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.

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 moment when it's happening; unless I count myself.

From my perspective, QM is far more likely to be derived from 't Hooft's holographic determinism, and the idea of personal identity as a fungible pattern is just (in historical terms) a fad resulting from the incomplete state of our science, so I certainly regard your excitement as based mostly on an illusion. It's good that you're having exciting ideas and new thoughts, and perhaps it's even appropriate to will yourself to believe them, because that's a way of testing them against the whole of the rest of your experience.

But I still find it interesting how it is that people come to think that they know something new, when they don't actually know it. How much does the thrill of finally knowing the truth provide an incentive to believe that the ideas currently before you are indeed the truth, rather than just an interesting possibility?

From experiences back when I was young and religious, I've learned to recognize moments of satori as not much more than a high (have probably had 2-3 prior). I enjoy the experience, but I've learned skepticism and try not to place too much weight on them. I was more describing the causes for my emotional states rather than proclaiming new beliefs. But to be completely honest, for several minutes I was convinced that I had found the tree of life, so I won't completely downplay what I wrote.

How much does the thrill of finally knowing the truth provide an i

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