LHC Can't Find the Higgs-Boson, But It CAN Find FTL Particles!

At least, they think they've found some!

Yeah, wait until the LHC tells you to buy a Prius, you'll be back to waving medicine sticks, and lighting human bonfires.

Meh. 60 nanoseconds at c, is, if my math isn't completely wrong, roughly 17 meters. Maybe they mis-measured the distance between the detector and emitter.

Interesting. And I recently saw some reporting that there's a little observational evidence that the speed of light might not be uniform thruout the universe . . . that different regions may have different values for C.

The goal: Le rêve d'étoiles

I doubt that it's as simple as a mis-measurement of distance. The more likely mistake is in the start time of whatever they are using as a timer. Obviously it's not a guy standing there with a stop watch but if you think about it it's similar. Say they press a button or whatever to begin the experiment. When that button is pressed the neutrinos are sent on their way and the signal to begin the timing is sent. 17 billionths of a second may be the time it take from the button press (or whatever) for the signal to be sent to the computer that is timing it and for the computer to start the timing. Perhaps on the receiving end when the neutrinos arrive there is a shorter distance for the signal to travel to stop the timer so the result is the slight delay on the front end but almost none on the back end, thus making them appear to arrive faster than they should. Rather than faster than light they might be moving exactly at light speed or only very slightly slower.

Who knows. I'm just guessing and I'd like to think that their measurement of distance would have been the very first thing they checked.

It seems almost certain this is some mistake in the experiment, but it will probably take a while before anyone figures out what that is given they spent three years working on this.

But if it's not a mistake, well, it'll be very interesting news.

I won't hold my breath.

I've a funny feeling you guys aren't going to nail the problem if there is one since they spent three years on this and can't find a problem. Also, the measurements are apparently very strong with the statisitcal significance to paraphrase Vader.

As the Head of Particle Physics at Oxford University has said in response to this: "if we don't have causality, we are buggered."

The way I have often heard it described is that modern physics doesn't actually prohibit FTL transfer of information, it in fact just says that out of special relativity, FTL, and causality, you can only pick two.

Yes I agree, we're probably not going to solve it here on WF. I was just saying I doubt it's as simple as a mismeasurement of distance since that would be one of the first things to check. I also think they checked out my simple theory as one of the first steps. Those seem to be the 2 easiest and most obvious things.

Damn it, that was my next guess. I should be getting credit for this.

From what I understand any kind of solution that uses alternate dimensions etc is still a problem because it still allows causality to be violated.

These are not good old boys working in somebody's garage. They're among the best scientists in the world, so if they say they've been trying for three years to find a mistake that would account for this I believe them. Assuming there isn't a mistake I really think the fear that the Theory of Special Relativity would be rendered irrelevant is a bit overblown. Special Relativity explains too many things too well to be totally flushed by one weird finding. My guess from a layman's standpoint is that Special Relativity may end up being modified or shown as incomplete. I also find intriguing the idea that these neutrinos were skipping through different dimensions, but that kind of conjecture is very difficult for me to follow. It is fun to see such brilliant scientists throwing up their hands and going "what the fuck?" I guess it also reinforces that good scientific research tends to raise as many, if not more, questions than it directly answers.

I think xkcd got this exactly right:

If someone had noticed the anomaly yesterday, I'd feel pretty secure saying "Yeah, it's a measurement/calibration/setup error of some kind."

But if they've spent a great deal of time looking for the source of the anomaly and can't find it? Then we could see some interesting developments come out of this.

I'm told that the distance has been accurately measured to within 20 cm, so it's not that.

That means it's exactly that, given the margins of error involved and the unlikelihood of overturning a few centuries of physics.

Until these results have been replicated a few times between different sites they're just not that interesting.

I wouldn't say that. IIRC similar results have been reported before, but the technical standards of the earlier tests weren't rigorous to be anything more than an easily dismissable anomaly. I gather that this is in an entirely different (i.e. higher) class of work. Not saying I'm buying it, but I think some interesting things will come out of this. Even if it's just a mistake that hasn't been isolated yet, chasing it down could lead to some interesting findings as well. To me, this has the look of good science: finding something interesting: trying to debunk it internally and failing that, putting it up for open examination by anyone in the world.

My understanding is that the margin of error is 10 ns and the measured difference is 60 ns, so this is more than a bit off.

Here's an excellent piece that does a great job of putting some of this in perspective. I doubt we'll see Einstein overthrown, but I think some fundamental discoveries and interesting new theories are in the works.

Linky?

My apologies. HERE YOU GO

Along with the existence of the Higgs becoming increasingly less probable, this could be another good shake of modern physics.

I rather hope it isn't shown to be an error, as the alternatives are far more exciting.

This will be quite embarrassing to modern physics if Einstein forgot to carry a two or something.

Newton brilliantly explained what he could observe and as long as technology didn't advance too far, his view of physics worked quite well. Einstein explained things that Newton couldn't see or conceive of. But here again, technology has advanced to observe things that Einstein couldn't see. Even if Einstein is supplanted it will be his work that made it possible.