Baffling CERN Results Show Neutrinos Moving Faster Than the Speed of Light

Something tells me someone is going to use the "optical allusion" excuse for this discovery to negate the possibility. Just like with subatomic particle velocities protruding from quasars.

Maybe it's time to except the fact that we don't know everything. Even the smartest men of years past didn't have an indefinite grasp of the universe. Them being as human as we are, it's sufficient to say that they can be wrong too, even several years after their own scientific discoveries and declarations.

I'm still willing to bet they'll rest in piece, and we'll still push the boundaries of our understanding and capabilities. There are exceptions to almost every rule.

I thought the expansion of the universe (expansion of space) was one thing that was faster than the speed of light according to an article here few days ago...

I take it someone already checked to see if the clock was the problem.

Ok, time for crazy theories. There is an idea out there that suggests mass slightly bends space, the greater the mass the greater the bend. Nutrinos will pass straight through mass with very little interaction because they are almost massless and are electrically neutral. HOWEVER, that doesn’t mean that they are unaffected by mass. By passing tangentially through a progressively denser mass, it is possible that the space that they travel through gets parabolically shorter relative to “regular space” and that they are essentially traveling a shorter distance than we would measure using a ruler. While normally these effects would be unmeasurable, these particles are traveling at relativistic speeds, which might amplify their interaction with the curvature of space (for some reason)…

…phew, that was fun. A more boring explanation might be that, since this group has repeatedly found this, that the emission detector has a billionth second more delay than the receptor detector on the other end.

Interesting stuff, wonder how they'll account for this granted if they ever come up with an explanation. On another note I vividly recall reading an excerpt in one of my physics books in college a couple years ago stating that the electrons from spent nuclear fuel rods-once exposed to water to cool down-travel faster than light. I believe it was argued there was no violation of Einstein's theories due to it occurring in water as the medium.

@Pheonix Why would you say "Maybe it's time to except the fact that we don't know everything" when the article specifically already talks about scientists admitting they don't have an explanation currently? Also, it's "accept" btw. And optical illusion. And rest in peace. If we thought we knew everything, we wouldn't be continually running experiments like this one.
@Kamydon I'm sure others have a better grasp of this than I do, but space has a rate that it is expanding which is expressed in kilometers per second per megaparsec, which essentially means that each unit of space will expand a certain amount in a second. The faster than light speeds come from when you look at two objects that are far enough away from each other to where all the space in between's expansion adds up to get those speeds. So nothing is really moving faster than the speed of light... it's hard to explain, but once you get it, it makes sense.

The superluminal velocities of subatomic particles are probably right in our face, and we simply fail to realize it because we are so strigent on holding onto a standard model of physics; mostly in the interst of being right all the time. But, I guess evolution hasn't fixed that problem yet.

@kamydon

That other article was mentioning how spacetime is expanding from the intial burst of all the matter in the universe following the Big Bang, and how the expansion of spacetime is accelerating do to an invisible force (dark energy). It is postulated that in the future the expansion of spacetime will reach velocities greater than the speed of light (at which point I'm assuming the Big Tear Theory of the universe's end will come into play).

Spacetime is not expanding at or faster than the speed of light yet, but it is accelerating. If it were, the light emitted from stars would not reach certain points in space at the same time relative time that we witness it to do now. Of course I could be wrong. I'm not an expert, and I won't even pretend to understand how the universe would behave if spacetime expansion reached superluminal velocities. For all we know, absolutely nothing might happen.

In an astronomy class i took a few years back we had a very light introduction to physics without as much math as might otherwise be required in a normal physics class but, i remember the instructor saying that scientists had observed neutrinos that appeared to be moving backwards in time( i dont know how it is possible to observe that but whatever)and the only thing that can cause that supposedly is faster than light speeds. so this doesn't surprise me too much.

WAIT JUST ONE MOMENT!!!

We were always told that if something went faster than the speed of light, time would go backwards!
Superman did it in the first movie.
Spock and Kirk did it in one of the Star Trek movies.
They went faster than light and traveled back in time.

So shouldn't time be continually going back wards?

Oh wait...the whole time going backwards thing is just for the *person* moving faster than light. It's merely a perception thing.

Still don't get how going really fast makes time go backwards. Now I am confused

@Haldurin

Excuse my spelling errors. I had a long day at work (which started at 6am; guess how early I had to be up for that!). I merely stated that people will debunk these findings for the sake of holding on to a classical sense of understanding that helps us quantify everything that we know about. Finding out new discoveries and exceptions to well established rules are still scary concepts for most people. This usually illicits a certain response (imagine how the world would respond to find out that all of their spiritual beliefs were false).

However, I am aware that there are a small percentage of human beings that make up the group we call academics that continue to seek truth through scientific experimentation for the purpose of obtaining greater understanding. They aren't bound by tradition and dogma, which is why we were able to progress society beyond where it started from.

The real question is what the motivation behind your inquiry was? You obviously didn't interpret it the right way. If your point was merely to attack me for my spelling then I could do just the same for your lack of insight. You clearly missed the point I originally made by a few kilometers per second per megaparsec.

Superluminal light propagation has been lab tested and (somewhat) accepted for some time; this is just another verification dealing with particles that are supposed to have mass (although most older neutrino theories state that they shouldn't have mass, the fact that they can change flavor suggests to standard model relativists that they MUST have mass.)

Nothing new here, it's not like Einstein's theory actually allows for movement at all... ...

Antiparticles are basically particles (of the same kind) moving backwards in time - it can be shown using Feynman Diagrams. So how about the neutrinos just move through time? But it must be something the scientists thought about and rendered impossible or not applicable in this case because the neutrino just shifts into another flavor..

I recall being virtually lambasted on this site a few months ago when I suggested the speed of light was more so a theoretical barrier that we don't fully understand yet (much like the sound barrier many years ago) and can be broken.

Hmmm. . .

Well anyways, here's another theory you all can laugh at now (but will be proven in time): Time travel IS possible, but only into the future, and not into the past.

what if neutrino mass isn't constant?

what if there are forces in the universe (present in the earth's core) that can somehow alter the mass of the particle mid flight?

i did a search for neutrino mass, but it still seems to be largely uncertain - somewhere between 'mass-less' and 'an incredibly small amount of mass'

the thought pattern being that the neutrino was able to reach light speed (or greater) in a mass-less state, and acquired mass mid-flight.

with this theory, the standard model isn't quite violated: a particle with mass can not accelerate up to the speed of light

however, since neutrinos dont interact with particles, there is no reason to assume that should it acquire mass mid-flight. some other force would have to slow it down. maybe the mass-inducing force would slow it down.. but maybe it wouldn't?

if only we understood what gave matter mass..

@Kamydon: Space is not a physical thing, so it does not need to follow the speed limit. It has no energy, no mass, nothing.

@Nikitaj That theory is called relativity:) It's an inherent part of it that mass bends space-time. Anything traveling through though would get bent, and therefore would be apparent as it doesn't appear where it should.

@avgjoe: Correct. I'm not aware of the specific example, but in most cases they are talking about a medium where light gets slowed down more than some other particle. We have actually been able to slow light down to about the speed of a bicycle. The only problem occurs if something travels faster than the speed of light through a perfect vacuum.

@Haldurin: Correct.

@Phoenix1012: There is nothing wrong with space itself traveling faster than the speed of light. The big tear is something that happens long-long-long after certain portions of space have passed the speed of light compared to each other. The big rip/tear is some ridiculous thing like 900 trillion-trillion-trillion years in the future. Probably a lot more trillions, I forgot...not that it really matters at that point:)

Actually, it's quite likely space itself between 2 points is indeed expanding faster than light already. As you mentioned though, we wouldn't be able to see such a point as the light would never reach us. Currently, we can see approx. 13.5 billion light-years away, which when that light left is effectively when light started traveling ( before it was sort of too "foggy" )...so anywhere that space is traveling faster than light is further away from us than that. I am not sure what the total speed between the 2 observable ends would be ( which would appear to be 27 light-years apart, though that was also as they were 27 billion years ago. At this time, they are more around 96 billion light-years apart. )

@kook916: Are you sure it was Neutrinos? It's possible he was referring to this very information from CERN, which they say they have known about for awhile now.

@Jaypers: For starters, remember that time is part of space. It's the 4th dimension. It gets interesting when you add in Einsteins limits for velocity. You end up with a sort of set amount of speed you can use to "move" in total. Normally, we put a tiny amount into moving through space, and almost all goes to moving through time. The faster you go through space, the slower you move through time. At the speed of light, you stop moving through time. Yea..it's crazy. If you ask a person standing on MARS how long it takes a beam of light to go from earth to a point 1 light-year out, he would say it took 1 earth-year. However, if you ask that beam of light...it would tell you it just left right "now". Even light that has traveled from the big bang 13.7 billion years ago would tell you the bigbang happened right now.

So, lets say this number of speed is 10. If you move at 1 through space, you are moving 9 through time. Light moves at 10 through space, so 0 through time. The whole backwards through time comes in with the whole what happens when we go at 11 through space? What happens is you go backwards 1 ( IE: -1 forwards ) through time.

So, you can see that "time" itself doesn't go backwards, but rather the object travels backwards through time. This is possible with light:
http://www.aip.org/pnu/2000/split/pnu495-2.htm

HOWEVER: The part you need to pay attention to is "This superluminal behavior does not contradict the principles of Einstein's relativity theory". The reason this CERN data DOES, is that because it is a particle instead of light itself, there is no complex wave to manipulate ( quantum waves aren't exactly real waves. Hard to explain, like everything quantum, lol. ) and doubly because there is nothing manipulating the waves to begin with.

@TonyB: See above. Because this deals with a particle with mass, instead of light, and is outside of a very specific laboratory condition: This does indeed appear to break Relativity whereas the experiment you are mentioning does not.

@Quantumice: I think you are thinking of Negative particles. Anti-particles are normal particles with a reversed charge. anti-electrons are identical to an electron, just opposite spin and are positive. They behave normally in time.

However, even negative particles don't truly move backwards in time. The confusion arises from them APPEARING to move backwards as compared to normal matter. The reason is negative matter has the same charges ( negative-electrons are negatively charged. ), but they have negative 1 times the mass. So, if you held a negative matter baseball, and let go of it..it would fall up into the sky exactly backwards from a normal ball. This is naturally because if you work the math for any equation and just reverse the mass, you reverse the direction of motion, etc.

ATT negative matter remains theoretical. It might very well and not exist, but anti-matter was just theoretical for a long time as well. Now we use it on a regular basis in PET scans at hospitals around the world.

I know that probably doesn't clear everything up for everyone: I don't have anywhere near all the answers...and have no clue at all about the answer to these particles. If I do figure it out though, I'm not posting here:P I'm going to find some help and get it into a peer-reviewed publication and try to get my nobel-prize, hehe.

Cheers!

@mrwright: First, you got the time travel backwards:) Past is the "easy" one as all you do is travel faster than light. This here could lead to another method of time-travel to the past, though there are currently lots of various theories to do that already. Traveling to the future though is a fairly different story. For the most part, your options are to travel at a negative speed ( not backwards, but slower than stopped ), which obviously we have no idea how to do, or else you need someone in the future to establish a link with you in the past. Various methods of manipulating space and time together can create a link between 2 points of time, allowing travel between them.

Anyways, I don't know the exact comments you are referring to, so I won't comment on them. However, keep in mind that traveling faster than light is something completely different. This is something heavily rooted into virtually all physics, and has been proven countless times.

What we have with this discovery, is sort of like being told: 2-1=0. However, we know from all sorts of math that 1+1=2, and therefore 2-1=1. The 2 oppose each-other at the very fundamental core. We know the second is incredibly accurate, far so beyond what the first...yet here we are being shown 2-1=0. Either there is some hidden trickery going on that we haven't found yet, or we need to completely re-write the core of Physics while coming to all but the same conclusion.

Personally, my bet is on some sort of trick ( similar to the previously linked bit of light traveling faster than light-speed not violating relativity ), as current relativity is just too exact. To completely re-do everything about it and get the same answer is just incredibly unlikely.

Who knows though...anything is possible.

just let the gamers figure it out...probably some mistake and when they find it the conspiracy guys will pounce, cheers

anything is not possible, a little reality please

The science is settled. There's a broad consensus. Don't publicize the claims of these Einstein deniers.

:-)

right on man!

@rgcombs

Science was settled thousands of years ago.

Not that I'm an Einstein denier, but if science were settled, how do you explain technological advances in society. Significant ones have happened with computer technology since the 1990s. I think that warrants the claim that science is no more settled than we are.

There's always room for development. It's warranted to pay respects to the great minds who established modular constructs of scientific knowledge for us to build on. But it doesn't mean that other brilliant, game changing minds won't follow.

You do not have to ride Einstein like a rodeo show.

@drchuck1: Actually, most current theories actually not only allow for anything, but demand it:) In an infinitely sized universe, with an infinite number of parallel dimensions, you have an infinite probability for any occurrence. Any theory with an infinite in it leaves room for absolutely any possibility occurring an infinite number of times in fact.

Sure, we might not ever be able to get out far enough, or find a way to get to these other dimensions/branes/planes, but it doesn't mean they aren't out there.

Einstein must have seen this coming down the pipeline. I guess being famous outweighed the potential risks of handing over great knowledge to a bunch of Monkeys.

By the way, Wikipedia and Google can make anyone posting here sound like a "know it all".

@Contra: Not sure exactly what you mean with the first one, but Einstein definitely saw that his theories did not fully mesh with quantum mechanics, and spent something like a decade trying to work things out. Reading this kind of makes you wonder though, could this 1 piece of information been the key he needed?

For the second comment: Indeed they can. They are great to add onto your knowledge, and invaluable resources, but you must always be careful that they are not the actual source of that information.

So I can still make a TARDIS, right?

zechio,

Thanks for the insight on Einstein. I would say that thanks to Einstein, we will eventually figure out what to do with this key.

As for the first one:

Einstein must have contemplated the possible negative results of making his theorem public. I was in turn contemplating if the potential for becoming internationally recognized (as he did become) had any influence on his decision to do so. Maybe google can help answer this for me.

I would love to say I am surprise but I am not. Even if this turns out to be an error, it would not change the fact that the universe has no speed limit - be it light or something else. The notion of limits and linear are human conceptions... based solely on limited perception; it should have long gone the way of the flat earth theory.

Supernova 1987-A proved that neutrinos travel at the speed of light. That event occurred ~50,000 LY away, and the neutrinos and the photons it produced arrived here at the same time. If neutrinos really traveled as fast as the CERN experiment claims, they would have beaten the photons here by nearly 15 months.

Baffling indeed since neutrinos have mass, however in the future we will see if there is more to this than what we read here.

I've always pictured neutrinos as the mass that could break the light speed record but also travel at much slower classical speeds, this is predicted in a theory of everything I dreamed up over ten years ago. People would be amazed as to how simple this idea is, it also explains away the infinities and most of the spooky effects, entanglement, quantum tunneling, etc, etc, that happen in the standard model and why gravity behaves the way it does.

When NASA estimated the almost perfect vacuum of space at earths distance from the sun, approximate 6.5 particles per cm³, they didn't include neutrinos -- neutrinos are particles. In comparison on earth at one atmosphere there are approximately 2.5 X 10³¹ particles per cm³.

Most solar neutrinos pass through the earth without hitting anything that has mass, trillions of solar neutrinos pass through your body every second.

Ron Bennett

Anything we measure, anything we see, is all relitive to the individual observer. For example, (all hypothetial)
Lets say there is a train 4million miles long, you are sitting somewhere between the middle and front of this train. I am standing on the ground at the middle, able to see both ends. Now lightning strikes the front and back at the exact same instant. I know it was simultanious, I saw the light from both strikes, because it took the same amount of time to reach me. You say the front strike happened first, because it took less time for the light of that bolt to reach you. Who is right?

"In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before.".. Paul Dirac

I recently read a great book called - Bending The Ruler - By Lindemann. www.bendingtheruler.com The book discussed this very issue way before CERN finally figured it out. Good Read!

Like many I am no expert. I suspect Nikita J is right. The speed of light is essentially the pseed of photons. However, photons bounce off matter, are reflected and absorbed. Neutrinos by contrast do not seem to be influenced in this way. Hence as a photon speeds on its way it is bound to affected by gravity (they have done the experiments to prove Einstein was right). Hence, thinking of the particle properties of a photon (note the double slit experiment)one would expect it to experience a drag effect from mass of its path through the unverse.

A neutrino on the other hand would not have the same drag. Although the difference would be expected to be small it could be none the less significant as they aeem to have found. So all thatis needed is to rewrite Einstein's equation E=mc2 to E=mn2. (does not do superscripts!).

You could test this by mneasirng the speed of light coming from a distant galaxy on the other side of the Milky Way compared to a similar galazy with a direct and less hazadrous route.

http://ygn.me/GI6E0z80

http://ygn.me/GI6E0z80

http://ygn.me/GI6E0z80

http://ygn.me/GI6E0z80

http://ygn.me/GI6E0z80

http://ygn.me/GI6E0z80

http://ygn.me/GI6E0z80

http://ygn.me/GI6E0z80

I have all the confidence in the world, if Einstein was alive today and had access to the current devices, whatever proposal or theory he come up with, he be ahead of everyone else.

I think this has to do with friction.

I think spacetime causes friction on photons paricles, which causes them to slow down a little. A tiny bit slower then the speed of light.

Now since neutrinos are so little they have less friction on spacetime which causes them to go closer the speed of light.

Since we can't get rid of spacetime, we have never seen the speed of light without friction. So the real speed of light is a little quicker then we previously thought.

This seems completely ridiculous, but perhaps the speed of light, itself, needs to be reevaluated. Photons, unlike neutrinos, do interact handily with matter. Hence the reason we see things. Gauging the speed of a stream of photons through a vacuum comes with a teensy margin of error, as a true vacuum cannot exist. Even deep space contains highly rarified gases and other particles. Is it possible that the speed achieved by neutrinos is actually closer to a pure measurement of light speed? It seems that the difference (a matter of a few billionths of a second) is so arbitrarily tiny, though still significant to science, that we could be dealing with the same velocity but through different relative mediums in which one particle is measurably slowed. Armchair physicists unite..

@NikitaJ, you just sparked a thought. It's not a theory or idea but a proven fact now that our own planet dimples and twists space/time due to its mass and rotation. Light follows space/time as we have seen with mass and gravity bending light, we know that neutrinos seemingly are not affected by any gravitional forces, so I feel safe in an asumption that space/time that is affected by a change in space/time due to mass and gravity would not affect a stream of neutrinos.

This stream of neutrinos isn't moving faster than light, it's simply going over the dimple in space/time, thus arriving at the destination before light has a chance to take the long way around the deformation in space/time.

Picture an orange on a sheet of nylon, the orange would pull down the nylon, any objects that rely on the nylon as a transmission source would, if fired from point A to point B where the orange is in the center, would be forced to travel an increased distance, whereas any object moving from the same point A and B but no relying on the nylon for transmission could go directly from A to B. So if one were to fire 2 objects both with a set speed, object L is forced to stick to the nylon, object N is allowed to bypass nylon, object N would always arrived at point B before object L, even though they were both traveling at the same speed.

What we are seeing here folks, is the beginning phases of spacial warp travel. A slight folding of space/time allowing an object to travel between 2 points faster than possible by light. I love science!!!

Playing Devil's Advocate since 1978

"The only constant in the universe is change"
-Heraclitus of Ephesus 535 BC - 475 BC

Something that we all have not looked at is the possible "Shock-wave" theory.
The theory is a boat going through the water shoves water in front of it, which shoves a little water in front of it too, producing decreasing returns. What might be perceived as the particle arriving early could mean that the measured Neutrino could have been propagated earlier by an earlier Neutrino.
This would produce the effect of the Neutrino coming "a few billionths of a second early". Since we cannot "Mark" the neutrino that left the emitter, we cannot prove that the actual emitted neutrino was the one that was measured.

The neutrinos are probably tunneling through another spatial dimension that isn't curved as much by gravity as normal space. That would shorten the distance traveled - no speed increase necessary.

DocM

@Codezero, I am glad that we seem to be on a similar page, with a theory that s fun (if less likely than measurement error).

I would remind you, and many of the people above, however, that all science is just theory. The scientific method does not allow for proof only evidence which can support or disprove. Theories then become the common threads through which we navigate the massive amounts of data/evidence we have accumulated. It remains to be seen how or if this new information will need to be addressed by revisions in theory, but we should never be afraid to revise (just careful), that is what makes science awesome, non-dogmatic, and not a religion.

I say, keep the ideas coming.

@zechio...you are correct up to a point (untestable is a problem), i still can't turn water to oil, thinking anything is posible leads to unrealistic expectations
@pheonix1012...relax, that was sarcasm from rgcombs
@Matt5327...you can make a tardis?
@rlb2...why havn't i heard about you solving the problems between the quantum world and the world we live in?
@Truncatus...gravity does not slow down light, mass curves spacetime, the light speed stays the same in a vacumn, it just follows the curved spacetime, i have a tough time explaining this stuff but you can look it up and get a better explanation
@readysetboom...i think Einstein would differ with you on spacestime having friction
@raalic...pretty sure these really smart people know how to measure light speed
@CodeZero...i see your logic, however, they measured the actual speed of the neutrinos by timing them and realized the speed their calculations came up with is faster than the speed limit we get from light traveling through a vacuum; light traveling the same route, which would of course be slowed traveling through the atmosphere, wouldn't be able to follow the curvature of the earth anyway
@st5cowboy...if you time when the first neutrino leaves to when the first neutrino arrives, and calculate the speed, it shouldn't be faster than light, cheers

@NikitaJ...all science is not theory, there are many facts that abound everywhere aroung us that are part of science and many things can be proven to be true, i agree about keeping an open mind as new data can disprove current theory, cheers

Today I read several articles about a neutrino experiment at CERN where neutrinos arrived at a detector 730 km away 60 ns faster than the speed of light would allow (about 25 parts per million faster.) If these results are accurate, many new explanations and theories will arise.

Our measurements for determining the speed of light have been taken in a vacuum. A “vacuum” we have believed to be where light travels fastest. Could our “vacuum” actually have a refractive index of approximately 1.000025? Could neutrinos actually travel at the true speed of light in a medium not familiar to us?

Or, could it be that neutrinos travel in a medium that has a refractive index of less than one (approximately 0.999975?)

If our measurement of c is off by 25 parts per million, would that small difference throw off our calculations of the energy output of the sun or other nuclear reactions?

From another angle, could the relativistic effects we experience because of the Earth’s movement though the universe cause our measurements of the speed of light to be slower than neutrinos which might travel in a different frame of reference not subject to our movement?

Let’s really stretch the imagination. Maybe neutrinos travel at the speed of light in absolute space (of course, we all know absolute space doesn’t really exist.) Then what CERN has actually measured is the velocity of the Earth relative to absolute space. Since our measurements of the speed of light are 25 parts per million slower, a calculation using the Lorentz Transformation yields Earth’s speed at about 5 million miles per hour relative to absolute space. 5 million miles per hour is not that far from some estimates of the speed of the Earth relative to the Cosmic Background Radiation.

Far brighter minds than mine will eventually come up with an explanation as to why neutrinos travel faster than light, or maybe some yet unidentified experimental error will show that one or our most sacred constants is still valid.

So how will the space craft of the future travel faster than light speed. Say it with me now, all together:
“It has Neutrino drive!!“ Yea Baby!

My ten cents contribution:
Lets repeat the experiment this time from Cern to another lab situated say.. Australia.
1. If the speed of the neutrinos remains as per the previous experiment - its back to the drawing board for physicists.
2. If the expected time is faster by the same amount of time, I'd pin it on a measurement / calibration issue.
3. But if the speed is Einstein's c to australia then we need to question if the neutrinos are actually travelling the full distance between Cern and Italy, and if not, why not.

ok sorry if this has been sugested before as i didn't read all the suggestions but from lab to lab was 455miles - timing issues was billionths of a second - can they be absolutely sure they know the exact distance the neutrinos actually traveled - i sincerly doubt gps is accurate enough and likewise any other methods of measuring distance over such a great distance

i'm not going to try and work out how big a spacial distance that few billionths of a second translates to but i cant imagine even at the speed of light its that far

How's this for an explanation: we have been confusing the speed of light with the fundamental constant c.

c is the maximum attainable speed in our universe, the yardstick by which time itself must be measured, the cornerstone of relativity.

Light - those familiar electromagnetic radiation waves - happens to travel pretty close to c in a vacuum, but let's suppose it doesn't ever quite achieve the theoretical maximum - either because of an as-yet-unknown theoretical restriction, or simply because there is no such thing as a perfect vacuum, or because there are always gravitational distortions present.

So let's suppose we have been underestimating c by a few parts per billion, and have never noticed, because all our attempts to measure c have actually been measurements of the speed of light, which is usually a bit less than c. And any measurements we've performed which should have shown up the error because they were not based on these electromagnetic waves, the discrepancy was dismissed as being within the margin of error.

Now neutrinos manage to get even closer to c than light. So yes, they are faster than the speed of light, but no, they are not faster than c and hence travelling backwards in time or whatever.

But I'm no physicist - I look forward to having the many flaws in this proposition pointed out!

I find this particular riddle especially fascinating.

After reading the CERN paper it seems to me that they have been exceedingly careful with their measurements of both time and "rest" distance. However, there was no direct reference to them having looked at relativistic effects and more specifically how that might or might not have changed the location of the endpoints of the experiment relative to the neutrinos in the test.

There are a number of comments on this site and others that indicate intuitively that there might a relativistic cause for the distance the neutrinos travel between the time they are emitted and received being less than the static distance they so carefully measured.

Sure intuition is a long way from an actual explanation, and falls very flat in the quantum world but at least it's some place to start. My first reaction when reading about this puzzle was something that this was something akin to those high school math problems relating to jumping or throwing a ball on a merry-go-round where in one direction the path of the ball between two points on the platform was longer than in the other direction.

I'm guessing that even though it wasn't described in the paper, someone that was part of the experiment *must* have taken into account relativistic effects especially given the velocities the neutrino are traveling. (This wasn't after all a school playground scenario.) Either that or I'm totally missing something basic in my understanding of relativity.

@zechio or @drchuck1, both of you have responded very constructively to the various thoughts expressed here, could either of you chime in on why relativistic effects and the corresponding description of the reference frames used in the measurements might not be relevant to this discussion?

OFF THE SCALE
-- James Ph. Kotsybar

The young lady known simply as Bright,
who could travel at speeds fast as light,
said, “While I’m never late,
I’m concerned that my weight
goes to infinite mass, though I’m slight.”

So if these results are reliable, then Einstein's famous E=mc squared is busted! Does anyone know what the energy or mass of a neutrino is? According to Einstein, it has to be infinite.

First, I want to address a major issue several of you have fallen for: Neutrinos DO react to warps in space-time, AKA gravity. What Neutrinos do not react to is forces involving charge: Electro-magnetic and Strong Nuclear forces. They do have some interaction with the weak nuclear force, but it is minimal.

Next: We don't just get C from measuring how fast light travels. Being so fundamental, we can work back to it from many other sources, not the least of which is E=MC^2. This has been verified well beyond the variance detected at CERN.

CERNs various various measurements allow for a tolerance of 10 milliseconds. This includes things like accuracy of the distance, accuracy of timings, etc. Because the results seen are 6 times this value, they are well outside the error-bars, and statistically quite significant.

Due to the short distance and time, along with the relatively ordinary circumstances (Things like being on Earth, not inside a black-hole), relativistic effects are negligible.

I think where scientists will be focused most, (Aside from some currently undetected error with the experiement that is) is in the very area the experiment was originally testing: Neutrino Flavor Oscillations. Basically, the theory involves Neutrinos of one "flavor" to occasionally turn into a different Neutrino. This experiment, and others, have verified this: They emit 1 type of Neutrino, and detect significant amounts of a different type beyond that expected from background bombardment.

This is a very odd behavior of Neutrinos, and is not understood at this time. As such, this is the perfect area to find the cause of some odd behavior, such as the apparent violation of the speed of light.

My primary (personal, so not entirely valuable ) theories, from most to least likely, are:

1)An unnoticed error in the CERN experiment. They were testing for something different, so it's not impossible for something related to this not having sufficient accuracy.

2)Neutrinos travel through a 5th dimension in some fashion, allowing for some sort of slight short-cut. They travel through that dimension at the speed of light, but for whatever reason, the distance is shorter. Much as Docmordrid said.

3)It's actually us that travels through the extra dimension. Instead of only occasionally doing this, in a sort of shortcut, we actually slowly travel through it on a constant basis much in the way we travel through time. For normal matter, photons, energy, etc. this would need to be a constant amount of travel ( else we would have previously detected it ), but for some reason Neutrinos can slow down or stop moving in the 5th dimension, allowing for a greater speed in the 3 spatial dimensions without affecting their travel through time.

4)There is something fundamentally wrong with our interpretation of the speed of light. Physics has a flaw at the very core, and sweeping changes unfold in a change not seen since the discovery of Quantum Mechanics or Relativity. (I really doubt this one. There's just too much that works out so nicely for the core to be wrong.)

These are actually the only possibilities I have been able to think of so far.

@hatandboots: No one really knows the mass of the Neutrino. It's so incredibly small, and so hard to measure, that we haven't been able to pin down an amount. However, the Flavor Oscillations require it to have at least some mass, and these experiments showed the oscillations do indeed occur.

Using just E=MC^2 ( which is not the full formula, at lightspeed you need to use the complete version: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass%E2%80%93energy_equivalence else you do end up with Light having 0 energy. ), you would actually get a negative mass for Neutrinos. Granted, even with the complete formulas, you still get a negative number, but this is assuming that both relativity is correct AND that the Neutrinos really are going faster than C. The next problem obviously arriving from Neutrinos appearing to have some positive amount of mass.

Hmm, you did spark a new train of thought though. "Negative Matter" is a theoretical form of regular matter that has a negative mass. The normal implications would cause a different effect ( namely, the particle would always travel backwards in time, which would be fairly obvious. ), but with the odd behaviors of Neutrino - namely the Flavor Oscillations - it makes me wonder if some part of the oscillations could involve Negative Matter to create an affect that appears as though the particle is traveling faster than C. This is definitely going to take some thought though...

Now in about a week or soo, we will hear about the black hole that was created... *troll face*

NOTE: In regards to my previous post, I forgot that a Negative Mass particle would not only travel backwards in time, but it would also react in the opposite direction. This complicates things, and unfortunately it's too late here to fully wrap my head around all of this tonight.

I will continue mulling this over tomorrow.

Cheers!

There are a lot of interesting ideas here. It is fun to read them. Thanks for posting.

The speed of light comes from the stiffness of space relative to electric and magnetic fields.

c = 1/(sqrt(eo/uo))

c = speed of light [m/s]
e0 = Permittivity constant = 8.85 x 10^-12 F/m
uo = Permeability constant = 1.26 x 10^-6 H/m

A Farad is a unit of capacitance and is related to the electric field.
1 F = 1 A*s/V

A Henry is a unit of inductance and is related to the magnetic field.
1 H = 1 V*s/A

(Fundamental of Physics, 3rd Edition, Chapter 37, Section 2 Maxwell’s Equations: A Tentative Listing

Thanks,
-Tony

@jsharpe...thank you for the compliment, i would think the "relativistic effects and the corresponding description of the reference frames used in the measurements" would always be relevent, i get the general principles but i am by no means an expert, my gut feeling is there must be an error in their measurements because (as zechio stated) "There's just too much that works out so nicely for the core to be wrong." this needs to be verified by another team using different locations amd equiptment, probably difficult to do seeing that everything required is not readily available on eBay, cheers

@jsharpe...thank you for the compliment, i would think the "relativistic effects and the corresponding description of the reference frames used in the measurements" would always be relevent, i get the general principles but i am by no means an expert, my gut feeling is there must be an error in their measurements because (as zechio stated) "There's just too much that works out so nicely for the core to be wrong."...these results needs to be verified or disproven by another team using different equiptment and a differnet location (the same equiptment and location as well), this could be difficult seeing that this stuff is not readily available on eBay, cheers

sorry for the double post
@Tony_Who...thanks for your contributions, wish i understood those equations, cheers

There are several possible scenarios that come to mind for me. In an attempt to be brief, a bulletized version of my thoughts works better:

1. Particles can exist in an infinite number of places simultaneously
A) Probability Density Function #2 (PDF2), at Gran Sasso, may be made up of some of the same particles in PDF1, Geneva, thus making the travel time smaller than actual
2. Double Slit Experiment
A) Earth, especially 455 miles of it and deep, would have many features that could act as slits
B) Even though neutrinos don't react w/matter that much, they still do
C) Are we measuring the right spray pattern? There may be many.
D) How do we know where to put the actual detectors?
3. Measurement Noise (Obvious and probably already considered and ruled out, but still worth mentioning)
A) GPS position sensors have noise and measurements for this experiment are done on a VERY small time scale.
B) Both position and time measurements could be made on a time scale where the noise is not averaging out, ie., a single noise spike could ruin either measurement
4. Time Synchronization of Gran Sasso/Geneva instruments (Again, obvious and probably already considered and ruled out, but still worth mentioning)
A) It takes time for a signal to go from Geneva to Gran Sasso at close to the speed of light.
B) That calculation would be susceptible to the same errors as in item 3.
5. PDF shape change
A) If there is any dispersion in the particles as they travel, the PDF would skew one way or another and the cross-correlation between the 2, (which is typically how travel time is meaured), would not produce a correct result.
6. Last but not least: Mass of neutrinos being measured increases by 2 orders of magnitude
A) Muon mass = 0.0003 protons, Tau mass = 0.033 protons
B) Not sure how this affects the experiment, but:
1. Light and attraction forces change relative to local mass
C) Have these effects been considered?

Marc (moosesox)

To suppose you could measure something faster than the speed of light, would you need a clock that is more precise than the speed of light and the thing you are measuring? I really do wonder exactly how they clock these neutrinos, since it seems it’s the fastest thing around.

We use atomic clocks to measure time as best we can. Will our future science clocks be neutrino based?

drchuck1 wrote - "@rlb2...why havn't i heard about you solving the problems between the quantum world and the world we live in?"

rlb2 reply - I'm just a tadpole in a sea of infinite ideas, with that being said my work is almost completed. The answer to the riddle of "Theory of everything' is so simple that the Greek philosopher, Democritus, who first formulated an atomic theory for the cosmos 400 BC and everyone who came after him that are no longer with us, would be rolling over in their graves saying why didn't I think of that -- if I am proven to be right.

hatandboots wrote "So if these results are reliable, then Einstein's famous E=mc squared is busted!"

rlb2 reply - A little known fact E=mc² was not first proposed by Albert Einstein according to

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/46941

In Germany and Austrian, Albert Einstein was in the company of some very smart people in his day. Just as Einstein knew the importance of two competing ideas on light and made them one, is light a particle or a wave, hence he surmised that they were both right. That being said Einstein master the art of intuitive thinking and knew the importance of E=mc² equation whoever discovered it first.

Ron Bennett

Maybe this explains why I keep getting these feelings of deju vu :-)
Seriously now, the theoretical ability of some particles to exceed the speed of light have been explored before. Arnold Sommerfeld (a German physicist who was nominated 81 times for the Nobel prize) discussed the existence of tachyons which can theoretically travel faster than light. Ironically, neutrinos, which seem to have broken the "light barrier", have been said to posses tachyonic properties. Maybe now, Sommerfeld's work on this topic will be re-evaluated.

I'm not a scientist so forgive my simplistic questions.

Why only a few billionths of a second faster? Is there another speed limit?

How do we get information from a system moving faster than light?

What I find interesting is about human nature. This has been going on for years, and just now they are asking what is going on? People really hate change and they certainly don't like to question what they consider a "fact".

Graphine has been seen to effect electrons as if they had no mass, building on this, could the neutrinos be speeding up when they pass through the individual layers of Graphine that make up the block of Graphite they are shooting the neutrinos at?

PS: another stupid question. Is the 'few billionths' of a second within the Plank's constant parameters???

Since this experiment did not take place in a vacuum, we can't know for sure that each and every one of the neutrinos that arrived in Italy was one of the same neutrinos emitted in Switzerland. My money is on this scenario being like the speed of sound, with the first neutrinos in the stream bumping neutrinos in front of the stream. The first neutrinos that arrived in Italy wouldn't have traveled the entire distance from CERN. Perhaps the last neutrinos in the neutrino stream never arrived in Italy, but could have been swept along with neutrinos traveling perpendicular to their path.

The rotation of the Earth and Earth's movement in space was just enough to deviate the recordings of speed by 1 billionth of a second.

At only 455 miles distance tested a couple billionth of a second faster denotes that it was travel just over the speed of light, light speed is approximately 186,282 miles per second. Although I do think that this may happen, to truly test this out they would have to time light speed traveling the same route.

As may have been mentioned above there could be an anomaly with curvature on the fabric of space time due to earth's gravity along the path the speed of the neutrinos tested -- maybe the neutrinos briefly passed through some hidden microscopic worm hole or, god forbid, light speed is a little faster now then the last time we tested it....

Ron Bennett

I'm still hooked on this puzzle enough to watch the CERN presentation and Q&A and do a bit more casual digging. My personal hunch remains that this could, at least in part, somehow relate to the one-way light speed being anisotropic.

As I understand it, the round-trip speed of light has been demonstrated on many occasions as being isotropic, but the one-way measurements have only set an upper limit. (See math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/experiments.html#one-way_tests) Since this CERN experiment was essentially doing a one-way speed of light measurement it would seem that that at least part of the discrepancy could indeed be to a non-zero one-way anisotropy of the speed of light.

Never mind. I just realized that the experiments for one-way speed of light anisotopy put an upper limit between 0.13 and 100 m/s. Well below the 7k+ m/s discrepancy observed in the CERN experiment.

Don't cry. Science has always used what worked until something better was found. Einstein worked well enough to make nuclear weapons to scare the %%%% out of generations. Wait 'till they finally admit time is not a 'thing' but only a math (mental)shorthand expression of relative instantaneous position of EVERYTHING and can never be traveled back or forward 'through'.

No physical object, message or field line can travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum.

The key word here is vacuum. This does not violate Einstein's special relativity theory, because he states in "vacuum", The experiment was not conducted in a vacuum, therefore the neutrinos are subjects of many external forces.

Einstein also said that nothing could be faster than the speed of light, because it's mass would be impossibly infinite, what if Neutrinos, are just like Photons, and don't have mass. This would also mean it could go faster than light.

My personal opinion is that there is a billionth of a second of delay in the clocks

It seems that physics is nowadays just a math. So let's think neutrinos as math, not something familiar.

E^2 = (m*c^2)^2 + p^2*c^2
->
v = p*c^2/E

If m is complex number and p^2 > 0 then
(m*c^2)^2 = negative and E^2 might still be positive. But small.

-> v > c !!!

What is a complex mass? Usually complex numbers are related to frequencies and phases. Perhaps that explains neutrino oscillations?

It could also explain weak nuclear force. If neutrinos move faster than light and oscillate they don exist most of the time and matte cannot resonate with neutrinos.

Why neutrinos from novas don't have that same speed difference to light than in the experiment? There is a lot empty space and weaker gravitational field in empty space than on earth. What if complex mass interact with gravity and/or matter and speed neutrinos up on Earth? Somehow?

Did anyone bother to check the simple fact that the Earth rotates from east to West to East? It's entirely possible that since neutrinos are in effect slippery, (they seem unaffected by charge)that while traveling from West to East they have made use of the nuetral charge, to travel just a bit faster. We are not talking about a huge speed change just enough to be accounted for by the rotation of the earth and the fact that Neutrinos are unaffected by charge. Sensationalist media strikes again. :(

garthog42,
Neutrinos are running down hill; thats why they are faster than the speed of light, yea, yea, running down hill, yea yea..running down hill, yea, yea, lol

Einstein is right. His theories have been proven. But here's what I think may be happening . . .

Perhaps, Neutrinos are not traveling faster than light. Matter just cannot break the speed of light - it's just not possible. But, anything can travel faster than light in a sense if you approach your destination in a different manner. That is, taking a shortcut. Light travels through space the same way every surface organism on this planet does - to get from point A to point B we must travel on the curvature of the earth so in essence for all of us on earth traveling takes about the same time (plus or minus supersonic speeds). Likewise, light must go through the curvature of space to get from point A to point B . . . but what if we took a shortcut to our destination? If I dug a whole trough the earth straight from New York to Beijing than I could get there faster than if I traveled around earth's curvature.

There are currently two ways to take shortcuts through space that is by use of a Worm Hole or compressing space-time. Perhaps something has happened that neutrinos are taking a mini worm hole to their destination . . or the experiment is compressing space-time in front of the neutrinos.

Let's await the results.

Asimov predicted gravitational repulsion at those speeds...one can use it to move objects with satellites orbiting and increasing to those speeds on one side... move stars...go back in time like water falling influenced by something moving that fast could make it water flowing upwards...

@NikitaJ I think you articulate your point well and really enjoyed your post. Think about a canon shooting a canon ball 10 feet.

Draw a line of trajectory from the mouth of the canon to the ground. Now think about a canon shooting a canon ball 1000 feet.

Draw a line of trajectory from that canon's mouth to the ground. You'll notice that the faster particles travel the straighter their trajectories appear to be.

Now imagine a canon that shoots 30,000 miles per hour, except this time you are riding the canon ball. You'll be halfway to the moon by supper as long as you are tangent to the curvature of the earth.

The reason why light bends is because all particles are under the influence of denser bodies. Extremely dense bodies, like a black hole, will bend the light around it. To neutrinos, there is so much space between earth's particles that they just zip on by. I think the chance of one colliding is rather astronomical, but it does happen. That might account for the error in the data set.

@Haldurin When Stephen Hawking proposes that we've figured out the universe and that there is no God. Isn't that kind of saying you know everything? Doesn't he kind of represent our scientific community. Isn't he kind of the "They"? I guarantee everything you know is mostly incorrect. You'll be happy your whole life thinking that we kind of understand what is going on. I'll tell you what though Einstein knew what was up.

@pheonix1012 Very good comment, you understand.

One thing though, and I only read your first comment, there is a pretty good chance that small particles are traveling faster than the speed of light and they move so fast away from us that our physiological constant as humans is the speed of light and we simply do not see those particles reach us.

I would think the speed of light is a function of our brains processing information at some set speed. Similar to the clock rate of a CPU.

@QuantumIce If time is relative, and the faster you move, the faster time elapses to slower particles, wouldn't you say that time itself is just a measure of relativity? Particles don't travel backward in time. Next.

@mrwright85 Time travel is indeed possible. Time travel to the past is also possible. Especially to neutrinos that travel faster than the speed of light. Although time travel for a human being in the human flesh, is just not possible. Let's put that one to bed. It is only possible to transmit information backward and forward. It is complex, since our definition of time is our own.

Your theory is a good one. I'll give you this food for thought.

Say we figured out the unified field theory with extreme precision. A perfect solution. We would be able to recreate complete physical immersion of the past, down to the particle. The only limitation is that we would need to process faster than the speed of light. I mean way faster.

@bfouts I like your comment. It has merit. Keep going down that path.

@zechio Great comment. Many insights. Thanks for your post.

@menoc The question is, can information travel faster than the speed of light? If all particles are just the visible effect of particles interacting with other particles and then interacting with our eyeballs, is it possible that we are just blinking at the wrong time?

Einstein says nothing that has mass can travel faster than the speed of light. He didn't say anything with mass can appear to move faster than the speed of light to anything other than our eyeballs.

I think I saw a t-shirt today that sums it up. "Particles that move faster than the speed of light? Not until I see some pictures."

@AP14 Good comment, enjoyed it.

@victorioustrimester A theory that cannot feasibly be tested in the physical world really shouldn't be an accepted theory. Propose how we can build a vacuum within this distance and contain the neutrinos? I'm sure someone earned themselves a headache trying to mock that up.

kamydon: if you mean inflation phase of universe expansion, then yes and no... yes, universe was expanding many times more speed than the speed of light... but this doesn't mean that SOMETHING ( some matter) was moving so fast... it was space itself what was expanding, not some matter within space... that's because inflation doesn't break the light speed limit law.... every particle within expanding universe was moving at same or slower speed than the speed of light - jut the space itself was expanding faster - thats because isolated regions of space developed within universe, like that our with event horizont 13.9 MLD lightyears from us, and anyhing within this isolated region can't reach other one... okay actually maybe something can, if this thing with those superfast neutrinos will be proved as right :)

maybe dark matter is the answer... maybe photons slightly interacts with dark matter, which causes tht they are moving little bit slower that is actual "speed of light" limit... maybe those neutrinos interacts less with dark matter, so they are moving faster than photons... other particles do not iteract with dark matter at all, so no speed anomalies observed for them ... sometimes most simply answer is the right one :)

if neutrinos are almost (but just almost) massless, if they react less with dark matter than photons, it can be that they can move faster than photons... they will actually never reach top speed limit (because of they aren't completely massless) but in region wih darkmmatter concetration theny can be closer actualmtopmlight speed than photons ;)

menoc wrote - The question is, can information travel faster than the speed of light?

rlb2 reply - Information can travel faster than the speed of light. Entangled photons speed between each other traveling in opposite directions was recently clocked over 10,000 times the speed of light.

http://www.livescience.com/2785-spooky-physics-signals-travel-faster-light.html

Albert Einstein's "Spooky action at a distance." Einstein hated the idea of this happening he went to his grave denying the speed between two entangled photons could travel faster than light although experiments after experiments proved that two entangled photons communicate faster than the speed of light. Now there is a simple reason this appears to happen, what is funny is there are a lot of scientist making an occupation out of why entangled photons can do this. I think I have the key to why this happens, however it is buried deep in my entangled neuron's of my brain.

Ron Bennett

OOOPs it should read SolomonSinclair wrote, not Menoc.

Ron Bennett

@OldOllie
The problem with sn 1987A is that the neutrinos arrived 3 hours BEFORE the light. So the only thing that event proved is that it is POSSIBLE that neutrinos travel faster than light.
The fact that they did not travel at the same speed than OPERAS neutrinos prove nothing as we know little of the normal speed of neutrino through different medium and different distances.
The most obvious explanation would be that neutrinos can slow down through long distance. Is that even remotely unintuitive to say so?

Thanks SolomonSinclair for your support :)

About this idea of complex mass which amplitude resonates like A(sin(wt)+i*cos(wt)).

It has mean value... you guess... zero. Like neutrinos. Almost massless but there is still some mass, propably. Goes about as fast as light but in short distances compared to wt, mean can be negative and neutrinos can be faster than light.

Perhaps that is the case just after neutrinos have born on earth. Their phase is between 90 and 270 degrees? Negative mass act inside matter and/or gravitational field like reflection factor that speed up neutrinos.

Now. What if photons also work like this but oscillation is faster? So fast that you can't see anything but mean = zero? What if phonon oscillation is the reason for Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle?

Hi there , this is something of an extreme importance, yet to be proven with much more complex experiments under different conditions. Now the question is, where would all this leads us to? and what are we going to utilize this technology if we live to see it at work,We are using light in our day to day communications, data transfers " optical fibre technology". we still thirsty for faster and more efficient ways to improve on what we got now, Can neutrinos be used as a new form of carrier in the IT or communications and who will have the ultimate control of it all? we have experienced the internet and how it is in the full control of the USA,Not being against the USA here, but the question have to be raised to where will be holding the master key to all this. We surely know and fully understand that any new technology would be solely available to the military use before its downgraded to any civilian use... SO are we entering a new form of weapons of mass destruction. and who will be using it against who? Question to be answered by future generation..

this 'anomoly' is all very interesting??...maybe neutrinoes are not even slowed by a vacuum like light is! Maybe a vacuum contains quantum forces that hinders light but not neutrinos!

Maybe the new paradigm should now be E = mn2!( where n = the speed of neutrinos)

God "turneth wise men backward, and maketh their knowledge foolish."

Pretty interesting comments here, folks. Thanks.

(Don't be disheartened, but inspired, for He will reveal all of this to you in the Kingdom of Heaven.)

Confirmation from another scientific respected sight needs to repeat this experiment or it’s all just mute, kaput, nada, splat.

Am I the only one who is going to point out the obvious? We already knew quantum particles behave acording to their own laws and do not change regular atomic and larger physics. It doesnt change that at all and only confirms that quantum particles indeed break one more physics rule. The evidence was already there since we recorded the activity of electons surrounding an atom and found that they not only disappeared and appeared again seamingly randomly around the nucleus but also could be in multiple places simultaniously. This observation implies that it exists in 4 dimentions (space-time being the 4th). Since one subatomic particle already can move through space-time much like we move through 3 dimentional space would it not be logical to conclude another subatomic quantum particle could do the same? Thus "moving faster than light" is akin to the same behavior and thus doesnt change physics but adds one more thing to quantum physics that baffles us and forces us to look for a unification theory. This is an amazing discovery but no where near the implications media is putting on it. It does, however, indicate more research is needed and we may have found a potential for FTL communications leading to better telescopes and a way to communicate accross the vast expanse of space. With this advent we can further research FTL engines but we first need a base station NOT on earth so larger risks can be taken with atomics and antimatter research. Its all about risk taking at this point. we need to take a risk and get ourselves into space so we dont endanger everyone by risky research.

COMMENTS FOR THIS ENTRY ARE CLOSED
-- James Ph. Kotsybar

When the general public hears about
A breakthrough in scientific research
They want to add their voices to the shout,
So as not to feel they’re left in the lurch.
That they have opinions, there is no doubt.

They’ll foist themselves into the dialogue,
When something sensational’s put in print.
Though their comments reveal they’re in a fog
Without having the slightest clue or hint,
It won’t prevent them posting to the blog.

Most often, all they can add is their moan:
“Why can’t science leave well-enough alone?”

For those of you that can't grasp an understanding of how traveling faster than the speed of light would turn the clocks around here's an image. Imagine I have a light clock, disreguard you old grandfather clock and take this one for instance. I have two mirrors that are parallel to one another and their 6 in apart, for one tick it takes one revolution for my photon(partical) to start from the bottom. Mirror then To the top and then the bottom again, that would represent one tick. It roughly takes(using realtive simpler numbers)o e billionth of a second for one tick to take place and one billion ticks for one second. Now imagine I have two light clocks, one stationary and one with a magnitude (A.=stationary,B=magnitude) while A. Keeps on ticking B. Has a velocity to it that I can change but, if I move it fast enough wouldn't the photon eventually miss one of the mirrors and shoot off into space? Well to understand why time slows down s that I have to shoot it at an angle. The angle. Changes when V does, now geisha the photons path and the hypotenuses of a triangle(longest part) when I accelerate the speeds (B.) The distance it takes from one end to another extends thus the tick slows down. So if you can reach the mirrors to 186000 miles persecond time would stop. If I take a photon and start at the initial start of the big bang and place the end point to today on earth, its age would be the equivalence to the start. Now can u imagine time going backwards?

The way I see it, it falls exactly inline with what Einstein predicted. Think about the thought experiment of time dilation. You know one brother gets in a rocket yada yada one is old and one barely aged.... The big thing in that is that the closer you get to the speed of light- the slower time is going. So what happens hit the speed of light? Time should stop- and if you go faster, it starts reversing locally.

This flavor of neutrino is changing its past- as if inertia does not care which direction time goes, just the rate it passes. If that is the case, it does not need to move across space time faster then the speed of light- in order to travel faster then it ;)

That is not like a star trek style warp engine by the way- it does not move over space time, that theoretically would be able to isolate and move spacetime itself. Nor is this like HG Wells style of time travel.

What I find most interesting is the possibility this flavor of neutrino is able to convert some of its mass into energy to change its mass:inertia ratio and when switching to another flavor is able to undo this.

this is ...... idk...... but its just weard ...... :P HAHAHAHAHHAHAHA ... oh nvm... im just bord..... bye

Here is a little hint folks, it is much simpler than you think. Look around you what do you see?

Albert Einstein told you about the curvature of space and time, which in his day was peer genius. But what caused the curvature of space time? Democritus is the genius who told us over 2,300 years ago, along with Leucippus and Epicurus, proposed the earliest views on the shapes and connectivity of atoms are the forbearers of the truth just that they didn't have the knowledge of present day. To find the answer to our existence look for the smallest indivisible particle.

Today we use binary numbers to create complex computer codes that digitally give you a spell bounding creation on the big screen and control our everyday life, via the internet. It all started with ones and zeros, off and on's, -- binary numbers Flash forwards to present day, neutrinos are the smallest mass that we think we know of, axion's are even smaller but to this day are theoretical, neutrinos have been proven to have mass.

After the brilliant incites of the past we can describe the phantom force of gravity and condense the 3 forces of nature, Week Nuclear, Strong Nuclear, Electromagnetic into one combined energy theorem, come on people this is easy....

Ron Bennett

Alright Guys don't Be hateful lol

Hmmmm What if the Higgs/ what ever gives mass doesn't interact with neutrinos as strongly as other particles which might give it the extra freedom ;-)

Atkinson’s submission.

I am pleased to be able to report that the CERN – Gran Sasso finding that things (in this case, neutrinos) ] can go faster than ‘c’, confirms the prediction made in the Tempo field theory. That theory shows the requirement in special relativity that the speed of light is a universal constant at 299,792.458 kilometers a second is flawed. It was originally thought that the universal constant was necessary for several reasons but these have proved to be spurious over the years. However, the most important reason was that it was considered to be the only way that clear images could be received at the eye. In other words, to avoid light being all jumbled up at our eyes and to enable us to see clearly, it was assumed to be an essential prerequisite for all rays of light to have the same universal speed. However, this assumption is wrong, the Tempo field theory suggests a much simpler way. This demonstrates that all that is required is for each observer to see all rays of light with a closing speed relative to their individual time dilations. They each have their own constant for the speed of light relative to their time dilation which ensures they receive clear images. The Tempo field theory allows the speed of light to increase as the time of the observer dilates but it does not admit of anything going faster than this increased speed. It is not possible to outrun light but it is possible to go faster than 299,792.458 kilometers a second when the speed is measured from dilated time. This of course, preserves the principle of causality and avoids the difficulty of travelling backwards in time, for which I apologise to all science fiction writers.

In the case in question, the experiment is timed from a point that is below ground level, that is to say, close to the mass of the Earth and therefore in dilated time. Experiments to try to establish the speed of light have in the past, been carried out above ground level, i.e. at a point more remote from the mass of the Earth and consequently in more contracted time. It can be readily envisaged that the neutrinos will consequently be clocked at a faster speed than that previously attributed to light.

The scientists who have conducted the experiment have asked for other teams to try to confirm their results by carrying out the experiment at other locations but care must be exercised to exactly mimic the degree of time dilation if the same results are to be obtained. The way to demonstrate that the aberration is due to the variation in time dilation, is to have the neutrinos and photons of light timed over a common course when it will be found that they both travel at the same speed. This has been done in nature by our receiving the neutrinos from distant supernova at approximately the same time as its photons of light.

The principle that the speed of light varies in proportion to the time dilation of the observer can be proved with the following thought experiment. If we consider a tall skyscraper, it is well established physics that time goes more slowly at the bottom, near to the mass of the Earth than at the top. Using this knowledge, let us carry out a light experiment by placing atomic clocks alongside mirrors at the top and bottom of the skyscraper so that a pulse of light can be bounced from top to bottom of the skyscraper between the mirrors. If this is done a given number of times, the distance travelled by the light is exactly known. The travel time of the pulse of light can then be accurately timed by the atomic clocks. It is now inevitable that as the two clocks are running at different rates they will measure different values for the travel time of the light. This yields the result that the speed of light is faster at the bottom of the skyscraper in dilated time, than at the top in faster contracted time. This is exactly the result that the scientists at Cern and Gran Sasso have accidentally come across. The Tempo field theory can be found on its open access website, where it gives a paradigm for quantum gravity.

Frank Atkinson

Nikita, I think your elementary explanation makes excellent sense. Light being as fast as it is, is still rather easily affected by matter or objects put in its path.

"NikitaJ

09/22/11 at 5:14 pm

Ok, time for crazy theories. There is an idea out there that suggests mass slightly bends space, the greater the mass the greater the bend. Nutrinos will pass straight through mass with very little interaction because they are almost massless and are electrically neutral. HOWEVER, that doesn’t mean that they are unaffected by mass. By passing tangentially through a progressively denser mass, it is possible that the space that they travel through gets parabolically shorter relative to “regular space” and that they are essentially traveling a shorter distance than we would measure using a ruler. While normally these effects would be unmeasurable, these particles are traveling at relativistic speeds, which might amplify their interaction with the curvature of space (for some reason)…"

And of course Frank's Tempo field theory

My experiments show that this is a form of neutrino quantum entaglement.

Gravity is From a Time Gradient.
---
Gravity is the effect of matter diffusing through a time gradient in space.

The time gradient is caused by an energy density gradient in the space.

The energy density of space affects the capacitance and inductance of space. This is similar to how a spring is stiffer when it is stressed, compared to when it is unstressed.

Since the speed of light is dependent on the capacitance and inductance of space, it is variable and dependent on the energy density of space.

Since time is dependent on the speed of light, it is also variable and dependent on the energy density of space.

In volumes of high energy space, light will travel faster, making time slower.
In volumes of low energy space, light will travel slower, making time faster.

Matter that is vibrating within a time gradient will move faster in the low energy space and slower in the high energy space. The net effect is that the matter will accelerate in the direction of the energy density gradient of space (gravity).

This is just a guess, so it is probably wrong.

Thanks,
-Tony

Yes we can travel faster than the speed of light. Not only neutrinos but Mass can travel faster than the speed of light.

Angelo Molinaro
I had an article published in the scientific journal titled Galilean Electrodynamics Volume 15 Number1 January/Feburary 2004 issue. The article was titled The Invariance of Mass, which proves mathematically that Mass is an invariant. This finding proves that we can travel faster than the speed of light. I also wrote a book titled The Two State Universe which describes this finding. The book also describes a new theory of the Universe and Gravity, and answere many of the unanswered questions of Science.
I have an undergraduate degree from MIT, I also have a Doctor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering, and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Theoretical Physics.
Also, I wrote a book titled, The Two State Universe which proposes a new theory of the Universe and a new theory of Gravity, which differs from Newton and Einstein. It also answers many of the unanswered questions of Science. Such as, What is light, is it a wave or a particle, How high is up does it continue to go up forever. Why the Michelson-Morley experiment failed. It shows that Mass and Time are invariants which means that we can travel faste than the speed of light. It proposes a solution to the Unified Field Theory that Einstein unsucessfully worked on until his death in 1955. and much more. The book can be purchased at any Book Store.

It may be that the famous equation and all others since that have used the speed of light as limit of speed and unit of energy calculation has been wrong, ever so slightly. It may be that we should have been using the speed of neutrinos instead, e=mn^2. I wonder how some of the attempts at a unified theory would work out using that higher number.

On the surface, it also makes sense as a most basic unit and limit of speed, as light speed can vary depending upon the material it is passing through. It is affected by its surroundings, while neutrinos are not, and that would make the neutrino's characteristics more "standardized" for use in the makeup of the universe.

Although massless, but filled with the incredible lightness of being, the neutrinos decided to "wormhole it" just to mess with our heads.

k...so I'm just a public servant.....most of what is written up above is Latin to me. What I do wonder though is although a lot of you seem to have theories about what unseen forces may be affecting these neutrinos.....wouldn't any type of obstruction...cause them to have a slower speed...and not one that is apparently faster than C? How could something getting in something's way....cause it to go faster?

Also...how could anyone say with any certainess that something is certain? Granted...1 is equal to two halves...etc....but when we're talking about physics at this level...let's be realistic here. There is so much more to come. Let's not for a second believe that over the next 1000 years we won't make some amazing and wonderful discoveries that will challenge our fundamental scientific beliefs. I often wonder that had we all been born with open minds "in the beginning" where we would be now. We are so young compared to the house we live in. Glass half full ladies and gents. Two thumbs up to all the scientists at CERN.

I got a theory, more of a question though. How do they know the Neutrino's they are receiving in Italy are even coming from Cern, if Earth is constantly being bombarded by Neutrinos of all kinds of flavors, wouldn't their be overlayed neutrino's from the rest of the universe.

And with the discovery of antimatter, is it a stretch to think their could be anti-neutrinos.

That these anti neutrino's could be bombarding the earth at a 180 degree vector to neutrino particles, and that they could bend strong and weak gravitational forces; perhaps repelling each other. of course, perhaps finding an absolute value for the speed of light is futile, since we still no little about how the universe works. speed C +/- some billionth of a second is still mostly speed C.