BBC Focus Magazine

[M Paul Lloyd]

I got to page three and decided.......................... to start again.

It is slowly sinking in (very slowly) but so far I do not see any allowance for the Ezbloke effect, other than that which lies within 'acceptable error' of course.

[Shadowwolf]

Okay, I've not looked at it overly closely yet but is this not something similar to throwing balls on a train?

If you throw a ball on a train in the direction of travel is it traveling at the trains speed plus that which you throw it at? Or is it part of the system?

Am I explaining myself clearly?

[M Paul Lloyd]

I think that's pretty much what Ezbloke is driving at Mr.S, the idea that the motion of the Earth, as it rotates around its own axis, the Sun and the galactic centre may have combined to throw the calculations out of kilter.

But even so this would not solve the problem completely because relativity should kick in and impose a blanket limit, so that to any observer the object (neutrino) should not appear to exceed it maximum velocity.

So if the hypothetical train were travelling at light speed and you threw that ball along the corridor in the direction that train was travelling it would be forced to stand still relative to the train and if you threw it in the opposite direction its apparent velocity should still not exceed that of light.

[EzBloke]

I think Earths rotation may be allowed for in the TOFv (Time Of Flight, Neutrino) calculations; there is a link to the International Earth Rotation And Reference Systems Service (IERS) ([24] in the papers bibliography) but I have not found (on that site) anything other than polar and cartesian co-ordinate calculations based on planetary rotation.

Nothing solar or galactic.

I still want to know in the TOFv how far, in solar & galactic terms has the detector travelled.

The paper clearly shows the team calculated TOFc (Time Of Flight, Speed of light in a vacuum) but I still wonder what the distance would be if the expected TOFv was as per theoretical physics. How much further away should OPERA be from CERN for this to be a non-issue? Using that value, could it shed light (har har har) on where the error (if there is one) is?

As for relativity... surely this doesn't breach relativity as, to the observer, the neutrino is not travelling faster than c, it is the combined velocity (is that the right term?) of two objects approaching each other not travelling in the same direction that is calculated at greater than c. If the observer were to be perched upon either the neutrino or the detector they would observe sub-c velocities...? Or have I goofed again?

[M Paul Lloyd]

If you were perched on a neutrino at near light speed on a head on collision course with another neutrino travelling at a similar volicty you would observe that your closing speed would not exceed that of light. Time would in effect be dilated, or at least that's my take on it.

As for the paper, well I have read it and excluding the illustrations and graphs, not all of which I can claim to understand, I think I have absorbed possibly two or maybe three pages worth of actual information. It is complicated and with good reason because they evidently wanted to cover all eventualities even allowing for accumulated 'negligble' errors 'within reasonable tolerances' and so forth.

The only query I have is the reliance on GPS to determine the 730 odd kilometre distance accurate to within 2cm between CERN and OPERA. I'm not questioning the accuracy in itself, after all it is a dedicated GPS of significantly greater accuracy that the sort you use in your car, but, I am left wondering if that GPS, for all its accurassy is not underpinned by generic 'off the shelf' software that might, possibly, be giving the distance concerned in terms of curved surface travel rather than a direct line of sight?

I feel a bit of an idiot even suggesting something so trivial, but I do recall the Hubble Space Telescope ending up with a dodgy mirror because someone forgot to calibrate the measuring instrument properly, a simple but fundamental error that was just not allowed for.

Thing is this would mean that the distance travelled between CERN and OPERA would be significantly shorter. Or am I the one who goofed??

Oh and the October issue of Focus has a splendid article on the Galileo GPS system by Sean Blair, well worth a read.

[PetTastic]

To me, their GPS accuracy looks ok.
The particles arrived 60ns early that is about 18 metres at he speed of light.
Also from the video and reading their papers / presentations the clock setup looks good as well.

Google calc "60 nanoseconds * the speed of light = 17.9875475"

[Frank Atkinson]

Atkinson’s submission.

I am pleased to be able to report that the CERN – Gran Sasso finding that things (in this case, neutrinos) ] can go faster than ‘c’, confirms the prediction made in the Tempo field theory. That theory shows the requirement in special relativity that the speed of light is a universal constant at 299,792.458 kilometers a second is flawed. It was originally thought that the universal constant was necessary for several reasons but these have proved to be spurious over the years. However, the most important reason was that it was considered to be the only way that clear images could be received at the eye. In other words, to avoid light being all jumbled up at our eyes and to enable us to see clearly, it was assumed to be an essential prerequisite for all rays of light to have the same universal speed. However, this assumption is wrong, the Tempo field theory suggests a much simpler way. This demonstrates that all that is required is for each observer to see all rays of light with a closing speed relative to their individual time dilations. They each have their own constant for the speed of light relative to their time dilation which ensures they receive clear images. The Tempo field theory allows the speed of light to increase as the time of the observer dilates but it does not admit of anything going faster than this increased speed. It is not possible to outrun light but it is possible to go faster than 299,792.458 kilometers a second when the speed is measured from dilated time. This of course, preserves the principle of causality and avoids the difficulty of travelling backwards in time, for which I apologise to all science fiction writers.

In the case in question, the experiment is timed from a point that is below ground level, that is to say, close to the mass of the Earth and therefore in dilated time. Experiments to try to establish the speed of light have in the past, been carried out above ground level, i.e. at a point more remote from the mass of the Earth and consequently in more contracted time. It can be readily envisaged that the neutrinos will consequently be clocked at a faster speed than that previously attributed to light.

The scientists who have conducted the experiment have asked for other teams to try to confirm their results by carrying out the experiment at other locations but care must be exercised to exactly mimic the degree of time dilation if the same results are to be obtained. The way to demonstrate that the aberration is due to the variation in time dilation, is to have the neutrinos and photons of light timed over a common course when it will be found that they both travel at the same speed. This has been done in nature by our receiving the neutrinos from distant supernova at approximately the same time as its photons of light.

The principle that the speed of light varies in proportion to the time dilation of the observer can be proved with the following thought experiment. If we consider a tall skyscraper, it is well established physics that time goes more slowly at the bottom, near to the mass of the Earth than at the top. Using this knowledge, let us carry out a light experiment by placing atomic clocks alongside mirrors at the top and bottom of the skyscraper so that a pulse of light can be bounced from top to bottom of the skyscraper between the mirrors. If this is done a given number of times, the distance travelled by the light is exactly known. The travel time of the pulse of light can then be accurately timed by the atomic clocks. It is now inevitable that as the two clocks are running at different rates they will measure different values for the travel time of the light. This yields the result that the speed of light is faster at the bottom of the skyscraper in dilated time, than at the top in faster contracted time. This is exactly the result that the scientists at Cern and Gran Sasso have accidentally come across. The Tempo field theory can be found on its open access website, where it gives a paradigm for quantum gravity.

Frank Atkinson

[M Paul Lloyd]

A most interesting post there Frank.
I have checked LinkedIn and found 25 professionals named Frank Atkinson, not that you are necasseraly a member of course, but I'm left wondering what your source is for all this amazing information?

[PetTastic]

I think it is going to be interesting what other experiments show.

If they see the same 60ns time discrepancy for a different length baseline, then you may hear maniac laughter from this direction.
Because one of the problems with my condensing universe model is the weak force not scaling very well.
So neutrinos still being 18 metres across, making the travel distance 18m shorter would be fun.

[EzBloke]

To me, their GPS accuracy looks ok.
The particles arrived 60ns early that is about 18 metres at he speed of light.
Also from the video and reading their papers / presentations the clock setup looks good as well.

Google calc "60 nanoseconds * the speed of light = 17.9875475"

Cheers!

[Healerman]

Could the answer really be this simple?

Those weird faster-than-light neutrinos that CERN thought they saw last month may have just gotten slowed down to a speed that'll keep them from completely destroying physics as we know it. In an ironic twist, the very theory that these neutrinos would have disproved may explain exactly what happened...

Researchers at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands went and crunched the numbers on how much relativity should have effected the experiment, and found that the correct compensation should be about 32 additional nanoseconds on each end, which neatly takes care of the 60 nanosecond speed boost that the neutrinos originally seemed to have. This all has to be peer-reviewed and confirmed, of course, but at least for now, it seems like the theory of relativity is not only safe, but confirmed once again.

http://dvice.com/archives/2011/10/speedy-neutrino.php

If this turns out to be correct, it is a solid validation of relativity, but a sad end to a potentially exciting revolution in physics.

Watch this space.

[M Paul Lloyd]

Watch this space.

Indeed I shall.

[PetTastic]

I am not so sure, the papers from CERN say they checked the timing using portable cesium clocks.
I don't think they could be transported by anything fast enough to be effected by relativity.
People would definitely notice if GPS was out by 60ns or 18m.

[M Paul Lloyd]

I watched a BBC TV Prog about this last night, available on the iPlayer
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... _of_Light/
And one body of thouight seemed to suggest that one solution might be found in the inherent problems with measuring exactly where and when the Neutrinos in question actually originated at CERN and arrived at OPERA and this could fully account for the 60 odd centimeters of 'lost' distance?

For myself I was left wondering whether time really does have to be quite so absolutley linear and whether it might not, on occasion, back-track just a few nano-seconds in certain circumstances and locations, like water in a river? Its all going down hill but not all at the same speed and sometimes you get back eddies and such? So couldn't something similar apply to time?

After all how would we be able to tell?

[KingPhillip]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15471118

After reading the above, I'm reminded of the light as particle/wave double-slit experiments. With the neutrinos streamed, we get a "statistically-significant" number which exceeded the speed of light. With the pending neutrinos-pulsed experiment, will we be shocked at a similarly incongruent result?

Also, the original experiment wasn't to measure the speed of the neutrinos, but to see if they change from muon to tau. Don't know if data was collected to perhaps make the correlation.

[M Paul Lloyd]

Taken from the article above.

The neutrinos showed up 60 nanoseconds (60 billionths of a second) earlier than light would have over the same distance.
However, the time measurement is not direct; the researchers cannot know how long it took an individual neutrino to travel from Switzerland to Italy.
Cern's director of research (Sergio Bertolucci) says the new experimental design will be more efficient.
Instead, the measurement must be performed statistically: the scientists superimpose the neutrinos' "arrival times" on the protons' "departure times", over and over again and taking an average.
But some physicists say that any wrong assumptions made when relating these data sets could produce a misleading result.

So it would seem that the most likely explanation is down to good old measuring.

[Isee]

I think that's pretty much what Ezbloke is driving at Mr.S, the idea that the motion of the Earth, as it rotates around its own axis, the Sun and the galactic centre may have combined to throw the calculations out of kilter.

But even so this would not solve the problem completely because relativity should kick in and impose a blanket limit, so that to any observer the object (neutrino) should not appear to exceed it maximum velocity.

So if the hypothetical train were travelling at light speed and you threw that ball along the corridor in the direction that train was travelling it would be forced to stand still relative to the train and if you threw it in the opposite direction its apparent velocity should still not exceed that of light.

The rotational and universe expansion theory could be eliminated if the experiment is conducted in both directiosn simultaneously.

so we just need to build an emitter next to the receiver and vice versa then repeat the experiment...
However, seeing as light is not affected by motion, and particles with mass are, I would have thought that even travelling at 90% of C then shooting a gun with a bullet travelling at 30% of C, still won't break C and won't equal the bullet travelling at 120% C, so motion should not really even be considered here surely? Because then breaking C this way would still break the rules of physics.

[M Paul Lloyd]

Well... apparently its happened again.

Neutrino experiment repeat at Cern finds same result
By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News

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

More here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15791236

[Shadowwolf]

I wonder if this is where we discover the means to an ftl drive, or am I being too sci-fi?

[M Paul Lloyd]

or am I being too sci-fi?

Probably.