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The CERN Neutrinos to Gran Sasso experiment sends muon neutrinos through a tunnel at the French-Swiss border in the direction of a detector in Italy, more than 450 miles away. One of the group's experiments, known as OPERA, turned up evidence that neutrinos may travel faster than light.
This year, particle physicists are aiming to get definitive answers to the questions that consumed them last year: Does the Higgs boson, potentially the final fundamental piece of the Standard Model puzzle, actually exist? Could there be new physics beyond the Standard Model, which is arguably the most successful scientific theory of the 20th century?
And just as importantly, can neutrinos really fly faster than light, as findings from Italian lab suggested last year?
"I have difficulty to believe it, because nothing in Italy arrives ahead of time." Sergio Bertolucci, research director at Europe's CERN particle physics center, joked today during a scientific meeting in Vancouver, Canada.
Physicists recapped the past year's results and looked ahead to the next year during sessions at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science — and if their expectations come to pass, 2012 could be a big year for textbook editors.
First, about those neutrinos: Experiments conducted by the OPERA collaboration at CERN on the French-Swiss border and at Italy's Gran Sasso National Laboratory clocked particles traveling the 450 miles (732 kilometers) between the labs at speeds slightly higher than the speed of light. That would run counter to a century's worth of special-relativity experiments, which has led most scientists to suspect some subtle factor went unaccounted for in the experiment. However, the skeptics haven't yet shown definitively where where the OPERA scientists went wrong, which "means that essentially they've done their job," Bertolucci said.
He said there were five efforts under way to re-examine or replicate the OPERA team's experimental results. One such effort would involve the MINOS neutrino experiment headquartered at Fermilab in Illinois. Rob Roser, a staff scientist at Fermilab, said the neutrino test required the installation of more sensitive detection equipment, and now that the equipment is ready, data would be collected in April. The results of the replication efforts should be in hand by the end of the year.
The faster-than-light effect is so subtle that physicists would find it hard to accept even if a similar effect is detected by other experiments. But Bertolucci recalled that similarly unexpected results from the Michelson-Morley experiment, more than a century ago, eventually led to Albert Einstein's revolutionary work on relativity.
"We have to just keep an open mind," Bertolucci said.
Quest for the Higgs
The discovery of the Higgs boson, the particle that could explain the phenomenon of mass and masslessness, is the year's other coming attraction in particle physics. For the past few years, Fermilab's Tevatron and CERN's Large Hadron Collider have been in friendly competition to pick up the first hints of the particle's existence. And even though the Tevatron was shut down last September, the teams analyzing the last of their results could still "steal Sergio's thunder," Roser said.
Roser, who is the leader of the Tevatron's CDF collaboration, said scientists were in the "final throes" of data analysis and would announce their results relating to the Higgs boson at a March conference in Italy.
"We will be able to say something interesting, though whether it's that we don’t see it or we do see it remains to be seen," he said.
Late last year, the LHC teams said they saw hints that the Higgs boson might exist at a mass-energy level of 125 billion electron volts, or 125 GeV. Those hints were too tentative to count as a discovery, however, and it sounds as if the same might hold true for the Tevatron results. Roser said he and his colleagues think the Tevatron's detectors could spot a 125 GeV Higgs boson at a 3-sigma confidence level — which is short of the standard for a discovery.
Bertolucci repeated his view that the LHC will determine "by the end of 2012" whether or not the type of Higgs boson predicted by the Standard Model exists. Workers are due to clear out of the LHC's underground tunnels next week, and after a cooldown period, the collider will once again start shooting proton beams into detectors at 99.999999 percent of the speed of light.
Bertolucci said the LHC has grown "from an infant to a very, very healthy teenager" over the past year, and CERN's plans call for the beam energies to be ramped up from 3.5 trillion to 4 trillion electron volts this year.
The Higgs boson ranks as one of physics' most famous "known unknowns," Bertolucci said. "But we hope for unknown unknowns," he added. 2012 could be the year that the LHC points to new physics beyond the Standard Model, perhaps having to do with supersymmetry, mini-black holes or extra dimensions.
If the Higgs is found, that would confirm once again that the Standard Model provides the correct description of the subatomic world, and physicists would rejoice. But Bertolucci said "I would be more excited if we don't find it."
"If the Higgs mechanism is not there, another mechanism must be there," he explained. It turns out that particle physicists, like fans of detective novels, love a mystery.
Closing in on the W boson
While we're waiting for the next chapter in the Higgs quest, Fermilab's scientists are getting ready to unveil yet another piece of the subatomic particle puzzle. They'll announce the latest estimate of the mass of the W boson on Feb. 23, Roser said. That's significant, not only because it helps nail down another key value in the Standard Model, but also because an accurate measurement of the W boson can tell physicists more precisely where to look for evidence of the Higgs boson. Symmetry magazine illustrates the point with plush toys in a vise.
More on the frontiers of physics:
- Higgs vs. hype: A mini-guide
- Faster-than-light neutrinos pass test
- Can physicists crack the big puzzle?
- What's a boson? Tour the particle zoo
- Special report on the Big Bang Machine
- Search msnbc.com for the Higgs boson
- 'Virtually Speaking Science': Podcast on weird physics
More from the AAAS meeting in Vancouver:
Alan Boyle is science editor at msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding the Cosmic Log Google+ page to your circles. 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:
Man, those sweet Bosons give me such a Hadron.
moron.
Very funny, Matt. :-D
The Higgs is a figment of physicists overactive imaginations.
The Higgs does not exist.
What does exist is errors in our current understanding of the universe.
Our fundamental understanding of the universe is flawed in some way.
We now have mathematical equations that give bizarre results using our current theories.
And too many physicists have been led down this path of creating concepts like Higgs, dark matter, dark energy in order to try and shoehorn our current theories to match the experimental observations.
We need to revisit our assumptions.
...lead the way.
You should really revisit your assumptions.
Another toll and you have all the answers.
Hey! 1776 BC.....they've imaged the gravitational effects of dark matter during the interactions of Galaxy mergers. You can get back to your flat earth map now.
>>...proton beams into detectors at 99.999999 percent of the speed of light.
Using some simple maths, it says that the proton gains 50 million times more mass at 99.99999 % of speed of light than when they are at rest. Or time passes 50 million times more slowly than our everyday clock. So if the proton thinks that 1 year has passed by it's clock, 50 million years would have passed on Earth.
Oh yes, isn't this an exciting year in particle physics? I like many others, look forward to watching this fascinating drama unfold in Europe.
Sorry, I stand corrected. The factor is 7000 times and not 50 million.
I get 10,000, please provide formula.
For half the square root of 2 a Kingdom was lost.
m=mo/root(1-(v*v/c*c))
v/c = .99999999
Well, it could be the case that light travels through 3 dimensions warped by the presence of mass, while the neutrinos are travelling through 3 dimensions that are not warped by mass. The result is neutrinos taking a slightly shorter path than light, thus appearing to travel slightly faster than light.
I still think the OPERA experiment has the wrong metric. After all, they're attempting to compare the travel time of neutrinos along a path that light itself cannot travel! Which version of c are they using? The free-space value? The value of c in glass or water?
One question is: what if the Great Secret of the Universe is at such a scale that it is, as a practical matter, interesting but useless information to the human race? The 'fundamental' particles of matter may be as limitless as the stars in the universe. The word 'infinite' is used a lot in the scientific community, but how many really have a grasp of what that means.
about as many that have a grasp on "eternal life"...
What have we already gains from the voyage so far? A lot! Quit being such a caveman.
Notice the lack of arrogance and hype about "WIMPs", "sparticles", "extra-dimensions", "strings",...?
That is because so far the LHC has turned up:
no string/brane exotica, no sparticles, no WIMPs, no supersymmetry exotica, no extra-dimensions, no mini-black holes, no Randall-Sundrum 5-D phenomena (gravitons, K-K gluons, etc.), no porker Higgsy [so far just mystery bumps], no evidence for ADS/CFT duality, no colorons, no leptoquarks, no lazy photons, ...
One wag put it thusly: "The Europeans spent 10 billion dollars on the LHC in order to get rid of 40 years of bad theoretical physics." Well, if we finally get rid of the Platonic garbage, it will be money well spent, and none too soon.
It's funny reading nonphysicists' comments, about how things that they do not understand, should be correct based on nothing more than a feeling. There are millions of human beings on this planet that will never know how Nature works, but insist that it should be simple enough for them to understand.
The combination of arrogance and ignorance is colossal. Even more astounding is that the very same commenters are able to spout their nonsense, using technology that they do not understand, let alone could not have invented, were it not for the scientific community that they have such contempt for.
Luckily, civilization marches on, driven by modern science and reason, leaving the hapless to their roadside sermons of progressive denial. This is what gives me hope for the future, that the march of knowledge will be more or less independent of those that do not recognize it.
Nicely put sir
Reading some of the comments gave me a huge headache. Somehow theoretical physics, especially the physics of cosmology, and despite the ubiquity of advanced mathematics, is magically accessible to any layperson who has five minutes to think about the subject. And after five minutes of deep introspection, these people suddenly have a more informed opinion than the leading researchers. From the perspective of someone with a scientific background, I'm not sure whether I should find it humorous or depressing that someone can be that misinformed.
I'm a "non-physicist" too ... and can barely grasp the concept of the article. But I agree with your comments. I wish I DID understand the technology I'm typing on and I'd love for this research to someday pave the way for deep space exploration.
Tom Don't: Excellent perspective. That about sums it up. I think many people fear what they can't comprehend and go on a mindless attack.
Tom Don't, I respectfully point out that opposite of your argument is also true that, some researchers who have some knowledge believe they have all the knowledge and have the authority to decide what is right and wrong, such as the Church did when they burned heretics and almost burned Galileo for challenging their knowledge and authority.
jnessler I must respectfully point out that you don't know what your saying. Everything a working scientist puts forth is scrutinized. Those that act as you say are quickly recognized as such. One work in not performed in a vacuum. There is peer review and scrutiny. This is the nature of science. Don't confuse it with religion.
There's a tunnel at the end of the light.....
Well, here are two simple facts to ponder.
(1) After 40 years of heroic efforts, billions of dollars, and many false-positives, not a single hypothetical "WIMP" dark matter particle has ever been observed.
(2) After dominating theoretical physics for over 40 years, string theory still cannot offer a formal background-independent theory, and this Ptolemaic pipe-dream has yet to offer a single definitive scientific prediction.
These are verifiable facts.
The question is: Have we learned anything from our decades-long deviation from evidence-based, predictions/testing science in the field of theoretical physics?
Or are we happy with our celebrity fizzicists and their fashionable pseudo-science?
Reminds me of the arguments of Alfred Lande, Nobel Prize winning German scientist in the thirties.
"Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are a Jewish plot against good empirical German science"
I thought all those guys disappeared, Guess not.....too bad!
Alan Boyle, The Italians did not measure any neutrinos traveling faster than light. If neutrinos have any mass at all, which they apparently do, that means that they cannot even travel as fast as light. Your willingness to publish this drivel, even though you are only technically just repeating their nonsense, in order to generate traffic and clicks on your web site, tells people exactly where your knowledge of physics is. I am "unliking" this page on my Facebook page. I still will read it, in the same way people read the National Enquirer, privately, without telling others.
Bob, I realize you are all kinds of superior to all of us, but the jury is still out on the FTL neutrinos and it remains a legitimate discussion. Scientists have studied the experiments and have not found any obvious flaws. That doesn't mean the conclusions are true, but it does mean that your insulting, arrogant incivility is somewhat unwarranted.
Many people agree with you, but the results are nearly compelling. We need to find out. I feel they will find that there was a mistake, but if there isn't a mistake...then we do have some new physics to deal with.
Science does not stand still!
If they find out they were mistaken about the Higgs (or that it isn't where they looked), its still good. The data found will have ramifications in other ways/areas. How so will become apparent to physicists through time.
It was, I believe, in 1947 Bell Labs came up with the transistor. They had no idea what it could be used for-and sold the patent to the Japanese. We know how well the implications of the transistor turned out.
Its also possible they'll determine the technology doesn't yet exist to confirm or refute the solution(s) to the question(s) they have. Its also possible they'll find answers to questions they never thought to ask.
As for expecting the physics to be understandable to the layman is silly. In effect, they're two different languages. Perhaps in a few decades words and descriptors will generate some understanding of now current events. Such always lags the event(s).
As an example; consider what would happen if a 1970's book on televisions were to land in the hands of a late 1700's scientist-or worse a farmer. Such gives an idea of the existing gulf.
@jock59801 Jock I was not trying to be arrogant or uncivil and I am not all kinds of superior (just one or two kinds at most). The jury is not out on the Italian Gran Sasso results. There is no jury because there is no case. The only question is where the errors lie, of the hundreds of places they could be. My initial comments remain. Neutrino's cannot physically travel at light speed if they have even infinitesimal mass. The do have some mass it seems, so no light speed travel for them, and no FTL (faster than light) travel either. See, I'm smiling, even though I'm still disappointed with Mr. Boyle for posting known drivel just to get some hits on his page.
Bob, why is it impossible for them to? Are you saying that the Theory of Relativity cannot be wrong? Part of science is always questioning prior truths and assumptions to find out if they are still correct. You would not make a very good scientist.
Geowil - I was/am only saying that the Italian Gran Sasso experiment is wrong. I hope and expect that superluminal speeds are possible. I am anxiously awaiting the next theory beyond Einstein. That theory, when it arrives, will not prove Herr Einstein wrong, but will incorporate his ideas in a greater concept, just as Einstein incorporated Newton's ideas. But it will not be Superstrings either, but that's not actually a theory anyway.
Bob, it's mathematically possible for the relativistic mass of an object going faster than light to have a real and positive number...but its rest mass would have to be a multiple of the square root of -1. We don't know what that would mean in terms of physics, but it's irrelevant as such an object could clearly never be at rest to any slower than light observer.
Now, any kind of tachyonic neutrinos (or any other particle) do lead to a lot of other problems that would have to be worked out, but anyone even remotely familiar with quantum physics already knows that Nature doesn't care about human notions of what's easy or intuitive. What matters here is only what you can experimentally or observationally show. That's how we got quantum physics, the data forced us there. Nobody would have thought this up on their own. Likewise, this could be the first* definite observation of something going FTL and all the complications it could raise...whether we like it (and whether you like it) or not.
So, either find an error in their observational method (as they explicitly asked others to do....the CERN folks understand what Sagan said about extraordinary claims), or sit down and deal with it. Simply saying 'It's wrong because it can't be right,' and 'I don't want to look any more' is not an answer...
* In the 90's, there was a solar neutrino experiment once suspected of detecting FTL neutrinos (the nature of the experiment was such that it gave the square of the particle mass value...but it seemed to be occasionally giving negative values, with all that implies) but that one was considered highly controversial, uncertain, and isn't widely known...
I agree with Frank. The theory of relativity predicts that faster than light travel of real particles is impossible, but theories in general are inherently inaccurate as we humans have not observed and are not capable of observing all phenomena. If there are no problems found in the Gran Sasso experiment, and the experiment is repeatable, then are theories will need to be modified in order to allow for the observance of faster than light travel. I personally believe that there is likely some flaw in the experiment and that neutrinos can not travel faster than light, however we will not know for sure until we try to repeat the experiment a few times.
Very poor choice of words. I know what you're trying to convay but that is incorrect.
regarding " So if the proton thinks that 1 year has passed by it's clock, 50 million years would have passed on Earth."
Please, the only thing it'll do is stir up helluva lot of dust going that fast.
One of the many silliest things i've ever heard!
Although his numbers were off, the principle is correct. If you think it's silly you are establishing that your opinion is worthless as you don't understand anything about the physics.
Yes...your opinion is worthless.. Sorry, but you have to do your homework before anybody should listen to you.
Humanbehave, if you wish to see an example of the relativity of time, you need only look at the GPS unit in your car. Global positioning satellites have on board atomic clocks which measure the course of time by the decay of certain radioactive substances. These clocks have to be corrected in order to be in sync with clocks on Earth. Time is relative.
Physicists---Just keep doing what you do. Just please be very careful (as most of you are) about what you announce or promote and the wording you use, so as not to stimulate the trolls.
Everybody else---unless you can prove you have an advanced degree (or lacking that, scientific proof that YOUR theory is right), STFU.
well, so slow, so very!! slow on getting this huge monster tech to work and then to get it to even run??..but,,, here we are,,, and some of the data is compelling to say the least,..but? we must always be aware that the mere fact of one or more of us observing any! experiment, alters the outcome of that experiment,,, and the larger the numers in play? the more this effect happens,,,when we get to sub sub sub atomic levels??..this can be a problem when attempting to understand outcomes,,"strings" can! be altered by looking at them, is a simpler way to read this,,I think,,, with the recent development of quantum computing, and it is almost a form of AI,,,that this is going to change and!! cheapen these experiments and make many many such questions?.. reality,,,we just dont have the brain power to "see" these things,,, and putting AI into the reading of the dataand the creation of the experiments?] will remove the "quantum effect" on the data,,,and then perhaps?? we may see some stunning solutions appear,,, and I suspect, and I dont think I am alone here,,, that most of it is going to be of the "that is so simple, why didnt I think of that"...variety,,,BTW re "infinity".. I can "see" this,,so can others,,, it is not!! impossible to grasp and or understand, for some,,truth is, we dont and wont really know what we are capable of, until we try,..and even then,, understanding these things and "seeing" them is not quite the same pair of sleeves,,,is it??..
The mark of true genius is realizing we know nothing. I think we may have only scratched the surface when it comes to our knowledge of the universe and how it all works.
So much of accepted science "fact" today, seems to be that which, not too many years ago, was shunned by the mainstream science community. Maybe neutrinos can move faster than light and maybe not? Maybe there is a Higgs boson and maybe there isn't? Perhaps dark matter and dark energy are today's version of "aether?" The only way we will know, for sure, is to continue questioning and searching.
The only thing I am absolutely sure of when it comes to science is that as soon as we think we know everything about a subject and give up any further experimentation and research, that will only prove that our egos have overtaken our intelligence and we have given up any claim we could have to being an intelligent society.
If you turn over the box that your hadron collider came in, the answers are on the bottom.
It is argued that this "fast neutrino" thing is similar to the Michaelson Morley experiment in its quality of surprise.
I think not, the quest here is to establish a small superluminal excess of speed for the neutrino. The MM experiment asserts that there is an exactly zero difference in the speed of propagation relative to the direction of the source.
MM is a lot easier to establish but has never been overturned. This fast neutrino is a hard thing to be sure of, especially in Italy, as it were.
Only a slight complaint on the statement: "But Bertolucci recalled that similarly unexpected results from the Michelson-Morley experiment, more than a century ago, eventually led to Albert Einstein's revolutionary work on relativity." The only ideas that Einstein really worked with were Maxwell's equations for the speed of light [they say the speed of light is a constant] and a dis-belief that the universe had a preferred reference frame [where the observer was at zero velocity in the ether -- the ether was used to make a consistent system for the constant speed of light]. Michelson-Morley experiment did not fit in all for Einstein. In fact, the explanation in the physics community at the time of M-M was that their results arose from thermal effects.
DURGADAS DATTA published a paper--MISJUDGEMENTS BY NEWTON in ASTRONOMY.NET in year 2002. He pointed out that ETHER IS DARK ENERGY. Our universe is ether soup of varying field ,non isotropic swirling and whirling taking stars and galaxies in rotation. As such both NEWTON and EINSTEIN THEORIES require correction. Newtons modified gravity equation will be F=P.G.M.m/R.R where P is factor of permeability. Ether is non isotropic field and acs such reqire a factor of permeability as in COULOMBS LAW. He even said that gravitons are monomagnetic coupling acting on matter molecule equally so that we see AVOGADROS LAW or GALILEOS EQUAL FALL ETC ETC. In his balloon inside balloon theory he said that our out side universe is antimatter and on OPPOSITE ENTROPY PATH. The common boundary is a annihilation zonw where FIVE GOD PARTICLES ARE PRODUCED --FOUR FOR FOUR FORCES AND ONE FOR MASS CREATION and injected into our universe as DARK ENERGY etc etc . He said due to opposite entropy path both these universes are re cyclic and eterna bouncing again and again and CP VIOLATION GIVES BIRTH TO TWO UNIVERSES AGAIN AND AGAIN. --durgadas.ddatta@gmail.com.