Oscar_Cunningham comments on Particles break light-speed limit? - Less Wrong

9 Post author: Kevin 23 September 2011 11:00AM

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Comment author: Oscar_Cunningham 23 September 2011 10:38:10PM *  4 points [-]

I hadn't realised is that neutrinos have never been observed going slower than light. If they had been observed going slower than light, then finding them also going faster would be absurd, since it would require infinite energy. But if they are always tachyons then them travelling faster than c is much less problematic.

However I don't see how this explains the neutrinos from the supernova. In the paper it says that higher energies correspond to lower speeds (due to imaginary mass). The ones at CERN are 17GeV, whereas the ones from the supernova were 6.7MeV. But the difference in time for the supernova was proportionately smaller than that for the CERN neutrinos.

Comment author: DanielLC 24 September 2011 01:35:53AM 1 point [-]

Perhaps CERN's experiment was in error.

So, even if neutrinos really do go faster than light, CERN messed up.