Please remain calm. CERN says they've measured particles moving faster than light.

Melkster

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/22/science-light-idUSL5E7KM4CW20110922

This is kind of a big deal, if true.

Taramoor

Damnit, I just learned the Laws of Physics.

If I have to memorize new ones somebody's going to have to pay.

Corehealer

Yes, this is kind of a big deal.

If we get this thing working, NASA won't have any more excuses for not sending men to Mars.

electricitylikesme

I am going to get unrealistically excited about this!

Because fuck the haters. Science should just work out for someone and if it can't be me then it should be CERN!

(also should involve some type of FTL and/or time travel)

EDIT: Although my immediate thought is, if they're firing neutrinos through solid matter, is that this could be a phenomenon similar to what happens if you shoot light into a chamber of cesium gas - the wavefront causes re-emission of light that appears to emerge from the tunnel faster then light, but turns out not to be capable of transmitting information.

It is a fairly small time difference after all, this isn't "particles measured moving 3x light speed".

RMS Oceanic

My Sister just started A Level (Senior High School) Physics and she wasn't feeling good about it. Now she's gonna have to learn everything again. She won't like that.

On a more serious note, I am extremely interested in this.

Salvation122

That's, uh

Interesting

Do they have any hypotheses yet?

Wassermelone

Ho, damn. That would be amazing if true.

I doubt any practical applications would occur during my lifetime, but maybe, just maybe, Alpha Centauri, here I come.

moniker

So Einstein wasn't much of an Einstein, ey?

Caveman Paws

electricitylikesme wrote:

I am going to get unrealistically excited about this!

Because fuck the haters. Science should just work out for someone and if it can't be me then it should be CERN!

(also should involve some type of FTL and/or time travel)

I just want to start listing off all my favorite FTL scifi applications. For no reason other than YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!

But I won't do that to myself because the chances of this being a flaw are still alive and well.

But man would this ever be fucking sweet.

moniker wrote:

So Einstein wasn't much of an Einstein, ey?

Don't jinx this or so help me skycake!

Drez

I'm stocking up on crowbars.

jothki

Knowing how much physics suck, it'll probably just turn out that those particles are the real upper limit for speed or that light as we've always measured it is slower than the actual maximum or something.

Styrofoam Sammich

moniker wrote:

So Einstein wasn't much of an Einstein, ey?

He's spinning in his grave.

Faster than the speed of light.

electricitylikesme

Admittedly if you were going to find a relativity violation, neutrinos are a pretty decent candidate - weakly interacting high-speed particles that are kind of a pain to detect in the first place.

If this is true I wonder what type of ramifications it would have for dark matter research though, since an FTL'ing particle would be doing a whole host of thing's it shouldn't be able to (i.e. technically having infinite inertial mass, which would mean it's a place to put an infinite amount of missing mass in the universe).

KalTorak

Moving at the speed of Bad News

Elldren

jothki wrote:

Knowing how much physics suck, it'll probably just turn out that those particles are the real upper limit for speed or that light as we've always measured it is slower than the actual maximum or something.

No, C is a pretty well-established constant. If these particles were moving faster than C, that doesn't mean they are the new C

Salvation122

electricitylikesme wrote:

Admittedly if you were going to find a relativity violation, neutrinos are a pretty decent candidate - weakly interacting high-speed particles that are kind of a pain to detect in the first place.

If this is true I wonder what type of ramifications it would have for dark matter research though, since an FTL'ing particle would be doing a whole host of thing's it shouldn't be able to (i.e. technically having infinite inertial mass, which would mean it's a place to put an infinite amount of missing mass in the universe).

Aren't neutrinos massless, like photons?

electricitylikesme

God damn it. It's 6am here, I've been in the lab since 3am, and now I'm pumped full of excitement adrenaline.

Because like, holy shit, this is the type of headline I live for (reasonable me is expecting disappointment).

Melkster

I'm going to say a reasonable thing, and then some unreasonable things. Ready?

Reasonable:

If it's a choice between some kind of human or systematic or measurement error and the theory of relativity being wrong, smart money is on the former.

Unreasonable:

I remember some discussions to the effect of -- the lack of communication from neighborhood extraterrestrials is rather good evidence against them existing. But what if it turns out that radio transmissions is a silly, archaic way of communicating, and that quickly intelligent life forms learn about neutrinos and use them to talk to each other.

I, for one, demand that my computer be hooked up to the Neutrino intergalactic internet as soon as possible.

surrealitycheck

when we find out it was instrument error prepare for tears

CptHamilton

electricitylikesme wrote:

I am going to get unrealistically excited about this!

Because fuck the haters. Science should just work out for someone and if it can't be me then it should be CERN!

(also should involve some type of FTL and/or time travel)

EDIT: Although my immediate thought is, if they're firing neutrinos through solid matter, is that this could be a phenomenon similar to what happens if you shoot light into a chamber of cesium gas - the wavefront causes re-emission of light that appears to emerge from the tunnel faster then light, but turns out not to be capable of transmitting information.

It is a fairly small time difference after all, this isn't "particles measured moving 3x light speed".

If it's not just systematic error then this is my guess, too. There are tons of observations of 'faster than light' photons based on the group velocity of the wave. Neutrino flavor oscillation is (probably; I don't think it's accepted standard model theory yet) based on the propagation of a mass eigenstate wave. Oddities in the velocity of observed neutrinos in a flavor state different from their initial one might be due to something akin to the photon group velocity phenomenon, only on the group velocity of neutrino mass states.

@Salvation122 No. Or at least the prevaling theory is no. It's not in the standard model yet, but smart money is on neutrinos with non-zero mass.

electricitylikesme

Salvation122 wrote:

electricitylikesme wrote:

Admittedly if you were going to find a relativity violation, neutrinos are a pretty decent candidate - weakly interacting high-speed particles that are kind of a pain to detect in the first place.

If this is true I wonder what type of ramifications it would have for dark matter research though, since an FTL'ing particle would be doing a whole host of thing's it shouldn't be able to (i.e. technically having infinite inertial mass, which would mean it's a place to put an infinite amount of missing mass in the universe).

Aren't neutrinos massless, like photons?

No they have a very small but non-zero mass. Which means FTL'ing neutrinos are doing something really god damn crazy and new. And awesome.

Aioua

So, if reuter's numbers are right (light took 2.4 milliseconds, neutrinos were 60 nanoseconds faster) and my math is right, the neutrinos were going approx 1.000025c. Neat.

dbrock270

Now we can have FTL drives on our ships and venture to distant stars.

electricitylikesme

CptHamilton wrote:

electricitylikesme wrote:

I am going to get unrealistically excited about this!

Because fuck the haters. Science should just work out for someone and if it can't be me then it should be CERN!

(also should involve some type of FTL and/or time travel)

EDIT: Although my immediate thought is, if they're firing neutrinos through solid matter, is that this could be a phenomenon similar to what happens if you shoot light into a chamber of cesium gas - the wavefront causes re-emission of light that appears to emerge from the tunnel faster then light, but turns out not to be capable of transmitting information.

It is a fairly small time difference after all, this isn't "particles measured moving 3x light speed".

If it's not just systematic error then this is my guess, too. There are tons of observations of 'faster than light' photons based on the group velocity of the wave. Neutrino flavor oscillation is (probably; I don't think it's accepted standard model theory yet) based on the propagation of a mass eigenstate wave. Oddities in the velocity of observed neutrinos in a flavor state different from their initial one might be due to something akin to the photon group velocity phenomenon, only on the group velocity of neutrino mass states.

@Salvation122 No. Or at least the prevaling theory is no. It's not in the standard model yet, but smart money is on neutrinos with non-zero mass.

See, now you've ruined it. It's totally going to end up being this exact thing. Stupid relative reality.

Echo

Styrofoam Sammich wrote:

moniker wrote:

So Einstein wasn't much of an Einstein, ey?

He's spinning in his grave.

Faster than the speed of light.

Someone wrap him in copper wire! Energy crisis solved!

Also, New Scientist posted this on Twatter: "Spool up the FTL drive! Er, actually this faster than light neutrino thing is apparently nonsense. Our story coming soon (ish)"

Echo

Aioua wrote:

So, if reuter's numbers are right (light took 2.4 milliseconds, neutrinos were 60 nanoseconds faster) and my math is right, the neutrinos were going approx 1.000025c. Neat.

Just 27,000 km/h faster than c? Pah, that's nothing.

electricitylikesme

Echo wrote:

Styrofoam Sammich wrote:

moniker wrote:

So Einstein wasn't much of an Einstein, ey?

He's spinning in his grave.

Faster than the speed of light.

Someone wrap him in copper wire! Energy crisis solved!

Also, New Scientist posted this on Twatter: "Spool up the FTL drive! Er, actually this faster than light neutrino thing is apparently nonsense. Our story coming soon (ish)"

NewScientist dealing with this type of stuff sensibly is kind of big news itself.

Yougottawanna

I was kind of hoping it would be eezo that gave us FTL travel. But I guess this neutrino thing is okay.

Melkster

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/09/22/140713791/scientists-report-breaking-the-speed-of-light-but-can-it-be-true

If this result were true (it has not been published, and thus not peer-reviewed, yet) then the structure of the world might be very different from what we believe. Einstein's theory of relativity is built on the idea that there is an absolute cosmic speed limit — that light is the thing traveling at this speed is beside the point. Among other things, the existence of that speed limit sets the structure of causality in the Universe.

In other words, that effects follow causes and not the other way around, which is, in general, a good thing. The universe would be a whole lot harder to understand without this link between cause and effect. Think of it as being shot before the trigger is pulled. It's more nuanced than what I am describing here (of course) but breaking light-speed means breaking relativity and casuality as we know it flows from relativity.

So if these results are correct then we might have to go back and start rebuilding pretty much all of modern foundational physics. Are they correct? This kind of thing has been claimed before. My colleague Steve Manly who works with neutrino beams in experiments like the ones described by the AP story puts it this way, "I'm not planning to eliminate the relativity portion of my general physics course anytime soon."

Based on past experience, these results are probably wrong but it sure would be a wild ride if they prove correct.

Adam Frank is an astrophysicist. He blogs at NPR's 13.7 and you can keep up with more of what he's thinking on Facebook andTwitter.

DoctorArch

Melkster wrote:

I remember some discussions to the effect of -- the lack of communication from neighborhood extraterrestrials is rather good evidence against them existing. But what if it turns out that radio transmissions is a silly, archaic way of communicating, and that quickly intelligent life forms learn about neutrinos and use them to talk to each other.

I, for one, demand that my computer be hooked up to the Neutrino intergalactic internet as soon as possible.

That actually makes a whole lot of sense. Kind of like what if in order to communicate with aliens, we keep trying to call their landline, when they have all moved on to cellular and don't use the landline anymore?

BobCesca

I very rarely trust press releases about science which hasn't been properly written up, peer-reviewed, and published.

I will wait until this experiment has had these and expect to find out that the initial results were not what they seemed.

Melkster

Another great skeptical article:

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/09/neutrinos-travel-faster-than-lig.html

Over 3 years, OPERA researchers timed the roughly 16,000 neutrinos that started at CERN and registered a hit in the detector. They found that, on average, the neutrinos made the 730-kilometer, 2.43-millisecond trip roughly 60 nanoseconds faster than expected if they were traveling at light speed. "It's a straightforward time-of-flight measurement," says Antonio Ereditato, a physicist at the University of Bern and spokesperson for the 160-member OPERA collaboration. "We measure the distance and we measure the time, and we take the ratio to get the velocity, just as you learned to do in high school." Ereditato says the uncertainty in the measurement is 10 nanoseconds.

However, even Ereditato says it's way too early to declare relativity wrong. "I would never say that," he says. Rather, OPERA researchers are simply presenting a curious result that they cannot explain and asking the community to scrutinize it. "We are forced to say something," he says. "We could not sweep it under the carpet because that would be dishonest." The results will be presented at a seminar tomorrow at CERN.

The big question is whether OPERA researchers have discovered particles going faster than light, or whether they have been misled by an unidentified "systematic error" in their experiment that's making the time look artificially short. Chang Kee Jung, a neutrino physicist at Stony Brook University in New York, says he'd wager that the result is the product of a systematic error. "I wouldn't bet my wife and kids because they'd get mad," he says. "But I'd bet my house."

Jung, who is spokesperson for a similar experiment in Japan called T2K, says the tricky part is accurately measuring the time between when the neutrinos are born by slamming a burst of protons into a solid target and when they actually reach the detector. That timing relies on the global positioning system, and the GPS measurements can have uncertainties of tens of nanoseconds. "I would be very interested in how they got a 10-nanosecond uncertainty, because from the systematics of GPS and the electronics, I think that's a very hard number to get."

No previous measurements obviously rule out the result, says Kostelecky, who has spent 25 years developing a theory, called the standard model extension, that accounts for all possible types of violations of special relativity in the context of particle physics. "If you had told me that there was a claim of faster-than-light electrons, I would be a lot more skeptical," he says. The possibilities for neutrinos are less constrained by previous measurements, he says.

Still, Kostelecky repeats the old adage: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Even Ereditato says that one measurement does not extraordinary evidence make.

WMain00

Cern: WOOPS! WE BROKE PHYSICS!

Science students everywhere: AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

Feral

Waiting for replication.

Turkey

So all we have to do is shove neutrinos into our rockets and then we rule the universe?

CommunistCow

Echo wrote:

Aioua wrote:

So, if reuter's numbers are right (light took 2.4 milliseconds, neutrinos were 60 nanoseconds faster) and my math is right, the neutrinos were going approx 1.000025c. Neat.

Just 27,000 km/h faster than c? Pah, that's nothing.

Fast enough for me. Quick, someone make a space ship out of neutrinos.

Lanz

Drez

Feral wrote:

Waiting for replication.

Me too. I can't wait to have Earl Grey tea on demand.

SanderJK

CommunistCow wrote:

Echo wrote:

Aioua wrote:

So, if reuter's numbers are right (light took 2.4 milliseconds, neutrinos were 60 nanoseconds faster) and my math is right, the neutrinos were going approx 1.000025c. Neat.

Just 27,000 km/h faster than c? Pah, that's nothing.

Fast enough for me. Quick, someone make a space ship out of neutrinos.

I built one just now, but then it fell right through my floor at the speed of light.

Kabitzy

Webcast for the seminar for those interested:
http://indico.cern.ch/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=155620

big l

I'm waiting to see it replicated. Probably measurement error.