The speed of light may have been broken.

Discussion in 'Physics & Math' started by Pincho Paxton, Sep 22, 2011.

  1. Pete It's not rocket surgery Registered Senior Member

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    It seems that superluminal particles should speed up as they lose energy.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyon#Speed
     
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  3. OnlyMe Valued Senior Member

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    Pete, tachyons are completely hypothetical. I'm not sure anyone is even looking for them.
     
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  5. Pete It's not rocket surgery Registered Senior Member

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    Superluminal neutrinos would be Tachyons.
     
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  7. AlexG Like nailing Jello to a tree Valued Senior Member

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    Wasn't it earlier reported that the synchronization of the clocks at Opera was off by .64 nanoseconds, because they failed to take into account the relativistic movement of the GPS and Cern?
     
  8. OnlyMe Valued Senior Member

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    That was from a link I attached to post 478. It had a single author and I am not sure it has been pier reviewed. Most of these haven't as of yet. They are rushing to preprint on arxiv, these days. It's like they are placing their bets and waiting for someone else to repeat the tests.

    That one sounded good to me but I don't know enough about the details of the GPS system and how the CERN group handled it all. Their report also sounded good.
     
  9. Tach Banned Banned

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    It doesn't matter what you maintain if you don't understand what the paper is showing. Let's try a simple experiment: what does figure 1 show?
     
  10. OnlyMe Valued Senior Member

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    Let us try a different experiment!

    Does the paper anywhere measure the time it takes the neutrinos to travel from CERN to Gran Sasso?
     
  11. Tach Banned Banned

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    No, let's not. Let's asses your understanding of the paper: what does Figure 1 mean?
     
  12. OnlyMe Valued Senior Member

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    My point has been all along that the paper you are referring to is not measuring the time of travel between CERN and Gran Sasso. If I am mistaken in that show me where. If they are not doing that. They are not contradicting the original paper(period) I am not interested in exploring diversions.

    Additionally their paper refers to a previous paper also a link earlier supplied by Walter, that suggests that Cherenkov radiation applies to superluminal neutrinos. This has never been experimentally verified that I am aware of. If you have a link to experimental proof provide that. Until it can be experimentally demonstrated that it does occur, you cannot use the abscence of it, as proof of anything.

    I am not going any further down a road that leads nowhere but into argument, rather than discussion. I don't require that you agree with me and I have no real need to try and convince you of anything.
     
  13. Tach Banned Banned

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    In other words, you have no clue as to what the paper is about, nor do you understand how it disproves the Opera results.
     
  14. Pete It's not rocket surgery Registered Senior Member

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    Tach,
    I think that the substantial part of OnlyMe's objection is the theoretical nature of the Cohen and Glashow prediction.

    Is that theoretical prediction more reliable than CERN's empirical measurement?

    Hi OnlyMe,
    My understanding is this:
    The Cohen and Glashow paper shows theoretically that if the CERN neutrinos were superluminal, then:
    • most of the neutrinos would emit positron-electron pairs en route to LNGS, and
    • the neutrino energy spectrum received at LNGS would have a particular profile, not similar to the neutrino energy spectrum emitted at CERN

    The ICARUS paper shows that:
    • No electron-positron emissions were seen
    • the neutrino energy spectrum received at LNGS is similar to the spectrum emitted at CERN
    Note that both papers talk about energy depletion in transit, not about changes in velocity, and that the ICARUS measurements explicitly show that neutrino energy was not radiated away (that's the paper's central contribution).

    Surely CERN wouldn't have missed something so basic?
     
  15. Emil Valued Senior Member

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  16. Tach Banned Banned

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    No, he doesn't understand the Icarus paper, i.e. he doesn't understand the experimental data (most likely he doesn't understand the theoretical data from the Glashow paper either).

    Correct. Meaning that the neutrinos cannot be superluminal, i.e. the Icarus data disproves the Opera interpretation of results.
     
    Last edited: Oct 19, 2011
  17. Pete It's not rocket surgery Registered Senior Member

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    Hi Emil,
    Yes, that's the news we've been talking about for the last 500-odd posts.
    Welcome to the thread.
     
  18. Emil Valued Senior Member

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    Put your idea in Alternative Theories.
    If you manage to prove that CERN is wrong, maybe you get a Nobel prize.
    Hi Pete,
    Have you read this thread from the beginning?
     
  19. Tach Banned Banned

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    The guy demonstrated two things:

    1. He doesn't really understand GPS and the clock synchronization scheme used by Opera. In effect he's describing the Sagnac correction to GPS, a correction that is already incorporated in the system.

    2. He completely ignored the fact that the Opera people checked the synchronization of the clocks by slowly transporting a clock between the endpoints. He practically wasted his time because he didn't pay attention to what the Opera experimenters did.
     
    Last edited: Oct 19, 2011
  20. Emil Valued Senior Member

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    LOL...at least you are able to understand that:
    The clock 1 is synchronized with the clock 2 but the clock 2 isn't synchronized with the clock 1?
    Why? I leave you to discover.
     
  21. Pete It's not rocket surgery Registered Senior Member

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    Assuming the validity of the Cohen & Glashow theoretical analysis.

    So, why is the Cohen & Glashow theoretical result more reliable than the OPERA empirical result?
     
  22. OnlyMe Valued Senior Member

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    I think you got close to my point. I had essentially two objections.

    Before I go further, I am not a particle physicist. I studied SR, GR, gravity and inertia 40 years ago. Mathematics back then was more like a first language to me than English, but 40 years is a long time.

    First the CERN OPERA data was a time of travel measurement. It may or may not prove to have been accurate. I agree that it seems unlikely that the CERN group would have missed the GR and GPS issue, but there is insufficient information in the arxiv papers to know, if they did.

    Second I agree if the Cohen and Glashow paper proves to be accurate, then the ICARUS paper has merit. The problem is that the Cohen and Glashow paper applies Cherenkov radiation normally associated with charged particles, to superluminal neutrinos, assuming that there must be a similar effect through weak interactions. If they are right then the conclusions in the ICARUS paper are reasonable and likely also correct. If they, Cohen and Glashow are wrong, then the ICARUS results are what could be expected. The Cohen and Glashow predictions must be experimentally confirmed before they can be used as a proof.

    My initial comment was only that I did not believe that the ICARUS paper was the last word on the CERN OPERA neutrino data. I add to that now that if it were, we would not be discussing it here and now. We would be talking about the headlines.
     
  23. Tach Banned Banned

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    Because the Icarus EXPERIMENTAL results contradict the INTERPRETATION of the Opera results. It only takes one experiment to falsify a theory.
     

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