I'm hoping that all of you have already heard about CERN's research results on the speed of the ghostly sub-atomic particle, the neutrino, with neutral charge and rest mass close to nil. Neutrinos seem to be traveling fractions of a second faster than the speed of light (roughly 300,000 km/sec) which is counter-intuitive, based on Einstein's famous equation: E=mc² that requires immense amounts of energy to accelerate particles heavier than photons (ligh particles) close to the theoretical cosmic speed limit.

Concerns regarding the reliability of the data have been quelled to some extent. From what I've gathered, the experiment had been conducted about 1500 times by CERN scientists, with a GPS system accounting for geophysical variables that might slightly vary the measurement of the distance traveled by the particles in the subterranean accelerator. So what these CERN scientists are asserting is that their experimental results are giving us error-free and accurate measurements.



This is exciting, and one of the reasons I'm glad to be around at this stage in our scientific (mis)understanding of the fundamentals of the cosmos. Personally, I'd love it for the data to be accurate, as the neutrino could possibly be a ghostly manifestation of an extra-dimensional phenomenon.



That the little guys are currently in the spotlight is so cool. You gotta love the little guys (neutrinos) because without them, the lighter atoms from supernovae will not accelerate sufficiently to fuse together into the heavier atoms that make up carbon-based life. No neutrinos = no you. I like to think of them as the ghostly midwives of carbon-based life. They have such a large impact on our cosmos, and yet pass right through almost anything in the universe like ghosts. Go neutrinos!!!

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Only up to a point. CERN itself doesn't have the most accurate way of determining when neutrinos have been produced - rather than having a detector like at Gran Sasso, the departure point of neutrinos from CERN has to be calculated from data gathered after the fact, and there's enough of a margin for error in those calculations to potentially account for how "early" the neutrinos seem to be arriving.

Lots of articles on neutrinos over at NewScientist.com, from which the above information came.

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What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet. - Gerard Manley Hopkins

I just saw the article, Dimension-hop may allow neutrinos to cheat light speed



Hopefully, the distance traveled from one end of the bar won't account for the full 60 nanosecond speed difference, since neutrinos can travel straight through matter with no effects.

Thanks for pointing me to NewScientist. Here's a quote from another one of their articles, Faster-than-light neutrino claim bolstered.



Sounds good to me.

If the timekeepers on both ends are linked to within one nanosecond, and 1500 experiments gave a precise measurement of the speed of the neutrino at 60 nanoseconds faster than light speed, then the margin for error is small enough to still give neutrinos a wide lead over photons.

But this is an issue of synchronizing timers.

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http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2 ... yfest.html

There was also a documentary on the BBC last night on the subject (don't know if the link will play outside the UK though). One of the theories proposed was something suggested by string theory, which is that the neutrinos might be gettting hurled from our 3 dimensional 'brane' by the energies involved in the experiment, into the 'bulk' of the other dimensions, before coming back into our 'brane' - effectively taking a shortcut. To be fair though, even the string theorist they had on felt that it probably wasn't what was actually happening with this experiment.

_________________
What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet. - Gerard Manley Hopkins

A tessering neutrino?

Another explanation for the speed of light discrepancy has to do with the moving detector's (observer satellite's) perceived contraction of space. See: Time-of-flight between a Source and a Detector observed from a Satellite



+1 for Einstein +

*hugs to poor neutrinos*

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