OPERA Confirms: Neutrinos Travel Faster Than Light

XiXiDu

New high-precision tests carried out by the OPERA collaboration in Italy broadly confirm its claim, made in September, to have detected neutrinos travelling at faster than the speed of light. The collaboration today submitted its results to a journal, but some members continue to insist that further checks are needed before the result can be considered sound.

Link: nextbigfuture.com/2011/11/faster-than-light-neutrinos-opera.html

The OPERA Collaboration sent to the Cornell Arxiv an updated version of their preprint today, where they summarize the results of their analysis, expanded with additional statistical tests, and including the check performed with 20 additional neutrino interactions they collected in the last few weeks. These few extra timing measurements crucially allow the ruling out of some potential unaccounted sources of systematic uncertainty, notably ones connected to the knowledge of the proton spill time distribution.

[...]

So what does OPERA find ? Their main result, based on the 15,233 neutrino interactions collected in three years of data taking, is unchanged from the September result. The most interesting part of the new publication is instead that the find that the 20 new neutrino events (where neutrino speeds are individually measured, as opposed to the combined measurement done with the three-year data published in September) confirm the earlier result: the arrival times appear to occur about 60 nanoseconds before they are expected.

Link: science20.com/quantum_diaries_survivor/opera_confirms_neutrinos_travel_faster_light-84763

Paper: kruel.co/paper-neutrino-velocity-JHEP.pdf

Previously on LW: lesswrong.com/lw/7rc/particles_break_lightspeed_limit/

New high-precision tests carried out by the OPERA collaboration in Italy broadly confirm its claim, made in September, to have detected neutrinos travelling at faster than the speed of light. The collaboration today submitted its results to a journal, but some members continue to insist that further checks are needed before the result can be considered sound.

Link: nextbigfuture.com/2011/11/faster-than-light-neutrinos-opera.html

The OPERA Collaboration sent to the Cornell Arxiv an updated version of their preprint today, where they summarize the results of their analysis, expanded with additional statistical tests, and including the check performed with 20 additional neutrino interactions they collected in the last few weeks. These few extra timing measurements crucially allow the ruling out of some potential unaccounted sources of systematic uncertainty, notably ones connected to the knowledge of the proton spill time distribution.

[...]

So what does OPERA find ? Their main result, based on the 15,233 neutrino interactions collected in three years of data taking, is unchanged from the September result. The most interesting part of the new publication is instead that the find that the 20 new neutrino events (where neutrino speeds are individually measured, as opposed to the combined measurement done with the three-year data published in September) confirm the earlier result: the arrival times appear to occur about 60 nanoseconds before they are expected.

Link: science20.com/quantum_diaries_survivor/opera_confirms_neutrinos_travel_faster_light-84763

Paper: kruel.co/paper-neutrino-velocity-JHEP.pdf

Previously on LW: lesswrong.com/lw/7rc/particles_break_lightspeed_limit/

Should we hope that the result is correct? (Please ignore the rationality problems caused by hoping for the universe to be structured in some preferred way.) Obviously, finding faster than light neutrinos makes the world more interesting but would it also mean that the laws of physics are more friendly to "beneficial technology" than we had previously believed? If you, and you alone, somehow knew that the result was correct and within a year the world would recognize this what if any stocks would you buy based on your private information?

If neutrinos are going back in time (which is only one possible explanation) then you might be able to create some pretty fancy things like Paradox Buttons that cannot be pressed and so won't be and so you can make "wishes" that the universe must satisfy... or the universe can stop you from making the button in the first place. There's a Yudkowsky video about this which he calls the Grandma Extraction Problem. Starts at the 19th minute.

Please ignore the rationality problems caused by hoping for the universe to be structured in some preferred wa

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8FiftyTwo15y

If one is willing to be purely mercenary one would invest in the sort of publishers who will soon be selling books about 'Neutrino Astrology' in the same way they currently sell ones about 'quantum healing.'

8JoshuaZ15y

Unfortunately, this research is so preliminary that there's no obvious applications that are remotely plausible even under this assumption. Detecting neutrinos is really tough. This means that one a) is going to have a lot of trouble using this to send information faster than the speed of light with any substantial bandwith (and even then you would be getting only a small fractional improvement) b) in order to violate causality to solve computational problems you generally need to be able to send back in time a number of bits that is roughly linear with the length of your problem. It is remotely plausible that similar tricks can be done with fewer bits but if so, very little has been worked out that does that sort of thing in any useful fashion and the math looks tricky. And even if that does work, the infrastructure may be so large that it might not be worth it compared to just building large computers. So the stocks that would make the most sense are simply companies that have anything to do with pure neutrino research because that is more likely to get more funding. So I'd look at what companies made the equipment for Gran Sasso, Kamiokande and IceCube and maybe buy stock in them. However, I strongly suspect that any company which is publicly traded and involved in these detectors is probably large enough that building components for neutrino research is very likely only a small segment of what they do. So even this would not be that helpful.

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OPERA Confirms: Neutrinos Travel Faster Than Light

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OPERA Confirms: Neutrinos Travel Faster Than Light

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