Phanerothyme Posted September 22, 2011 Share Posted September 22, 2011 Uh Oh. Faster than light neutrinos. Einstein was clearly wrong. Nah, surely not? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HeadingNorth Posted September 22, 2011 Share Posted September 22, 2011 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15017484 The article doesn't make clear whether neutrinos have exceeded the speed of light through the Earth (not impossible according to Einstein), or the speed of light in a vacuum (absolutely impossible according to Einstein); given that the scientists can't explain the findings, though, it's hard to believe they would miss something that obvious, but I wonder if the BBC reporters have misunderstood what they were being told. (That would be no surprise on a science story...) The scientists, being unable to find any explanation for their findings, have published them in the hope that someone else will find one. The explanation won't necessarily be "Einstein was wrong after all," but until an alternative explanation is provided, it remains filed under Mysteries. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phanerothyme Posted September 22, 2011 Author Share Posted September 22, 2011 Fermilab confirmed excitedly that they had made a similar discovery, equally crazy, in 2008 and were rapidly reassembling the experiment again at the earliest opportunity. It's not robust data, but given how much scrutiny they've given it before opening up to the wider scientific community for analysis (in the hope they'll find the mistake), makes this especially interesting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
littlebasher Posted September 22, 2011 Share Posted September 22, 2011 Sub atomic particles disobeying our rules of physics eh! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alcoblog Posted September 22, 2011 Share Posted September 22, 2011 Erm ... I only just heard a snippet on the telly about this. Has anyone got a decent link or do I just have to rely on the daily rags later on today? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mikes10 Posted September 23, 2011 Share Posted September 23, 2011 It might be a scam to get more grant money The pipe they fire the paticles down my not be as long as first thought. Since the pipe is circular maybe the particles are hugging the inner serface thereby covering a shorter distance. Did you know that high frequency electric currents travel close to the surface of a conductor and not the through the centre its known as the 'Skin Effect'. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HeadingNorth Posted September 23, 2011 Share Posted September 23, 2011 It might be a scam to get more grant money I'm not going to argue that no scientists would ever do such a thing - after all, some have in the past. This particular incident cannot be an attempted scam, unless it's an amazingly dumb one - since the whole point of publishing their results is that they are asking other scientists to find their mistake, or, in the highly unlikely event that there is no mistake, to confirm their findings about neutrinos travelling faster than light. If a mistake is found, that's the end of the story and there is no money to be had; if they have, indeed, found neutrinos travelling faster than light, then it's not a scam, they have a genuine discovery. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
barleycorn Posted September 23, 2011 Share Posted September 23, 2011 It might be a scam to get more grant money The pipe they fire the paticles down my not be as long as first thought. Since the pipe is circular maybe the particles are hugging the inner serface thereby covering a shorter distance. Did you know that high frequency electric currents travel close to the surface of a conductor and not the through the centre its known as the 'Skin Effect'. Er, the 'pipe' as you call it is straight. I think you're thinking of the LHC. http://proj-cngs.web.cern.ch/proj-cngs/ProjetOverview/NeutrinoBeam.htm http://operaweb.lngs.infn.it/spip.php?rubrique41 jb Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alchresearch Posted September 23, 2011 Share Posted September 23, 2011 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mikes10 Posted September 23, 2011 Share Posted September 23, 2011 Er, the 'pipe' as you call it is straight. I think you're thinking of the LHC. http://proj-cngs.web.cern.ch/proj-cngs/ProjetOverview/NeutrinoBeam.htm http://operaweb.lngs.infn.it/spip.php?rubrique41 jb Thanks for that, I was struggling to figure out how they got nutrinos to go round bends! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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