BBC Focus Magazine

[Shadowwolf]

Another view on those apparent ftl neutrinos.

When an international collaboration of physicists came up with a result that punched a hole in Einstein's theory of special relativity and couldn't find any mistakes in their work, they asked the world to take a second look at their experiment.

Responding to the call was Ramanath Cowsik, PhD, professor of physics in Arts & Sciences and director of the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

Online and in the Dec. 24 issue of Physical Review Letters, Cowsik and his collaborators put their finger on what appears to be an insurmountable problem with the experiment.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111223114121.htm

[M Paul Lloyd]

Oh dear, so basically it was a flawed experiment and doomed to failure from the outset... possibly?

[KingPhillip]

"... so basically it was a flawed experiment and doomed to failure from the outset ..."

Huh?

"The OPERA experiment was inaugurated in 2006 to observe the rare transformations (oscillations) of muon neutrinos into tau neutrinos. One such oscillation was detected in 2010, demonstrating the experiment's unique capacity in terms of detection of the elusive signals of tau neutrinos."

from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 095005.htm

Ramanath Cowsik, PhD., offered a theoretical rebuttal, not to the physical experiment, but to the possible existence of superliminal neutrinos. We await efforts to duplicate the experiment for dissimilar results. We might wait another five years, from setup to analyses, for further progress.

The secondary data collected on the speed would not have been noteworthy had not a large enough sampling of the neutrinos allegedly went ftl. Perhaps, the experiment did fail (there is no published report of it yet) and this is an effort to misdirect.

[Shadowwolf]

I don't think the experiment was flawed or that anyone is suggesting such, OPERA was not built for the purpose of that one aberrant finding they did stumble on. This guy was just offering an explanation for the ftl neutrinos conundrum, that such things should not be able to be generated by Cern and would not last long enough at ftl even if they could be created. Still does not show how the folks at the other end detected what to them appeared to be ftl particles but I doubt misdirection has anything to do with it.

[M Paul Lloyd]

Oh dear, so basically it was a flawed experiment and doomed to failure from the outset... possibly?

Apologies for any confusion caused, just to qualify the above statement, as I recall the Neutrino experiment, which stirred up all the excitement re the speed of light, was something of a side show that made use of some convenient tunnels and the relative location of the two sites so it wasn't really designed for purpose as far as I can see? And although I'm happy to be put right on that score my reaction was based purely upon the apparent, and I did add the word 'Possibly' plus a question mark at the end, to the articles interpretation of events.

[KingPhillip]

Seeing as nature has surprised us with "impossible" quasi-crystals, might ftl join the bandwagon?

I see at least two possible explanations:

a) theoretically, Earth is bombarded with loads of neutrinos constantly. Most of the neutrinos pass through without interacting. Over the three-year span of data collecting, perhaps a sigma-5 few interacted with the experiment, the detector, enough to cause the anomaly,

b) since the neutrinos hardly interact, we can hardly measure whether they can go ftl. If they go ftl, is there light for us to measure? If they don't interact, we can't measure their effects in their path.

And with the theory of supersymmetry suggesting many other higher energy particles, might these be zipping by unnoticed?