Faster than light???????

[cartrite]

I heard a news cast the other day from PBS. They said that neutrinos were clocked at CERN at about 80 nanoseconds faster than light would have traveled in the test distance. Poor Albert will roll over. This was in within the error margin according to the report. This apparently was also observed in 2007 but the margin of error was too great. Is there any truth to this? Are we ready to figure out how to go into Star Trek mode with warp speed? ha ha ha.
cartrite

[kristoffer]

I don't know if it is some truth, but this is facinating news, It stands on the news here in Norway too

probably the whole world knows about it

[t00fri]

http://forum.celestialmatters.org/viewtopic.php?t=416

Fridger

[kristoffer]

If the particles are travelling over the speed of light, they are travelling in time

One time I saw a program on tv. It was about a railway that was going across the globe to reach the speed of light, and when it did, and passed the speed of light, it travelled in time

[ThinkerX]

Warp drive no, 'subspace communicator'...maybe?

Used to see the odd article or discussion elsewhere pertaining to problems with dark matter / dark energy, relativity, and quantum mechanics. There were some very bright folks who came up with alternative explanations for this (allowing for vastly less dark matter/energy, among other things)...but these theories tended to get abandoned because they predicted that it was possible to send actual information faster than light. Might be time to take a second look at them if this proves out.

[LordFerret]

Why not faster than light?! We've already shown light can be slowed down* (and with practical applications for it as well**), so why not sped up as well?

* http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/1999/02.18/light.html
** http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100905161910.htm

This makes me wonder about really distant objects (like other galaxies), the light we see from them, and what type of regions of space (cold/hot) that light has passed through before arriving here. Do we measure the speed of that arriving light or any alteration of energy state it's in? (Did I word that right?) Does that not affect the distance we perceive it to be?

I'll shut up now.

[Deepwatcher]

last news: Two italian scientists found a theory of Ettore Majorana that could explain the phenomenon. In the 1932 Majorana hypothesized that a neutrino could travel faster then light, because in the case of passing through extremely dense matter the neutrino would convert itself into a tachion, a particle with immaginary mass and speed always major of c, and then reconvert into a normal neutrino. And the predicted values could, and I say could, fit with the experimental values found in the Gran Sasso laboratory

http://www.media.inaf.it/2011/09/28/i-s ... -majorana/

I'm sorry, the article is in Italian... I'll look for an English version as soon as possible...

[t00fri]

See my corresponding thread at CM for a new significant theoretical argument against the claimed superluminal speed of neutrinos:

http://forum.celestialmatters.org/viewt ... 6&start=12

Fridger

[Cham]

There's a nice paper (I don't have it at hands right now) that says that the problem with the neutrinos experiment is the clock synchronisation process needed to mesure the time of flight of the neutrinos (they used the GPS system to synchronise the atomic clocks located at two places). The clock synchronisation process have several subtle ambiguities and is actually highly unreliable !

To me, it is clear that the results of this experiment are highly unreliable because of the complicated clocks synchronisation process. They published their results prematurely.

After some time of analysis, this experiment may turn out to be another successfull confirmation of both Special Relativity AND General Relativity !

[t00fri]

A judgement about soundness of appearing papers on the OPERA superluminal neutrinos as well as about the OPERA results themselves requires a thorough specialized training in these delicate matters, both experimentally and theoretically.

In our global high-energy-physics preprint archive (arXiv.org), there appeared JUST today (Oct 4th) as many as 12 new papers that either explained or refuted the OPERA result!

Meanwhile way above 100 such papers have appeared since the announcement of the OPERA anomaly on Friday Sep. 23rd. It takes a fair amount of expertise to sort out the sensible papers from this bulk.

Fridger

[MiR]

Once upon a time...

...there were two bright and enthusiastic photons - Albert & Isaac.
They lived on a super(soon)nova star. Somewhere in space.
And Albert proudly intoned:

"Nothing is faster than light! So, we are two of the fastest guys in the universe!"

And Isaac agreed with a grinning smile "Yehes, indeed. We are..."

"So, let's take a ride far away to the borders of this huge universe." said Albert immediately while Isaac impatiently listened.
"I'll go to a whirlpooled galaxy in the northern hemisphere and you travel to a cluster way down in the deep south!"

Isaac - very happily - jumped from one waving sinusbow to the other: "Wohow, that's great, let's start right now and very quickly just in this nano-second!"

And so they did.

Both of our light particles started with lightspeed in different directions. Isaac with a sunny smile and an effusively light-hearted feeling and without any asking scepticism. Just singing '...we are the fastest, we are...'

But Albert, already after a hundred million lightyears distance, was wondering "...we are the fastest ones in our universe...? nothing is faster than light... but..."
Albert would have scratched his beard if he had one; "...if we travel with lightspeed in different - contrary and opposite - directions, then the rate of velocity between us - with which we move away from each other - must be faster than light..?"
----
"Isn't it --- ?"

If the photon would have had something like a face, probably he would have looked pretty damaged...

And just as he curved around a BlackHole he thought by hisself very silently:
"Oh, a good question and a nice and entertaining problem... will think about it... the next seven billion years, hehe..."
and hissed out of sight.

Michael

Of course; light expands in every direction. But the distance between the - with lightspeed - expanding photons should increase faster than the speed of light...

[MiR]

Too bad, nobody has apparently an answer to my little story. Sorry, but I can not write like a physicist... because I am no physicist *;-)

Be sure; it wasn't my intention to destroy this thread - but the theme here is "Nothing is faster than light???????"...
So let me add: Further proof - at least for me, that there must be "something" (at least as a mathematical option) which is (moves) faster than light is the space itself. And indeed the velocity of its expansion (eg: "BigBang")

Michael

*I really like the Physicists, especially astronomers. The only guys here (at least within the empirical science), who know - determined - that we really know nothing (or just about 5 percent. The rest - 95% - of the "surrounding world" is still a complete and incomprehensible mystery...

[John Van Vliet]

--- edit ---

[MiR]

Hi John,

Yes, in this particular case, I also tend rather to agree with you.

What I actually meant, however, is, that there must be still a possibility at all in our - virtually unexplored - universe. Just maybe a mathematical solution what an option opened to be faster than light.

(Oh, I love the english language - hope you understand what I wish to say...?)

Michael

[t00fri]

my understanding was there was an honest "oops "

dealing with the relativistic change in speed in the GPS timing satellites there was a aprox. 80 to 100 ms difference that was not taken into account

John,

there is no acknowledged source of such a bug to my knowledge. To the contrary see e.g. here an official CERN press release (from Nov. 18)

http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressRel ... 9.11E.html

Since the announcement of the speedy neutrinos on Sep 23, 2011, a number of crucial timing issues have been rechecked with the result that the probability for the effect to be true has rather increased than decreased...Also the (peer reviewed) finalized paper has been published since some weeks.

http://inspirehep.net/record/928153/fil ... ?version=3
It is noteworthy that unlike the initial announcement paper (Sep 23), now ALL members of the OPERA collaboration have signed this finalized paper!

For people who want to keep in touch, here is a summary page with relevant links from MIT:

http://web.mit.edu/redingtn/www/netadv/XftlNu.html

Notably, the THEORETICAL: section is most useful, since there the various attempts have been grouped already according to the underlying principles that are exploited!

Fridger

PS: What were the (credible) sources of the "oops" you referred to above??

[t00fri]

...
What I actually meant, however, is, that there must be still a possibility at all in our - virtually unexplored - universe. Just maybe a mathematical solution what an option opened to be faster than light.
...
Michael

Certainly NOT in the proper sense!

We have precisely three options allowing for an apparent superluminal speed without violation of Special Relativity (and Causality, see below).

• We know the effect of superluminal speed in a medium e.g. for the familiar Cherenkov light (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation), It is electromagnetic radiation emitted when a charged particle (such as an electron) passes through a dielectric medium at a speed greater than the phase velocity of light in that medium.
  
• Generally phase or group velocities can exceed the speed of light in vacuum, since no information is transferred this way at superluminal velocity.

Since Sep 23, 2011, many papers have investigated, whether one of these 3 options could have applied. See e.g. this summary page from MIT:

http://web.mit.edu/redingtn/www/netadv/ftlNuSlow.html

The real conceptional problem with a true violation of Special Relativity is the accompanying possibility of a violation of Causality.

Causality is the relationship between causes and effects. It is considered to be fundamental to all natural science, especially physics.
(see e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causality_%28physics%29)

In popular terms it means that effects should always happen later than their causes. E.g. You should not be able to see a distant light before it has been switched on

Clearly, in Special Relativity one has to be more careful, since time is now frame dependent! For simplicity, let me just quote this crucial paragraph from Wiki :

In modern physics, the notion of causality had to be clarified. The insights of the theory of special relativity confirmed the assumption of causality, but they made the meaning of the word "simultaneous" observer-dependent.[6] Consequently, the relativistic principle of causality says that the cause must precede its effect according to all inertial observers. This is equivalent to the statement that the cause and its effect are separated by a timelike interval, and the effect belongs to the future of its cause. If a timelike interval separates the two events, this means that a signal could be sent between them at less than the speed of light. On the other hand, if signals could move faster than the speed of light, this would violate causality because it would allow a signal to be sent across spacelike intervals, which means that at least to some inertial observers the signal would travel backward in time. For this reason, special relativity does not allow communication faster than the speed of light.

Fridger

[MiR]

Hallo Fridger,

first of all thanks for your comprehensive explanation.
Unfortunately I can not answer you until tomorrow morning (I'm currently in a hurry)

Michael

[Fenerit]

Hi Michael, albeit you were promising a plot of the configuration:
From CelestialMatters:

But here's the short description...
Imagine: not far from our planet (in my example 24 light years away) ignites a new star. The light needs 24 years until we can see it on earth. Well situated - across from the earth - an exoplanet, also 24 light years away from the new star. Also on this exoplanet light takes 24 years.

I'm unable to figure out this. Is the sun in the middle of the two, or is the Earth in the middle, between the sun and exoplanet?

Accordingly, the speed BETWEEN the first light waves (photons) which reaches Earth and exoplanet exactly after 24 years must have twice the normal speed of light. (This is the mathematical option I was talking about...)

If the Earth is in the middle, the exoplanet is at 48 ly (2 x 24 ly) from the sun; while if the sun is in the middle, then both are at 24 ly and the statement above doesn't make sense; since it seem confusing a numeric variable with a measure.

[Chuft-Captain]

Accordingly, the speed BETWEEN the first light waves (photons) which reaches Earth and exoplanet exactly after 24 years must have twice the normal speed of light. (This is the mathematical option I was talking about...)

If the Earth is in the middle, the exoplanet is at 48 ly (2 x 24 ly) from the sun; while if the sun is in the middle, then both are at 24 ly and the statement above doesn't make sense; since it seem confusing a numeric variable with a measure.

I think what Michael may be suggesting is that the photons would pass each other at a realatibe speed of twice the speed of light (like 2 cars traveling at 60mph in opposite directions have a relative speed of 120mph), however this does not break any physical laws.
(ie. A policeman with a speed camera a the side of the road would not clock either of the aforementioned cars at 120mph.)

[cartrite]

Indeed. This officer would clock them at 60mph.