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Merged Puzzling results from CERN

It can be hard for those of us who don't grasp the mathematics of advanced physics to distinguish between the more bizarre, but credible aspects of QM / Relativity/ Cosmology etc and pure nonsense.

So the following question may be based on the latter.

If the E-G-W "Multiverse / parallel worlds" idea is "true" (whatever that means) , there exist many universes, in which quantum events produce different macroscopic outcomes.

Is it in any sense possible that what we are seeing here is due to some of the neutrinos from CERN reaching Gran Sasso via a nearby universe in which it so happens the Alps are 20m shorter than in this one?

I ask this question in all honesty. It may be sheer stupidity . I can handle that.
 
epix said:
Does anyone know what was the initial purpose of the experiment at CERN? There had been no slightest doubt that neutrino, or a particular flavor of it, could move faster than c, so if CERN really decided to measure the speed of the particle, there had to be a reason. What was that?
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OPERA is primarily a neutrino oscillation experiment, in particular looking to observe appearance of tau-flavor neutrinos via oscillation of an initially muon-flavor beam.

The normal reason that you do a timing measurement is in the hopes of measuring the mass of the neutrino, by seeing how much slower the neutrino travels than light. If the rest of our neutrino-oscillation model is right, then this mass ought to be too small to measure (and the experiment should produce a result indistinguishable from c), but this is the sort of thing that's useful to check and recheck at every opportunity.
 
ben m said:
OPERA is primarily a neutrino oscillation experiment, in particular looking to observe appearance of tau-flavor neutrinos via oscillation of an initially muon-flavor beam.

The normal reason that you do a timing measurement is in the hopes of measuring the mass of the neutrino, by seeing how much slower the neutrino travels than light. If the rest of our neutrino-oscillation model is right, then this mass ought to be too small to measure (and the experiment should produce a result indistinguishable from c), but this is the sort of thing that's useful to check and recheck at every opportunity.
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Aha. Thanks.
Looks like they were following up on the things coming from Super-Kamiokande.
 
Soapy Sam said:
It can be hard for those of us who don't grasp the mathematics of advanced physics to distinguish between the more bizarre, but credible aspects of QM / Relativity/ Cosmology etc and pure nonsense.

So the following question may be based on the latter.

If the E-G-W "Multiverse / parallel worlds" idea is "true" (whatever that means) , there exist many universes, in which quantum events produce different macroscopic outcomes.

Is it in any sense possible that what we are seeing here is due to some of the neutrinos from CERN reaching Gran Sasso via a nearby universe in which it so happens the Alps are 20m shorter than in this one?

I ask this question in all honesty. It may be sheer stupidity . I can handle that.
Click to expand...

It isn't stupid at all. It is wrong, however. Under the many worlds interpretation, the only worlds that the neutrinos would have access too would be worlds that branched off since they were created. That's not long enough for mountain mass, which would have to change subluminally, to change enough.

Still, it's excellent lateral thought, and I hope you keep thinking.
 
sol invictus said:
What's that?
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Sorry - Everett Wheeler Graham (if my memory serves).(The many worlds interpretation of QM).

I appreciate the multiple worlds idea has moved on since then, but I mean the notion that quantum events literally follow all possible paths and that each represents an alternate universe. How literally anyone takes this, I don't know.

If Epepke is right that the only alternate universes accessible to the neutrinos would be ones created in the time of flight of the neutrinos, then barring some very different plate tectonics in the universe next door, it won't work.
 
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ben m:
just wanted to say a big huge thanks for posting the link to the ftl faq the other day. What a good read.

Huge thanks also to sol and all the others who have been posting constructive stuff, and doing such a good job of explaining it in an understandable way - well worth trawling through all the dross to get to, and its so far been one of the most enjoyable threads I've read in quite awhile here.

If i had to bet either way... my money would also be on that these neutrinos have not exceeded c.
Though thats one bet I'd be more than happy to lose.
 
RussDill said:
Oh good, they DO have a tunnel. That solves so many problems :)
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In case this gets misinterpreted, I just want to mention to lurkers that, no, they do not have a tunnel between Gran Sasso and Cern.

Also, I'm getting frustrated that people here are speculating on many things that were discussed days ago on the research team's presentation video @ Cern, if you don't want to be in the dark, watch the recording of the presentation from this link:

https://mediastream.cern.ch/MediaArchive/Video/Public/WebLectures/2011/155620/155620-podcast.mp4

I'm posting it again for the nth time so that people can see how the research team answers to these questions. It's a streaming video, you can jump straight to the QA if you wish, the QA begins @ 1.03:45.
 
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RussDill said:
What if there are two packets of neutrinos sent? One superluminal, one subluminal? Perhaps there was a group of neutrinos arriving in 1983, we just weren't watching for them.
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But is it not the case that the strength of the observed 1987 neutrino signal was about equal to the predicted value for such an event, assuming all of them arrived as a single packet?
 
Jono74 said:
If i had to bet either way... my money would also be on that these neutrinos have not exceeded c.
Though thats one bet I'd be more than happy to lose.
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That's where the good money is. The vast, vast majority of the time something like this happens, it ends up being an error.
 
In other news from the Large Hadron Collider, reports indicate they may have found Elvis in the cafeteria...
 
Someone else has probably said this - isn't this a classic example that shows how silly the claims are about how the scientific community suppresses new ideas and anything that threatens "THE CONSENSUS"?
 
Darat said:
Someone else has probably said this - isn't this a classic example that shows how silly the claims are about how the scientific community suppresses new ideas and anything that threatens "THE CONSENSUS"?
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No, those claims would come up AFTER this experiment is shown to have an experimental error. The suppression hasn't finished yet, you see.

Doesn't work if those neutrinos really were traveling faster than light.
 
Craig B said:
But is it not the case that the strength of the observed 1987 neutrino signal was about equal to the predicted value for such an event, assuming all of them arrived as a single packet?
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There were a total of 20 neutrino events spread across 4 detectors. How many detection events were expected?
 
RussDill said:
There were a total of 20 neutrino events spread across 4 detectors. How many detection events were expected?
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It doesn't really matter. If such a split was going on the experiment at CERN would have picked it up.

We're pretty much down to high energy neutrinos can move faster than light in some fashion or there's an error in the experiment.
 
Certainly it's rare to see a Pope or Psenior Psychic holding a press conference to announce there may not be a life after death after all - far less asking someone else to check his evidence and his reasoning.
 
Soapy Sam said:
It can be hard for those of us who don't grasp the mathematics of advanced physics to distinguish between the more bizarre, but credible aspects of QM / Relativity/ Cosmology etc and pure nonsense.

So the following question may be based on the latter.

If the E-G-W "Multiverse / parallel worlds" idea is "true" (whatever that means) , there exist many universes, in which quantum events produce different macroscopic outcomes.

Is it in any sense possible that what we are seeing here is due to some of the neutrinos from CERN reaching Gran Sasso via a nearby universe in which it so happens the Alps are 20m shorter than in this one?

I ask this question in all honesty. It may be sheer stupidity . I can handle that.
Click to expand...

Well, look at it this way - if that could happen, we'd expect to observe such speed violations very often (not to mention all sorts of other weird and inexplicable effects).

The truth is, quantum mechanics also obeys the rules of relativity, and other universes of the type you refer to are much too weakly connected to ours to have any observable effect.

Still, if I was forced to take this result seriously, one of the options to consider is the possibility that there is some kind of "short cut" in the space between CERN and Gran Sasso. Such things can exist - put simply, the distance is measured by measuring two sides and angles of a huge triangle with CERN, Gran Sasso, and a GPS satellite at the vertices. But that only determines the length of the third side (the path the neutrinos took) if the spacetime is Euclidean.

(Please note - I'm not saying it isn't Euclidean, or that this result should be taken seriously.)
 
Belz... said:
Is there any reason for anybody to believe that this is true, aside from your personal wish ?
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If Anders is correct, and time is NOT a dimension, then it should be impossible to plot the location of an object in time using x, y, z, and t coordinates.

It may be impossible for him. Perhaps that's where the difficulty lies.
 
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