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Merged Puzzling results from CERN

This month's "Scientific American", in an article on the Higgs boson, mentions a domestic research facility, the Tevatron, has recently done a couple of tests with neutrinos going 450 miles of earth, which display a "bump" ..."an excess of particles above what the Standard Model predicted".
One possiblity mentioned is "the decay product of some more massive particle,
perhaps an unexpected form of the Higgs boson"...
Or, the superluminal accumulation of the neutrinos in the tests, similar to the CERN results.
IOW, some of the particles observed got there too quickly...
???
 
Dan O. said:
What we need is an active list of every speculated cause of the error and a real analysis to eliminate that cause as a possible contributor. If nothing else, this will act as a filter to keep the same speculations from being asked over and over.
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Yep.
 
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.
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The honest answer is: I have no clue.

And I think that's the broader honest answer regarding the greater ramifications if the FTL neutrino result is found to be the real thing. We just don't know where this will lead, which is one reason why - if it pans out - it would be so exciting!

ETA: Note that the CERN-OPERA research team makes no attempt to work out any theoretical ramifications of this result, for two reasons. One, probably because anything of that sort at this stage would be little more than speculation, and two, probably because they're too busy attempting to think of ways the experiment went wrong.
 
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Kuko 4000 said:
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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Thanks again for posting the link to that video, Kuko :)
 
Maybe a little of topic but:

Can someone show me how the mass is incresing depending on the speed? Like for example...
0.10c = 120%
0.20c = 240%
 
Lennart Hyland said:
Maybe a little of topic but:

Can someone show me how the mass is incresing depending on the speed? Like for example...
0.10c = 120%
0.20c = 240%
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Nowhere near as quickly as that.

I make it:

0.1c = 101%
0.2c = 104%
0.3c = 110%
0.4c = 119%
0.5c = 133%
0.6c = 156%
0.7c = 196%
0.8c = 277%
0.9c = 526%
0.95c = 1025%
0.99c = 5025%

The formula is here if you want to check my little spreadsheet's arithmetic.
 
From here:

I received a comment on this piece from Luca Stanco, a senior member of the Opera collaboration (who also worked on the ZEUS experiment with me several years ago). He points out that although he is a member of Opera, he did not sign the arXiv preprint because while he supported the seminar and release of results, he considers the analysis "preliminary" due at least in part to worries like those I describe, and that it has been presented as being more robust than he thinks it is. Four other senior members of Opera also removed their names from the author list for this result.
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Pixel42 said:
Nowhere near as quickly as that.

I make it:

0.1c = 101%
0.2c = 104%
0.3c = 110%
0.4c = 119%
0.5c = 133%
0.6c = 156%
0.7c = 196%
0.8c = 277%
0.9c = 526%
0.95c = 1025%
0.99c = 5025%

The formula is here if you want to check my little spreadsheet's arithmetic.
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The Wikipedia article: Mass_in_special_relativityWP provides an introduction to the concept (and the properly written formula).
 
Potentially dumb question:

How to you aim a neutrino at anything? Or am I missing something here about how this experiment was done?
 
The results of some interaction will broadly speaking go all over the place, but if the net momentum of the things colliding is in some particular direction, all the stuff coming off it will broadly go the same way. That's about as good as it gets.

Anyway, since you can't catch all the neutrinos you probably don't get so worried about getting them all to go in the right direction in the first place.
 
Doubt said:
Potentially dumb question:

How to you aim a neutrino at anything? Or am I missing something here about how this experiment was done?
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They cheat. In the relativistic frame of the particles that decay to produce the neutrinos, the target is much closer and almost surrounds the particle.
 
Doubt said:
Potentially dumb question:

How to you aim a neutrino at anything? Or am I missing something here about how this experiment was done?
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You tightly focus a beam of charged particles (pions and Ks in this case) using magnetic fields, and aim the beam towards the detector. Those particles decay into (among other things) neutrinos. Because the decaying particles are highly relativistic, the neutrinos continue in the same direction as the beam, at least more or less.
 
sol invictus said:
You tightly focus a beam of charged particles (pions and Ks in this case) using magnetic fields, and aim the beam towards the detector. Those particles decay into (among other things) neutrinos. Because the decaying particles are highly relativistic, the neutrinos continue in the same direction as the beam, at least more or less.
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So let me take a guess here. No significant amount of the pions and Ks can make it through the mountain so they cannot be used to verify the neutrino speeds.
 
Doubt said:
So let me take a guess here. No significant amount of the pions and Ks can make it through the mountain so they cannot be used to verify the neutrino speeds.
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My guess is that the mountain isn't an unavoidable obstacle, but is actually a necessary part of the experiment and it's purpose is to filter out the non-neutrinos. Not sure neutrinos would be detectable amongst a flood of charged particles?
 
RecoveringYuppy said:
My guess is that the mountain isn't an unavoidable obstacle, but is actually a necessary part of the experiment and it's purpose is to filter out the non-neutrinos. Not sure neutrinos would be detectable amongst a flood of charged particles?
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You should really watch the video or have attended like sol :) Watching the video really increased my understanding; perhaps from 5% to 10% :p

Yes, the mountain reduces the amount of background noise.
 
What is the geography at FermiLab relative to the European site?
Is there a mountain there, to scrub off some of the particles and not others?
 
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