C
chase
I thought that Einstiens theory of relitivity was already disproven , when they found that the speed of light is incosistant ?
i don't believe you need to have such a massive collider, just one that generates neutrinos in sufficient numbers...
FIRST, im pretty sure you need your own Halderdon collider to 'independently verify' their results. So their 'wait for independent verification' could take A LONG TIME;there are no plans to build a larger collider.
...
By Robert Evans
GENEVA | Sun Nov 20, 2011 6:35pm EST
(Reuters) - An international team of scientists in Italy studying the same neutrino particles colleagues say appear to have travelled faster than light rejected the startling finding this weekend, saying their tests had shown it must be wrong.
The September announcement of the finding, backed up last week after new studies, caused a furor in the scientific world as it seemed to suggest Albert Einstein's ideas on relativity, and much of modern physics, were based on a mistaken premise.
The first team, members of the OPERA experiment at the Gran Sasso laboratory south of Rome, said they recorded neutrinos beamed to them from the CERN research center in Switzerland as arriving 60 nanoseconds before light would have done.
But ICARUS, another experiment at Gran Sasso -- which is deep under mountains and run by Italy's National Institute of National Physics -- now argues that their measurements of the neutrinos energy on arrival contradict that reading.
In a paper posted Saturday on the same website as the OPERA results, arxiv.org/abs/1110.3763v2, the ICARUS team says their findings "refute a superluminal (faster than light) interpretation of the OPERA result."
They argue, on the basis of recently published studies by two top U.S. physicists, that the neutrinos pumped down from CERN, near Geneva, should have lost most of their energy if they had travelled at even a tiny fraction faster than light.
But in fact, the ICARUS scientists say, the neutrino beam as tested in their equipment registered an energy spectrum fully corresponding with what it should be for particles traveling at the speed of light and no more.
Physicist Tomasso Dorigo, who works at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, and the U.S. Fermilab near Chicago, said in a post on the website Scientific Blogging that the ICARUS paper was "very simple and definitive."
It says, he wrote, "that the difference between the speed of neutrinos and the speed of light cannot be as large as that seen by OPERA, and is certainly smaller than that by three orders of magnitude, and compatible with zero."
Under Einstein's 1905 theory of special relativity, nothing can travel faster than light. That idea lies at the heart of all current science of the cosmos and of how the vast variety of particles that make it up behave.
There was widespread skepticism when the OPERA findings were first revealed, and even the leaders of the experiment insisted that they were not announcing a discovery but simply recording measurements they had made and carefully checked.
However, last Friday they said a new experiment with shorter neutrino beams from CERN and much larger gaps between them had produced the same result. Independent scientists said however this was not conclusive.
Other experiments are being prepared -- at Fermilab and at the KEK laboratory in Japan -- to try to replicate OPERA's findings. Only confirmation from one of these would open the way for a full scientific discovery to be declared.
(Reported by Robert Evans; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
SCIENCE NEWS
"Speed of light" experiment professor resigns
Posted 2012/03/30 at 7:22 am EDT
ROME, Mar. 30, 2012 (Reuters) — The Italian professor who led an experiment which initially appeared to challenge one of the fundaments of modern physics by showing particles moving faster than the speed of light, has resigned after the finding was overturned earlier this month.
Italy's national institute of nuclear physics INFN said on Friday that Antonio Ereditato had stepped down as coordinator of the so-called OPERA experiment but had no comment beyond saying it "took note" of his decision.
It was not immediately possible to reach Ereditato for a comment.
The experiment measuring the speed at which sub-atomic particles called neutrinos travelled from the CERN research centre in Geneva to Gran Sasso in central Italy at first appeared to show they had flown the 730 km stretch 60 billionths of a second faster than light.
Had it been confirmed, the finding would have disproved Albert Einstein's 1905 Special Theory of Relativity, one of the foundations of modern physics and cosmology, which holds that nothing in the universe can travel faster than light.
The result of the experiment was later called into question by separate experiments and CERN said the OPERA result appeared to be the result of a measurement error or malfunction.
(Reporting by Ilaria Polleschi, writing by James Mackenzie Editing by Maria Golovnina)
kind of surprised it resulted in a resignation, thought the observation was well presented as just that and not an outright discovery
but sometimes these events have a life of their own, everyone gets too invested in their arguments
wasn't surprised with the result, i.e. Einstein rulesIm not suprised at all. Im no quantum mechanic but....
the observation was a 60ns difference over a (relatively) short distance.
lightspeed margin of error is VERY slight.... VERY.
60ns difference would equate to a much larger separation of the detectable neutrino surge from a star and its 'visual nova event'.
If this had been found to be true, they would have had to explain why neutrinos dont arrive a lot sooner.
Occams Razor > Hickam Dictum
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