E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSS
AFP - Getty Images
The detectors of the OPERA experiment to measure neutrinos rise from the floor of the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics INFN's Gran Sasso Laboratory. Two human figures on the left and right edges of the picture provide a sense of scale.
Researchers say new tests have confirmed earlier indications that neutrinos can travel faster than light, but not everyone is convinced.
The claim runs so counter to a century's worth of physics that most observers won't be content until the findings from the OPERA experiment are repeated under a variety of conditions, by different teams of researchers. If the results hold up, that would require a reinterpretation of Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity, which effectively sets the velocity of light in a vacuum as a cosmic speed limit.
The latest round of tests was conducted to address some of the criticisms that cropped up in the wake of the OPERA team's initial announcement about faster-than-light neutrinos in September.
"A measurement so delicate and carrying a profound implication [for] physics requires an extraordinary level of scrutiny," Fernando Ferroni, president of the Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics, or INFN, said in a news release. "The experiment OPERA, thanks to a specially adapted CERN beam, has made an important test of consistency of its result. The positive outcome of the test makes us more confident in the result, although the final word can only be said by analogous measurements performed elsewhere in the world."
"OPERA" is a tortured acronym that stands for "Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus." The team's researchers shoot beams of neutrinos from the CERN particle-physics center on the French-Swiss border to INFN's Gran Sasso Laboratory, more than 450 miles (730 kilometers) away. The travel time for each pulse of neutrinos is measured to an accuracy of billionths of a second. In the faster-than-light experiment, the researchers reported that the neutrinos arrived 60 nanoseconds earlier than a light beam would have.
The revised experiment sent out 3-nanosecond-long bursts of neutrinos, spaced by as much as 524 nanoseconds, INFN said. "This permits to make a more accurate measure of their velocity, at the price of a much lower beam intensity; only 20 clean events have been collected by OPERA in this phase. Additional events could be eventually collected in the next year run," the institute said.
The Associated Press reports on the faster-than-light neutrino research.
Jacques Martino, director of France's National Institute of Nuclear and Particle Physics at CNRS, was quoted as saying that the search for potential experimental errors "is not over."
"There are more checks of systematics currently under discussion," he said. "One of them could be a synchronization of the time reference at CERN and Gran Sasso independently from GPS, using possibly a fiber [cable]."
Some physicists criticized the initial experiment because they thought it did not fully account for the relativistic effects of the Global Positioning System, which was used to track the elapsed time as well as the distance traveled between CERN and Gran Sasso.
INFN said the updated results have been submitted for review and publication in the Journal of High Energy Physics. But ScienceInsider's Edwin Cartlidge reported that about 15 of the experiment's nearly 200 collaborators have declined to lend their names to the journal submission, on the grounds that further confirmation is required.
An unnamed source on the OPERA team told ScienceInsider that the controversy over the faster-than-light findings was exhausting. "Everyone should be convinced that the result is real, and they are not," the source was quoted as saying.
Other researchers, including physicists with the MINOS experiment at Fermilab, are working up independent analyses of neutrino runs to assess the OPERA team's findings. The initial outside assessments are expected to become available within six months or so, but end-to-end replications of the experiment could take significantly longer.
Update for 2 p.m. ET Nov. 18: In response to some of the comments below, I've changed the headline on this item, which originally read "Faster-than-light neutrinos confirmed." I realize the new headline still implies that superluminal neutrinos actually exist even though the evidence for that is in dispute, but I hope you'll understand that this is shorthand for "New experiment continues to support hypothesis about faster-than-light neutrino travel."
More on the faster-than-light controversy:
- Neutrinos spark wild scientific leaps
- Faster-than-light neutrinos? Not so fast, some say
- Challenging Einstein is usually a losing venture
- Interactive: Putting Einstein to the test
- 'Virtually Speaking Science': Podcast on weird physics
Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or following the Cosmic Log Google+ page. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
Leave a Comment:
Ppp Alan Boyle, dont ge listening to the haters dawg..
If we weren't a nation of idiots who legislate based on over reacting to events caused by our apathy to compromise. This stuff would be more exciting than football even in a world that respects the pursuit of knowledge more than expressing how great we are as we admire ourselves in the mirror. And these guys should be media gods.
To bad they don't have the time or the ego needed to appease the masses. What they do is a fascinating use of math and scientific process. Mind boggling algorithms run on powerful simulators, which are crazy accurate.
Maybe we could convince them to give our congressional leaders a single brain cell each, and in effect double the brain power in D.C.
'The revised experiment sent out 3-nanosecond-long bursts of neutrinos, spaced by as much as 524 nanoseconds' did the current test produce the same ~60 ns. deviation? What if other bursts and spacings are tried? How accurate are the bursts and the delays?
There are other strange experiments that have not received, as far as I know, sufficient attention. One has to do with all masses, in a common gravity, falling at the same rate. The following neutron interferometer study indicated that this 'law' may also have exceptions or conditions. The reply to these results is the same 'the experiment must be wrong'.
http://news.stanford.edu/pr/99/atomgravity990825.html
Also there are the reports that, in orbit, radio active isotope decay may be 'triggered' by solar events faster than the visual detection of the solar events. Such decay should not be possible in the first place and should not be keyed to faster than light events. Could these triggers be connected to gravity. Is gravity itself a form of energy and not a space distortion? Is gravity then faster than light and does the above decay triggering show a difference between the speed of light and the speed of gravity? Could the difference, in a orbit experiment, be used to measure a possible speed of gravity? Pure speculation for sure; but there are scientists who believe gravity is at least thousands of times faster than light. Any thoughts...?
Sure. to start we need to know the Facts about what Is Gravity, so please tell Me what is the Graviton, what drives it and from where is it derived, once you provide me that data, i be more then willing to participate in your chat :-)
day67 The Only " constant " in this type of discussion is the misunderstanding of what is " c" and what is " speed of light" once again a MILE is a constant, the speed of a Train is not, so the problem again is a Ignorance of the Stated Facts Vs Dogmatism.
So once again Light speed is variably according to locale, it is affected by Temperature,density,electromagnetism,gravity to name just a few of he Known factors, and I am sure there is also a Plethora of " Unknown factors " so lets allow the " Religions Dogma " get flattened by the Karma and end this nonsense and progress to the Facts of Physics!
"Light speed is variably according to locale, it is affected by Temperature, density, electromagnetism, gravity"
Huh? I don't think so. The only one on the list that's even close is density, in the sense that light travels through certain denser media (water and glass, for example) more slowly than it does through a vacuum. The ratio is the index of refraction of that media.
skip Nicholson, Oklahoma City Some Facts you might want to look up :
http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2001/01.24/01-stoplight.html
The light dims as it slows down, so you think that it's being turned out. Then Hau shoots a yellow-orange laser beam into the cloud of atoms, and the light emerges at full speed and intensity.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s518907.htm Scientists have managed to 'stop' light and then release it without any change to the photon, opening the door to a new area of physics.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/2003/73.cfm NASA-funded research at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., that literally stops light in its tracks, may someday lead to breakneck-speed computers that shelter enormous amounts of data from hackers. .... When they shot a light pulse into the cloud, it bogged down, slowed dramatically, eventually stopped, and turned off
Once Again we have " Science Religious Fanatics and their Dogma " Vs Real Science and Facts ;-)
Wow! Lot of posts. It boils down to a really simple postulation: if they indeed prove that neutrinos can move faster than light then ALL physics will be set on its ear. A century of higher math...zip! Out the window at faster than light. I, for one am incredibly glad to be alive for this! Like I started this post...WOW!
I don't get the WOW part. Is that just a mathematics thing? I mean, even if confirmed, it's an extremely tiny amount over the speed of light. Is it THAT big a deal if the theory of relativity needs a little tinkering with at the edges? That is, would it necessitate any major change in our conception of the universe?
Have these neutrinos been tested for PED's? Could be the explanation, Senate hearing anyone?
interesting
Im not a physicist but i seriously doubt we are smart enough to know very much about how anything truly works.
That's funny my wife keeps telling me that too, all the time. :-)
". . . race between photons and neutrino . . . "
Why not stage the race in space? From the ISS to a test space craft stationed at various reasonable test distances.
From what I understand, a particle acquires mass through its interaction with Higgs bosons. Only massless particles like photons are suposed to be able to travel at the speed of light (because zero times infinity is still zero). Another way of looking at this is that a photon is not affected by a Higgs field. Here's the strange part about this to me, neutrinos have small, but not zero mass - they would have to, therefore, interact with the Higgs field and obtain infinite mass as they pass through the speed of light.
Assuming that this research pans out and the neutrinos ARE moving faster than light would it also be true that they are interacting with a Higgs field in a NEGATIVE way. Think about THAT implication!
Those neutrinos are juicing, mark my words!
Gee I will be able to sleep better knowing this. (sarcasm)
for the time being we can all keep using e=mcc but the end is NEAR......and it is about time, even albert said his stuff was a theory, a lot of labs made a lot of grant money proving it to be "true", but many of us have expected the fudge factor to be vetted out as such for a long long long time....I hope they do several more proof experiments to salt this in, BEFORE the radical physical theorist philosophers get a hold of a new string and start pulling it (and our legs) again. Meanwhile, it's time to start taking harder cracks at the frame dragging theory before it completely envelopes us with yet another white coated, jack booted authoratarian enforced concept by the control freaks hell bent on trying to force us into to thinking they know best.....guess they don't, in fact I know they never did, meanwhile, back at the ranch I hope cern gets a cool method to encode data in the ole teeny 'trinos and punts yet another square box outta the relative realm.....yeeeehaaa......I nominate these guys for TWO noble prizes!!......make that three and more to follow (will explain in some other vague post).....see that all ye rich senators and congreeassy men, woman and whiners?....70 years of particle physics dominance and you all gotta drop the ball cause your favorite college buddy wants to make remote controlled airplane toys for 35 million each instead of better pressure controlled concussion proof helmuts.....I nominate senators dumbasses and dumberasses for IG-nobel prizes......food for thought, if frame dragging is greatest at the outer edge of a gravitational spin system, and we, here in the outer arm of the milky way are in THAT zone, where the heck is all the predicted time frame dragging, does that mean the MW center is like no where NEAR we THEY (see above) say it is?????.....I'll take warp six for nova scotia, scottie, now!!!
I hope you're all having a good laugh because when zombie Einstein comes back you're all going to rue this day...
bla,bla...I want warp drive.....just saying...
And God said, let there be neutrinos and there were neutrinos.
Holy sh't, does this mean God is Italian? :-)
Yawn.
Alan, you have really cost yourself a lot of credibility with this nonsense. This experiment has not passed any tests. It has just failed to find its error yet. Neutrino's are reported to have some non-zero mass, which means that they cannot move as fast as light, which also rules out faster than light. Y'all need to brush up.
Here Bobby, right from the horse's mouth:
http://public.web.cern.ch/press/pressreleases/Releases2011/PR19.11E.html
Here's an idea: instead of interpreting the results as a sequence of events for a single superluminal particle, maybe the results should be seen as a series of events of more than one particle, since neutrinos have the ability to morph from one variety to another.
True, the classical physics model of Galilean transformations has been shown not to hold at relativistic speeds, so throwing a rock forward 5 mph from a train speeding away from the train station at c-4mph will not result in the rock’s speed reach c+ 1mph relative to the train station.
But maybe the neutrino morphing should be seen as one particle going out of existence and another one coming into existence. Then, unlike the rock which existed and traversed from station to destination, the velocity of neutrinos measured at the destination point in Italy cannot be gauged using the distance from CERN to Italy because they didn’t exist at CERN.
Go neutrinos, go! You have a lot to teach those naive human researchers.
Alan Boyle:
Go look at for 10-9-11, for an explanation of why the standard interpretation of "1905 Einstein" to be some "speed limit" is just wrong. Standard interpretations of things have been wrong before, that's a demonstrated track record in science.
GWJ
Alan:
I see my previous comment got the internet address erased. Search for "exrocketman" on google, then go to the site, then scroll down to the article dated 10-9-11. There is no relativistic speed limit, only an observation limit.
GWJ
It is no wonder that the velocity of these neutinos is a tad faster at this time of the year. The farther we are from the Sun, the faster is the velocity of light. The speed of light is a composite average of every measurement taken and is therefore an average speed. As the Earth moves from perihelion to aphelion so does the speed of light vary. There has never been two determinations of the speed of light which were identical. Our measuring devices are becoming more precise in determining time in ever increasing smaller intervals. Einstein should have stated that the velocity of light is absolute for the observer at his point of observation exclusively.
NC,
The speed of light is a cosmic constant, set by the Almighty One Himself. And every physical law and theory, practically all of them, are derived from this and the other cosmic constants.
We have defined the time so that we can formulate sequencing of events (change of quantum states) in the positive time direction.
Since 1967, the second has been defined to be the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom.
This is the smaller stable interval of time we can measure and so we use it until we can improve on it.
So the speed of light is an invariant. When you think about it must be or else we would probably have a chaotic universe. The constant speed of light along with the other cosmic constants are the drivers of evolution (positive time, or positive entropy as you wish).
The animation on the video is not that good. I find it confusing as to describing what happened. Too bad there isn't a way to fire a "la-ser" simultaneously and see if neutrinos win the race !