Posted on 03/17/2012 11:21:01 PM PDT by Olog-hai
There was definitely some excitement in the physics world last Fall when the OPERA Collaboration in Gran Sasso, Italy, announced that they had measured neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light. I’ve been skeptical of this announcement since the first day, and in the intervening months since, things have been looking worse for the measurement. This culminated last month when the OPERA Collaboration admitted that the faster-than-light measurement may have been due to a simple measurement error.
Now, in what may well be the final nail in the coffin for the claim that neutrinos travel faster than light, scientists from the ICARUS Group, which is also in Gran Sasso, have announced that they’ve measured neutrinos traveling from CERN, and determined that those neutrinos were not traveling faster than light. The ICARUS detector has been involved in the neutrino findings for several months, and last year pointed out the experimental results showed that the CERN neutrinos did not display the decay pattern expected from neutrinos traveling faster than light.
The ICARUS Detector examined data from neutrinos sent from CERN to Gran Sasso. These neutrinos were from the same pulse that were sent to OPERA, so if the neutrinos were traveling faster than light, the ICARUS detector should have measured that, as well. However, when ICARUS reviewed their data, they found that “(t)he result is compatible with the simultaneous arrival of all the seven events with the speed of light and not compatible with respect to the result reported by OPERA.” …
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
They needed this cable then the Neutrinos would have actually traveled faster than light through it!!!
http://www.amazon.com/Denon-AKDL1-Dedicated-Link-Cable/dp/B000I1X6PM
LOL. That type of cable might have worked. I cannot believe scientists would overlook something like this.
I called it as a measurement error when I read about this. You would have thought that they would have kept their mouths shut until they had absolutely verified their “findings”.
It’s like Einstein said.....it’s all relative.....and if you had relatives like him, you’d be moving pretty fast. His Uncle Carl thought he was a rutabaga.
What if the test equipment was limited by the speed of light? A neutrino went by a policeman with a radar gun. He clocked it at 180 mph. Try getting a conviction in traffic court when you tell the judge the neutrino was going faster than the speed of light. A good lawyer can get the neutrino off easy on that one. Nope, better to tell the judge the neutrino was doing 70 in a 45 zone.
That’s good to know! Laying in my cardboard box behind the soup kitchen I could hardly sleep thinking about how neutrinos might be faster than light.
Toldja
You are the exception. Most people fail to appreciate forces, ideas and events that shape their lives and their world.
Scientists overlook things and make errors all the time. The problem is, these scientists were so excited by their finding that they went public with it, before verifying their results. Probably, a grad student without much experience was involved.
Probably, a grad student without much experience was involved.
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Grant money had absolutely nothing to do with it, I swear!
The money is awarded before the research ever takes place. Making a highly publicized mistake like this is not very conducive to receiving future grants, though.
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