Particles break light-speed limit?

Kevin

http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110922/full/news.2011.554.html

http://arxiv.org/abs/1109.4897v1

http://usersguidetotheuniverse.com/?p=2169

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3027056

Ereditato says that he is confident enough in the new result to make it public. The researchers claim to have measured the 730-kilometre trip between CERN and its detector to within 20 centimetres. They can measure the time of the trip to within 10 nanoseconds, and they have seen the effect in more than 16,000 events measured over the past two years. Given all this, they believe the result has a significance of six-sigma — the physicists' way of saying it is certainly correct. The group will present their results tomorrow at CERN, and a preprint of their results will be posted on the physics website ArXiv.org.

At least one other experiment has seen a similar effect before, albeit with a much lower confidence level. In 2007, the Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search (MINOS) experiment in Minnesota saw neutrinos from the particle-physics facility Fermilab in Illinois arriving slightly ahead of schedule. At the time, the MINOS team downplayed the result, in part because there was too much uncertainty in the detector's exact position to be sure of its significance, says Jenny Thomas, a spokeswoman for the experiment. Thomas says that MINOS was already planning more accurate follow-up experiments before the latest OPERA result. "I'm hoping that we could get that going and make a measurement in a year or two," she says.

Perhaps the end of the era of the light cone and beginning of the era of the neutrino cone? I'd be curious to see your probability estimates for whether this theory pans out. Or other crackpot hypotheses to explain the results.

http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110922/full/news.2011.554.html

http://arxiv.org/abs/1109.4897v1

http://usersguidetotheuniverse.com/?p=2169

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3027056

Ereditato says that he is confident enough in the new result to make it public. The researchers claim to have measured the 730-kilometre trip between CERN and its detector to within 20 centimetres. They can measure the time of the trip to within 10 nanoseconds, and they have seen the effect in more than 16,000 events measured over the past two years. Given all this, they believe the result has a significance of six-sigma — the physicists' way of saying it is certainly correct. The group will present their results tomorrow at CERN, and a preprint of their results will be posted on the physics website ArXiv.org.

At least one other experiment has seen a similar effect before, albeit with a much lower confidence level. In 2007, the Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search (MINOS) experiment in Minnesota saw neutrinos from the particle-physics facility Fermilab in Illinois arriving slightly ahead of schedule. At the time, the MINOS team downplayed the result, in part because there was too much uncertainty in the detector's exact position to be sure of its significance, says Jenny Thomas, a spokeswoman for the experiment. Thomas says that MINOS was already planning more accurate follow-up experiments before the latest OPERA result. "I'm hoping that we could get that going and make a measurement in a year or two," she says.

This may or may not be the result of day 2 of modafinil. :) I don't think it is, because I already had most of the pieces in place, it just took that sentence to make everything fit together. But that is a data point.

Hm, a trace-debug. My thought process over the five minutes that this took place was manipulation of mental imagery of my models of the universe. I'm not going to be able to explain much clearer than that, unfortunately. It was all very intuitive and not at all rigorous, the closest representation I can think of is Feynman's thinking about balls. I'm going to have to do a lot more reading as my QM is very shakey, and I want to shore this up. It will also probably take a while until this way of thinking becomes the natural way I see the universe. But it all lines up, makes sense, and aligns with what people smarter than me are saying, so I'm assigning a high probability that it's the correct conclusion.

An upper speed limit doesn't matter - all that matters is that things are not instantaneous for locality to be valid.

A conversion experience is a very appropriate term for what I'm going through. I'm having very mixed emotions right now. A lot of my thoughts just clarified, which simply feels good. I'm grateful, because I live in an era where this is possible and because I was born intelligent enough to understand. Sad, because I know that most if not all of the people I know will never understand, and never sign up for cyronics. But I'm also ecstatic, because I've just discovered the cheat code to the universe, and it works.

I just made a long-winded addition to my comment, expanding on some of the gaps in Eliezer's reasoning.

I'm also ecstatic, because I've just discovered the cheat code to the universe, and it works.

Well, you're certainly not backing down and saying, hang on, is this just an illusory high? It almost seems inappropriate to dump cold water on you precisely when you're having your satori - though it's interesting from an experimental perspective. I've never had the opportunity to meddle with someone who thinks they are receiving enlightenment, right at the... (read more)

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