FTL

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/22/science-light-idUSL5E7KM4CW20110922

An international team of scientists said on Thursday they had recorded sub-atomic particles travelling faster than light -- a finding that could overturn one of Einstein's long-accepted fundamental laws of the universe.

Antonio Ereditato, spokesman for the researchers, told Reuters that measurements taken over three years showed neutrinos pumped from CERN near Geneva to Gran Sasso in Italy had arrived 60 nanoseconds quicker than light would have done.

So, any bets on whether decision will be overturned on appeal, or if all those crusty old stories involving tachyons get a second life?

ETA:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/09/neutrinos-faster-than-light/

Were the people in Gran Sasso sure their watches were right?

a finding that could overturn one of Einstein's long-accepted fundamental laws of the universe.

Was there a similar statement in the press about Einstein's work overturning Newton's long-accepted fundamental laws?

Einstein didn't have a Large Hadron Collider to work with, but I'm sure he would have been delighted to work with data that would help him modify his theories where necessary.

I wait with bated breath to see how quickly this will be used to justify creationism...

>2 pgmcc:

*pictures scientist timing sub-atomic particles w/ a big ol' analog brass stopwatch - smiles*

What's funny is that earlier today I was just thinking about how the novel FlashForward, written in 1999, had tachyons as a crucial plot point. I was thinking it was a shame that such a fairly recent book had used a mostly discredited theory...

Of course, this isn't really a "tachyon", but someone not previously predicted (if true). It's also not an technobabble tachyon, which often involves in it traveling backwards in time (not in FlashForward, though).

Then again, the tiny time difference here doesn't actually salvage FlashForward, I'm afraid.

Hey, over a few lightyears, those nanoseconds would really add up (to minutes)!

#4 I can just hear the CERN talking clock. The guys in Gran Sasso ring up the CERN talking clock and listen to, at the next beep, it will be 2 O'Clock exactly...beep...and 1million nanoseconds.

Some years ago, New Scientist ran a similar article.
Only noticed it was the 1st of April a few days later.
Yep, up there with the "spagetti tree" disease.

I used to really annoy my colleagues at work when I would get a pad of yellow post-its, take off individual post-it pages and stick them to the whiteboard in a straight line and label it a "tacky-on beam".

:-)

I have to go now. The nice men in the white coats have managed to break open the door and are bringing that lovely white jacket with the nice straps and buckles. Bye! Bye!

These guys should probably be ashamed of themselves. The result makes no sense when examined with other facts. According to the Reuters article, the neutrinos traveled 730 km and were detected at Grand Sasso 60 nanoseconds "early".

In 1987, when Supernova 1987a exploded in the Large Magellanic Cloud, the neutrino burst from the core collapse was detected at three different neutrino detectors around the world. SN1987a was approximately 168,000 light years away. If the numbers quoted in the article were correct, then a back of the envelope calculation suggests that the neutrino burst would have arrived roughly 4 years before the visible light from the supernova! I don't think so.

#10 by @fredbacon> Aren't you assuming all neutrinos are identical in properties?

I always try to take these things with the attitude that if we "knew it all" there wouldn't be any point in trying to learn more.

Also, I have this little fantasy that if FTL is indeed impossible in this universe, then by golly we would, by shear weight of will and determination, effect reality in such a way that FTL always had been possible.

Excuse me...someones at my door. Well, it seems that Peter's men in white coats are attempting to collect me as well. (out the window and down the drain pipe I go) ;-)

By definition they have the same properties. If they had different properties, then they wouldn't both be neutrinos.

Quarks are quarks too, but they can be 'up' or 'bacon'.

This may not be an entirely true statement.

By definition they have the same properties.

Yes, but there may be a difference in transmission speed between free vacuum and solid rock....

Not true anyway; there are three different types of neutrino known.

So, in reference to #5, I'm wondering if the tachyons in Watchmen are of the "real" or "psychobabble" variety. Anyone?

Yes, and there are Majorana neutrinos and sterile neutrinos and antineutrinos and...well, you get the idea. Nothing about these differences would explain such a radical change in properties. I studied this stuff in graduate school. This story is absurd. It's as bad as the cold fusion flap in the late eighties.

I took a cynical attitude at the "ftl" news since I had read recent articles where "they" were thinking that the God particle, Higgs boson, should have already shown itself at the energies used at cern and other atom smashers actually. The articles meandered about on the topic of boson-less universe theories etc.

I thought maybe the ftl story was a preemptive strike; way to justify the expense of CERN . if they can't fabricate a god particle, at least they didn't make any black holes!

Yes, and there are Majorana neutrinos and sterile neutrinos and antineutrinos and...well, you get the idea.

Except, you know, there aren't. If they're Majorana particles (which isn't known), then there are no (distinct) antineutrinos. There may or may not be "sterile" neutrinos; who knows? But there are three experimentally-verified types of neutrino.

The CERN result is well within the margin of error for slower-than-light neutrinos (six standard deviations). Claim there are unrecognized error sources if you want; that may well be the case; but it's silly to go calling it "absurd" without further evidence (some of the statements in the Wired article, etc., are absurd, granted)

18> I'm guessing these people who do research running neutrino detectors just might have had a physics class or two as well. I think the result could very well be shown to be an error (or simply not consistently reproducible, which amounts to the same thing). But I always get a chuckle out of people who come up with the "obvious" counterproof in five minutes without ever thinking that maybe they might have already thought of it, too.

What people are not realising is that, because of the distance between CERN and Gran Sasso, the neutrino beam is actually travelling underground.

It is obviously passing through a section of a Tibetan Monks' tunnel. Some of these tunnels are known to contain time machines and this will be what is causing the anomaly. QED

What people are not realising is that, because of the distance between CERN and Gran Sasso, the neutrino beam is actually travelling underground.

(Hey! *I* caught that, up at #15.

I can't figure why that should increase a neutrino's speed - let alone make it superluminal - but I at least noticed it.)

'Tibetan tunnels' makes as much sense as the rest of the discovery. Oh, wait: "...arrived 60 nanoseconds quicker than light would have done." What's the value of c in solid rock?

Slower than vacuum, I bet.

*I* caught that, up at #15.

Yes. Yes you did. You didn't realise the importance of the Tibetan Monks' tunnels though, did you? Did you!?!

What's the value of c in solid rock?

I've been in some caves in my time, pretty damn dark down there. I'd say it gets slowed down quite a bit. If it got speeded up, underground caves would all be like an 80s disco!

c represents the speed of light in a vacuum, so it's the same in solid rock as anywhere else :)

The 'speed of light' (obviously not visible light) in solid rock is only a small fraction of c, but I doubt that confused them much :)

I've been in some caves in my time, pretty damn dark down there. I'd say it gets slowed down quite a bit. If it got speeded up, underground caves would all be like an 80s disco!

No, it's dark because the light has already been and gone before you got there. And then it probably went back in time and was an 80s disco! QED. Or QCD.

...already been and gone before you got there.

I always get to the party too late!

...went back in time and was an 80s disco!

But we're talking FTL, so for the observer in the cave it would be a 2080s disco. I wonder if my flared jeans will be back in fashion.

I remember a story at school about the men of Harleck. They built a town hall without windows. The Mayor solved the problem by getting a team of men to stand outside with sacks open to the sun. They then closed up the sacks and carried them into the town hall where the opened the sacks and emptied out the light that had obviously filled the sacks when outside.

Marvelous idea.

Yes, I got away from the men in white coats. Randal distracted them for a moment and I escaped.

Sounds more like an Irish story than a Welsh one :)

It was actually Welsh. There was a whole raft of stories about those men. I suspect they were written by an English man.

PS Your comments have been noted in my little book.

"Neutrinos come in a number of types, and have recently been seen to switch spontaneously from one type to another.

The team prepares a beam of just one type, muon neutrinos, sending them from Cern to an underground laboratory at Gran Sasso in Italy to see how many show up as a different type, tau neutrinos.

In the course of doing the experiments, the researchers noticed that the particles showed up a few billionths of a second sooner than light would over the same distance.

The team measured the travel times of neutrino bunches some 15,000 times, and have reached a level of statistical significance that in scientific circles would count as a formal discovery
"
From the BBC which at least answers the 'type' of Neutrino question.

Also in Nature which is less likely to carry soundbites. With an interesting comment:
"
Sixty Nanoseconds corresponds to a distance error of only about 20 meters.

Given all the complexities of the problem (Rotation of the Earth, non-uniformity of Earths gravitational field, etc) I would imagine that it's very hard to actually measure the shortest path over 730 km
"
ETRA Also contains a link to the Paper - rather than third hand news sources. here

I'd continue to put the FTL devices in the 'not true' category for a while yet. If (and it's a massive IF) this can be confirmed by another team, then we're talking.

Even if it is 'confirmed by another team', I suspect that the amount of carry-on baggage will be limited for quite some time.

So why did nobody ever turn up to Professor Hawking's Time Traveller Party?

The Nature story is probably the one to read; ordinary news organizations are very bad at covering science. I don't think the researchers are claiming FTL, but giving up on figuring out the problem within the team, and opening it up to the rest of the community. Almost certainly it's not FTL (why such a small increment over c?), but it might be something else interesting, e.g. problems with synchronizing clocks.

That's interesting right there. Science has a general problem that positive results get published and known, but cases where something seems not to work don't. People learn about those cases through personal networks, maybe. This can lead to wasted effort and missed leads to interesting lines of inquiry. So it's good that they went public - though in such a big experiment the problem would probably leak out anyway.

Almost certainly it's not FTL

I wouldn't put money on it being FTL.

why such a small increment over c?

If it wasn't small, it would have been seen earlier. Actually, there have been similar results before, but with a wide enough margin of error that a slower-than-light result was likely. This time, a slower-than-light result is six standard deviations out from the central value, assuming they didn't screw up royally.

And of course "XKCD"

Whatever the case, I love these accounts as they are grist to the mill if you're a SciFi author!

reading_fox wins the thread, I think. Very impressive of Munroe to cover this so quickly.

The neutrinos from SN1987A traveled so far that had they been moving that much faster than light, they would’ve arrived here almost four years before the light did. However, we saw the light from the supernova at roughly the same time as the neutrinos (actually the light did get here later, but it takes a little while for the explosion to eat its way out of the star’s core to its surface, and that delay completely accounts for the lag seen).

But I wouldn’t use that argument too strongly; perhaps this experiment creates neutrinos in a different way, or the neutrinos from this new experiment have different energies than ones created in the cores of supernovae (a good bet). Still, it’s enough to make me even more skeptical of this FTL claim.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/09/22/faster-than-light-trav...

If only he'd studied physics in grad school, maybe he'd know how absurd it is to think the differences in neutrino types have anything to do with this, eh fredbacon? ;)

Uh, he agrees with me.

You must have skimmed over the "but I wouldn't use this argument too strongly" part. You know, the argument you used to say they should probably be ashamed of themselves"?

When I heard about this my heart rate literally elevated. I guess I may be a geek but the implausibility of distant space travel without faster than light velocities seemed kind of depressing (although even if Newtonian mechanics were relevant at high speeds far range space travel still would be highly implausible).

>2 pgmcc: "Was there a similar statement in the press about Einstein's work overturning Newton's long-accepted fundamental laws?"

The press always loves to exaggerate anything particularly when it comes to scientific findings that contradict commonly accepted theories. Newtons laws are still relevant for everyday situations and Einstein if anything, modified more than overturned Newtons work. If these new findings are correct then likely the same thing will happen to Einsteins work by other scientists. My physics professor suggested that Einstein never applied Special Relativity to leptons such as neutrinos so there may not even be a contradiction here with his theory of special relativity (do not know how reliable that is he just suggested it in passing before class when asked about the new findings).

I hope this ends up showing that, yes, you can build faster-than-light space ships. But, you know, only a teensy bit faster than light!

Hey, lightspeed ships would make me more than happy.

only a teensy bit faster than light!

I suppose your right, relatively speaking.

FordStaff@41,

I've always found the lightspeed limit to make for more dramatic SF - The Odyssey and all that, not that Homer is a modern SF writer, of course.

I'll settle for Lightspeed© briefs.

The prospect of being restricted to slower-the-light travel for the duration is almost too horrible to endure. Such a scenario, in the absence of radically extended lifetimes, would probably result in humanity remaining in the general neighborhood. That would suck big time. So would generation ships and sleeper ships.

I'd much rather imagine humanity spreading through the galaxy like an especially aggressive necrotizing fungus.

Regarding the research paper on FTL neutinos: Boy that's a lot of second authors! (In neurosci. I've maybe seen 10 just once). I sure hope they snugged that up nice and tight, because if the first and corresponding authors were sloppy there's gonna be a lot of researchers stupid looking.

Last year there was a paper on some extremophiles that where supposedly using arsenic in place of phosphorus in their DNA. I believe that was refuted.

Is it yet generally acepted that neutrionos have mass?

Pretty sure they have very little mass and no charge. That's why the can pass through planets with only a small percentage actually interacting with anything. Hence the huge detectors of heavy water far underground. The chance collision with (a nucleus?) produces a detachable photon.

Well, even a teensie weensie bit of mass is significant!

I was more fascinated by the idea they (the neutrinoes)
were "tunninling" through some of the extra dimensions proposed by String Theory.
Guess I'll have to wait a few years before the theorists catch up on that idea.

It's time we raised the light speed limit. Pass the damn bill!

Aye!

Lousy fatcats.

Those jerks. Probably just think theyre protecting big oil by keeping the limit down...

>45 dukedom_enough:

"FordStaff@41,

I've always found the lightspeed limit to make for more dramatic SF - The Odyssey and all that, not that Homer is a modern SF writer, of course."

I was not bashing science fiction that does not have faster than light travel. There are many advantages to science fiction with no faster than light travel.

The reason I find it depressing is that in reality we may be confined to a very limited volume of space which makes it unlikely we will find other intelligent life (or just any life I suppose). Oddly enough some of my favorite SF involves no intelligent aliens (hell not even intelligent robots) and only humans such as the Foundation Trilogy or Firefly (not to say there is no SF with aliens or robots I really like, just works out that my very top tier of favorite SF does not have them FTL or not).

I should mention I do not necessarily think that contact between different sentient beings would turn out well. Perhaps it is a very good thing sentient beings may be limited in their expansion. However in this case curiosity prevails. Our expiration date is fairly short-term so it seems to me worth the increased complexities/risks to see the other beings who co-inhabit the universe with us.

Tim at #42: I hope this ends up showing that, yes, you can build faster-than-light space ships. But, you know, only a teensy bit faster than light!


There's an sf story someplace - the name of which escapes me, of course - where physicists FINALLY discover a workable wormhole technology.

And find that the much longed-for wormhole travel is actually SLOWER than light.

56 AsYouKnow_Bob: Yeah. I think its a short story.

Just assuming that it is possible to get neutrinos to go FTL. That is little help to we highly organized collections of electrons, protons, and neutrons. However, demonstration of a particle going FTL would be important for reasons other than transporting us fleshbags.

My money is on the exploitation of loop holes: worm holes and especially Alcubierre drive


Space is compressed in front of the ship and the debt paid after the ship: The warp-drive bubble. c is never violated locally.

> 57. What would happen if the ship did a u-turn inside the warp bubble? Or even a hard right-turn

#58: I'm no warp drive engineer, but I imagine it is analogous to asking: What would happen to your car if you made a hard right turn but left the tires where they had been? Probably smashed tin can n' raspberry jam :-)

Mmmm. Raspberry jam.

58> Would there be any "where" to turn right to?

It would be cool, but how many light years are we from the nearest earth like planet?

60 > There's always a Starbucks where you least exect it.

>62 A.G.Claymore: There's always somebody who wants to put a downer on the whole adventure! :)

Besides, the service is better at IHOP (Intergalactic House of Pancakes!)

#63 IHOP (Intergalactic House of Pancakes!)

Is that the restaurant at the end of the universe?

No, that's Milliways (on the site of Frogstar World B). Well, that's one of them anyway. Perhaps there's a whole restaurant precinct at that end of the universe.

If we can learn how to modulate the FTL neutrino stream, one of the uses may be to make reservations at Milliways!

Of course, at the other end of the universe, there is the Big Bang Burger Bar. Again, there may be others.

"New trinos for even newer trinos."

"Neutrino who?"

"Neutrino"

"Who's there?"

"Knock, knock."

You forgot the punchline:

"New trinos for even newer trinos."

You must be in the wrong time stream, Noisy!

I read somewhere that if you were to shine a flashlight down a sufficiently long wormhole that double back to the place you were that the light would appear before you actually turned the flashlight on.

But what if you then didn't turn it on?

Yeah. Its crazy.
Free will anyone?

Free Willy!

I'm not gay myself, you understand, but some of my friends...

>61 A.G.Claymore: Perhaps only 36 light years!

http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=exoplanet-looks-potenti...

57, 61, 73> My math is a little...let's say "rusty", 'K...but I don't see a mathematical limitation to speed using the Alcubierre Metric, so a 36 LY trip (or 100, 0r 1,000) might be nothing if you have good engineers. Really, really good engineers.

#74: I thinks its a matter of energy need. Perhaps a sufficiently robust Higgs field based generator.

But what if you then didn't turn it on?

You can't do that :)

76: Yeah. Wikipedia rules. Great resource.

So, if you went back in time and saved someone from the Titanic sea wreck that would violate the principle, but going back and saving a used paper napkin from the garbage is OK. Hmmmm. My brain hurts.

Yeah, as I once mentioned on another SF thread on LT,
I do wonder about say a "gold tooth" (showing my age here, OK a Titanium Hip replacement for the whipper snappers) Well... Those atoms are now in 2 places simultaneously when the hero goes back in time.
And if she goes back far enough, they are just quarks in a brew. Many light years away.

Yes lots of paradoxes for us "boys and girls" to wonder over.

Guido.

Tomorrow is too far by James White has a great paradox in it.

The protagonist is being prepared for a space launch. There has been talk of travelling back in time by going...can't remember all details...but that's not important right now.

What is important is that he is ready for the launch and can't understand why everybody is delaying. All of a sudden there is a space capsule spotted in the sky. It lands within sight of the launch site; a space-suited figure climbs out and waves to the flight controllers who then proceed with the launch telling our astronaut to be sure and wave to them whenever he lands.

The had been waiting for him to land and let them know he was ok before they launched him on his journey.

And James White is a way better resource than Wikipedia.

79> I seem to remember an Excellent Adventure that had something along those lines.

#80
Be excellent to each other!

Rock on, Dudes!

Experimentalists Aren't Idiots: The Neutrino Saga Continues

But, but, but - my explanation for their error depends on them being idiots! You mean I actually have to have in depth knowledge of the subject to actually refute them, rather than a hastily composed internet post echoing other hastily composed internet posts? Outrageous!

We all know that a quick read of some websites is all a person ever needs!

I think there is always a tendency, even pressure to put to frame the results into title and abstract of scientific results in an interesting way. The first author should have known that for this subject the media would have run with it with the risk of being made to look foolish. The general rule of thumb seems to be publish publish publish with it being the community understands how things are done.

The bartender says "Hey, we don't serve neutrinos here!"

A neutrino walks into a bar

(Not sure where I got that. Credit goes to some unremembered source)

thanks. Interesting. I'll have to read it later. I wonder if the LHC is equiped to perform the same experiment. CERN is no hack operation.

This is OT because it does not concern FTL but it does concern the Casimir effect sometimes invoked in SF.

This group has demonstrated photons from vacuum (virtual pairs have been theorized to be created in vacuum). Here's the link

Here's some follow-up on the supraluminal neutrino deal. I really like what hey said about the OPERA group.

Here's the link .

Of course if the neutrinos were traveling through one or more hidden dimensions light speed would be conserved and the energy of the pion decay would not be an issue.

The OPERA group is doing a great job and proceeding cautiously. The Standard Model has been showing cracks for years and the latest results from CERN are showing up cracks in SUSY. We live in interesting times.

Current news points to a bad cable connection, and maybe some GPS problems, not superliminal neutrinos.

The sysadmins hereabouts will be shaking their heads and muttering "always check the cables!"

Yeah, but you're assuming that's a source of error. Maybe starships of the future will have very, very loose cables.

Damb,

In all my FTL space ship designs *patents pending*
I just suddenly realized that "the cables are too tight"

Thank you Jim err Tim.

Hey, maybe LT will run better if someone loosens a few of the connections on the server. Less spam, fewer interpersonal conflicts, even more early review copies...

They tell me I have a few loose cables, but I still can't run FTL.
Although as a boy I did run in slow motion while going "Nah na na na naaa" like the bionic man...