Faster-than-light neutrinos found?

[Arcanyn]

To get something to go faster than light, you don't need infinite energy, you just need an imaginary quantity of energy. So all they would have needed to do is pray for some energy, convince themselves that prayer works, and they'd have had all the imaginary energy they could ever want.

[Darwinsbulldog]

Originally Posted by Arcanyn

To get something to go faster than light, you don't need infinite energy, you just need an imaginary quantity of energy. So all they would have needed to do is pray for some energy, convince themselves that prayer works, and they'd have had all the imaginary energy they could ever want.

But neutrinos are essentially massless, and to detect them you need a big tank of whatever stuff deep underground...photons interact quite strongly with matter [via the electromagnetic force].

[AUSloth]

Originally Posted by DB

I don't see how. Neutrinos are notoriously weakly interactive..almost like gods really.

All bow down to the new god NEUTRINO who proves his existance with FTL travel.....a miracle, a miracle!!
Now what did I do with that sandle and gourd I followed before?

[CoachPedro]

Welll...it could sorta be defined as a miracle, in the sense that it's the opposite of what is expected to happen. If I jump off a 30 story building and I walk away injury free...that's a miracle, since it's expected that I'd be pretty injured...or die.


On he other hand...it may not be an miracle since...it's hard science...oh dear me....

[AUSloth]

Originally Posted by Coachpedro

Welll...it could sorta be defined as a miracle, in the sense that it's the opposite of what is expected to happen. If I jump off a 30 story building and I walk away injury free...that's a miracle, since it's expected that I'd be pretty injured...or die.


On he other hand...it may not be an miracle since...it's hard science...oh dear me....

I like to keep A.C. Clarke's quote in the back of my mind for these occaisions "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" which leads me to conclude that if a "miracle" occurs that can't be expained then i'm lacking all the data.

The shitty part is that between the phenomena and the theory to explain it, Vroomfondel and Majikthise have the opportunity to muddy the water capitalise on it.

[Answers in Gene Simmons]

Originally Posted by DezinerAU

Neutrinos may interact with the vacuum of space itself less than light does, allowing them to travel faster.

This would mean that “c” could be greater than the speed of light a vacuum, and that neutrinos move somewhere between the speed of light and a new, faster “c”.

I am slightly leaning in that direction. because the neutrino was unknown in 1905. So Einstein could not have known about them.


Let me rephrase the matter as your formulation seems awkward to me. It has been well established that everything interacts with space including light. However, neutrino oscillation requires a non zero but tiny mass. If anything, they have to be more tightly coupled to space time.

So c is slightly larger than we thought. So slightly larger that it took us until now to get around to finding out. Photons are the slower of the two. Despite what is being reported far and wide, I see no major issue with special relativity.

[Worldslaziestbusker]

I'm sure that to get to play with the LHC you need to be pretty hot on your physics, but is it possible that someone failed to account for the fact that the experiment was taking place in a rotating system, and that the target had moved from the t=0 position in the time the neutrinos took to transit?

[DanDare]

Wasn't the beam going north to south? The rotation would not add to the arrival time but cause a Coriolis drift.

On the other hand the Earth is curved over that distance and the neutrinos would have passed through a gravitational gradient. From high up to low then back up again. Shouldn't there be a time discrepancy when you do that?

[CoachPedro]

Originally Posted by AUSloth

I like to keep A.C. Clarke's quote in the back of my mind for these occaisions "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" which leads me to conclude that if a "miracle" occurs that can't be expained then i'm lacking all the data.

The shitty part is that between the phenomena and the theory to explain it, Vroomfondel and Majikthise have the opportunity to muddy the water capitalise on it.

Sorry I'm a bit blonde...can you elaborate what A.C Clarke's quote means !

[AUSloth]

@ CoachPedro - From the perspective of the observer of the "magic/miracle" if you do not have the data or theoretical tools to observe and understand the event then you have no realistic way of figuring out what is going on. So for all you know it could be magic or advanced technology but I think that you can apply Clarke's idea more broadly. Substitute "complex natural event" for "advanced technology" and given that with our current level of science the FTL neutrino has no explaination. Some of the possibilities are a "miracle" (complete bollocks) bad observational data, incomplete theoretical model or xenu fucking with our heads.
The point is without the tools and information to understand any event we can not confidently tell what is happening (we can make some pretty good guesses). The really good thing is that throughout history we have slowly filled in the blanks with science and eliminated the "miracles".