict the reading of their colleagues. In a paper posted on Saturday, the ICARUS team says their findings 'refute a superluminal [faster than light] interpretation of the OPERA result.'

They argue, on the basis of recently published studies by two top U.S. physicists, that the neutrinos pumped down from CERN should have lost most of their energy if they had travelled at even a tiny fraction faster than light. Astonishing: Physicists from Cern, the Swiss home of the Large Hadron Collider, pictured, announced last week that for the second time in a matter of months they had proved Einstein's theories wrong But in fact, the ICARUS scientists say, the neutrino beam as tested in their equipment registered an energy spectrum fully corresponding with what it should be for particles travelling at the speed of light and no more. Physicist Tomasso Dorigo, who works at CERN as well as Fermilab near Chicago, said in a post on the website Scientific Blogging that the ICARUS paper was 'very simple and definitive.'

Different: Scientists studying the same neutrino particles which their colleagues say appear to have travelled faster than light have rejected their claims. Pictured are some neutrino particles He said the paper asserted 'that the difference between the speed of neutrinos and the speed of light cannot be as large as that seen by OPERA, and is certainly smaller than that by three orders of magnitude, and compatible with zero.' Under Einstein's 1905 theory of special relativity, nothing can be accelerated to a speed faster than light. That idea lies at the heart of all current science of the cosmos and of how the vast variety of particles that make it up behave.

There was widespread skepticism when the OPERA findings were first revealed, and even the leaders of the experiment insisted that they were not announcing a discovery but simply recording measurements they had made and carefully checked. The new modified experiment by OPERA researchers last week involved shorter neutrino beams from CERN and much larger gaps between them. But those behind the experiment said it had produced the same result. Independent scientists said, however, this was not conclusive.

Other experiments are being prepared — at Fermilab and at the KEK laboratory in Japan — to try to replicate OPERA's findings. Only confirmation from one of these would open the way for a full scientific discovery to be declared.

http://www.dailymail...l#ixzz1eL2tPmT4