https://gizmodo.com/scientific-breakthrough-physicists-at-cern-have-record-5842947
So what actually happened here ? TheOPERAcollaboration has a detector in Gran Sasso Italy , about 730 km from CERN . CERN produces neutrinos in abundance , andneutrinoshave a few important properties : They are very most massless and thus , even at moderate energy , we ’d look them to go fundamentally at the speed of light . They can “ oscillate ” or change identities , which means that the mu neutrinos produced at CERN can turn into tau neutrinos which the OPERA detector is design to measure . They are very weakly interacting , which intend that they can spend through solid earth unimpeded .
https://gizmodo.com/ask-a-physicist-can-i-build-a-doomsday-machine-using-ne-5630725
Light should make the journeying from CERN to Gran Sasso in about 3 megabyte , but agree to the OPERA collaboration press exit , they are detecting the neutrinos as establish the journeying in about 60 ns less than expected .
In other Scripture , they are claiming that , unless there is some hitherto undetected systematic , neutrino are traveling quicker than scant .
A twosome of caveat :
The genuine paper does n’t seem to be up on thearXivyet , so I do n’t cognise precisely what their measurement is .
Even once it is , I ’m a theorizer , not an experimentalist , so I ’m improbable to be able-bodied to identify the systematics .
That said , I am jolly darn certain that this event is blemished . Neutrinos have mass , which is why they vibrate in the first property , so if it turned out that a massive particle could travel quicker than lighting ( and it was n’t some sort of issue with not correct for oecumenical relativistic issue or something like that ) , that would pretty much overturn special relativity .
More to the point , I have a simple calculation that reach me passing skeptical .
retrieve that the neutrino are say to beat light by about 60 ns over a travel fourth dimension of 3 ms . That ’s
Now consider a supernova explosion . In particular , considerSupernova 1987A :
This was an detonation about 160,000 unclouded years from earth . The matter is , the neutrinos and the photon from the explosion reached us at almost exactly the same time . In the cause of intellectual honestly , I take to point out that the neutrinos were discover first , by about 3 hours , but this is because the gasbag of the explosion was optically deep and the photons had to bounce around a while , while the neutrino just pour justly out .
But how much of a delay between neutrino and photon would we expect if the OPERA leave go for ?
In other words , if the gist really were this bombastic , we would have seen the neutrinos from SN 1987A way back in 1984 . Yeah , we would have noticed that .
I do n’t want to be too glib-tongued , however . There are a duo of key differences : The neutrino detected from 1987A were electron ( anti-)neutrinos , not tau neutrinos . However , since neutrinos oscillate from one flavor to another , I ’d be surprised if this was the primal remainder . The muscularity are quite dissimilar . In 1987A , neutrino energy were typically a few 10′s of MeV. The neutrino measured by OPERA are a factor of 100 high-pitched . It could very well be that this is a sensitive function of energy .
Of course , since the first moment is that neutrinos should NEVER travel quicker than light , there ’s no way to cipher what we ’d expect .
I , for one , am not going to hold my breather .
This post by Dr. Dave Goldbergoriginally appear at his web log , Users Guide to the Universe . Dr. Dave isthe co - author of A User ’s usher to the Universe : Surviving the Perils of Black Holes , Time Paradoxes , and Quantum Uncertainty . Dr. Davewrites io9 ’s “ inquire a Physicist ” column .
Top image by Jezper via Shutterstock
CERNParticle physicsPhysicsScience
Daily Newsletter
Get the best tech , skill , and polish news in your inbox daily .
News from the future , rescue to your present .
Please select your desired newssheet and subject your email to elevate your inbox .
You May Also Like
