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/

I wonder what renormalization theory has to say about relativity being only an artifact of charges and photons. That'd let charge-free particles (neutrinos, gluons, and Z [*]) exceed c. I'd suspect that it produces a different result - if only that the removal of gauge invariance should produce velocity-dependence in nuclear stability. If the OPERA result ends up being verified with all conceivable checks made (we're not close to this yet), we should definitely pop some heavy ions in a storage ring and see whether their decay rate changes (after taking relativity into account).

And of course it would require explaining the distant supernova data showing simultaneous arrival of neutrinos and light. Well, both of the models of tachyons that I've seen say that their energy peaks at speeds approximately C. If the distant supernova neutrinos are highly energetic, that would explain it... the low population of low energy photons would be indistinguishable from background, having been smeared out so far in advance of the arrival of most of them that connecting them to the event would not be a natural inference.

Alternately, there could be some sort of electroweak drag which brings them down to approximately light-speed before they accumulate a lead of more than, say, 60 ns over photons emerging from the same event. Maybe the OPERA neutrinos were initially moving much faster than c, but slowed down to c before accumulating more than a few meters' lead. Again, if this holds up, it'd be worth building a neutrino detector closer to the source (or a new source closer to the neutrino detector), perhaps much closer, to see if the speed is constant or whether the neutrinos are decelerating.

[*] but not neutrons, which contain charges, and moreover have magnetic dipoles, and can have electrical dipoles, and always have a quadrupole

And of course it would require explaining the distant supernova data showing simultaneous arrival of neutrinos and light. Well, both of the models of tachyons that I've seen say that their energy peaks at speeds approximately C. If the distant supernova neutrinos are highly energetic, that would explain it... the low population of low energy photons would be indistinguishable from background, having been smeared out so far in advance of the arrival of most of them that connecting them to the event would not be a natural inference.

The OPERA neutrinos are on the order of GeVs but the SN 1987A neutrinos were on the order of 1-10 MeV. So that doesn't work.

0prase15y

Any reason to suggest this hypothesis? (And by relativity you mean Lorentz invariance?)

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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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