Superluminal Neutrinos, Take Two

This is helpful but not that helpful. There are at this point a variety of potential explanations for what went wrong in the OPERA experiment. These include mismeasuring the tunnel length, issues with the clock calibration, and issues with the statistical analysis among other issues. It is important to note that while the OPERA group is double checking most of these issues, this experiment only really helps deal with a single problem, the statistical analysis of the neutrinos. If they are associated to individual bursts, the statistical test will be much simpler. So even if this still gets the same result, this won't be that strong evidence that there's something real going on here.

A better replication attempt is that which is being done by MINOS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MINOS [wikipedia.org], the equivalent experiment at Fermilab in the US. One reason that OPERA was paying careful attention to the arrival times (when their main interest was actually in measuring neutrino oscillation) was that MINOS had earlier reported data that tentatively suggested that some neutrinos might be going too fast. Now that OPERA has done their work, MINOS is working on doing a more detailed analysis that should be out by around February.

Overall, I still think that there's a mistake here, but it is interesting to see how long this is taking to find where the mistake was. The apparent initial sprint by physicists to find the error is turning into a marathon. The data though still needs to be somehow reconciled with the fact that neutrinos from SN 1987a (a supernova that occurred close to Earth and whose light and neutrinos reached Earth in 1987 ahref=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SN_1987Arel=url2html-7691 [slashdot.org]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SN_1987A> had the neutrinos arrive when conventional theory predicted them, that is a few hours before the light. This isn't due to neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light, but due to the fact that neutrinos are produced at the way beginning of a supernova in the core and then fly out with a headstart because they can easily avoid most of the matter in the star but the light takes time to get through the star. But, if the neutrinos traveled faster than light to the extent OPERA data suggests then SN 1987A neutrinos should have arrived years earlier.

There are some other possibilities that would reconcile the two claims. For example, it is possible that neutrinos actually travel faster in a denser medium. This would be really weird. It is also possible that the reactions we think produce neutrinos actually produce a very short lived tachyon which itself decays into a neutrino. This starts running afoul of Occam's razor, but would explain why one would see too much velocity in the OPERA setting but not from the supernova. This hypothesis is actually also pretty easily testable: one needs to use a shorter distance for one's neutrino detectors and see if the apparent velocity goes up.

Overall, I still suspect that this is a fluke or error of some kind. But I really hope it isn't. This could be the Michelson?Morley experiment of our error, the first anomaly which leads to a glimpse of some fantastically deeper understanding of the universe. But I really wouldn't bet on it.

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/itHXp8NGxtw/superluminal-neutrinos-take-two

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