[meteorite-list] Faster Than Light Neutrinos?

From: Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2012 18:12:28 -0600
Message-ID: <102A2DBE52C349E7AD713665185B739F_at_ATARIENGINE2>

Remember thos faster-than-light neutrinos?

Well, now you can forget about them...

http://www.space.com/14654-error-faster-light-neutrinos.html

"Those famous neutrinos that appeared to travel
faster than light in an Italian experiment last September
probably did not do so after all. A faulty connection
between a GPS receiver and a computer may be
to blame for the mistake.

In September, and again in a repeat run in November,
scientists on the OPERA team had detected neutrinos
travelling from the CERN laboratory in Geneva to the
Gran Sasso Laboratory near Rome at what appeared
to be a light-speed-shattering pace. The neutrinos
completed the trip about 60 nanoseconds faster than
a beam of light would have done.

Though the physicists felt confident in their
experimental setup, they and the rest of the
scientific community suspected that the shocking
result was probably due to some error, considering
that light as the universe's speed limit is a
central tenet of Einstein's theory of special
relativity.

And indeed, in November, another group of physicists
also working at Gran Sasso Laboratory demonstrated
that the neutrinos in question could not possibly
have been traveling faster than light, because if
they had, they would have given off a telltale type
of radiation, which was not detected.

Further complicating matters, even the OPERA scientists
couldn't yet explain why the neutrinos clocked in
as fast as they did. Now, according to Science Insider,
sources familiar with the OPERA experiment say a fiber
optic cable connecting a GPS receiver and an electronic
card in one of the lab computers was discovered to be
loose. (The GPS was used to synchronize the start and
arrival times of the neutrinos).

Tightening the connection changed the time it took
for data to travel the length of the fiber by 60
nanoseconds. Because this data processing time was
subtracted from the overall time-of-flight in the
neutrino experiment, the correction may explain the
seemingly early arrival of the neutrinos. To confirm
this hypothesis, the OPERA team will have to repeat
their experiment with the fiber optic cable secured.

When OPERA announced their results in September, the
physicist and TV presenter Jim Al-Khalili of the
University of Surrey voiced the incredulity of many
in his field when he said that if the results 'prove
to be correct and neutrinos have broken the speed of
light, I will eat my boxer shorts on live TV.' It
looks as if he, for one, has been spared that level
of embarrassment."


Sterling K. Webb
Received on Wed 22 Feb 2012 07:12:28 PM PST