Faster than light finding faulted in new neutrino test

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Source: CBS

(CBS News) An international group of scientists says that the speed of light has not been broken, rejecting a "faster than light" particle claim made recently which cast doubt on Albert Einstein's century-old ideas about relativity.

The new paper, published in the online journal arxiv.org/abs/1110.3763v2, contradicts the findings of fellow researchers at Italy's Gran Sasso laboratory, who said their experiments with a neutrino beam registered particles flying faster than the speed of light.

In that September test, scientists said they tracked beams of subatomic particles from their source in Geneva to a target 760 kilometers away in Italy moving 60 nanoseconds faster than a beam of light making the same trip. If that claim holds up, it would throw down the gauntlet to physics by shattering modern science's shared assumption about the speed of the universe. The initial findings of the OPERA project - an acronym for Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tracking Apparatus - generated a thrill throughout the scientific community - as well as a fair share of skepticism about the methods used to carry out the test.

But the findings published over the weekend by fellow scientists at Gran Sasso working on an experiment known as ICARUS rejected that finding, saying their data "refute a superluminal (faster than light) interpretation of the OPERA result."

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-57328668/faster-than-light-finding-faulted-in-new-neutrino-test/

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A search for the analogue to Cherenkov radiation by high energy neutrinos at superluminal speeds in ICARUS

The OPERA collaboration has claimed evidence of superluminal {\nu}{_\mu} propagation between CERN and the LNGS.

[itsrobert]

1. This was reported a couple weeks ago

so it is not late breaking.

[bananas]

3. Yeah - "Submitted on 17 Oct 2011 (v1), last revised 22 Oct 2011 (this version, v2))"

Why is CBS claiming this is new?

[bananas]

4. And bloggers wrote about it on Oct 20, a whole month ago

The trackback link from the abstract page goes here: http://arxiv.org/tb/1110.3763

Trackbacks for 1110.3763

A Bet Concerning Neutrinos (Part 3) « Azimuth (Azimuth @ johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2...) (trackback posted Thu Oct 20 21:07:37 2011)

Faster-than-Light Neutrinos: Case Not Closed Yet (Quantum Diaries @ www.quantumdiaries.org/2011) (trackback posted Thu Oct 20 21:08:05 2011)

ICARUS Refutes Opera's Superluminal Neutrinos (A Quantum Diaries Survivor @ www.science20.com/quantum_diar...) (trackback posted Thu Oct 20 21:22:00 2011)

Das war es dann für überlichtschnelle Neutrinos (Diax's Rake @ www.scienceblogs.de/diaxs-rake) (trackback posted Sun Oct 23 13:45:43 2011)

OPERA neutrino experiment papers hit the Web (Physics Today News Picks @ blogs.physicstoday.org/newspic...) (trackback posted Tue Oct 25 15:57:10 2011)

Relativity-9: The importance of corroborating evidence in science (Mano Singham's Web Journal @ blog.case.edu/singham) (trackback posted Thu Oct 27 09:09:06 2011)

[Speck Tater]

2. Science is always a work in progress.

That's a good thing but the problem is that the general public was, for a long time, lead to believe that science was the fixed and final font of all knowledge. When they witnessed the vacillation and changing opinions of leading edge research they took that as discrediting all science.

After hearing the ping-pong refrains of, for example "Coffee is good for you." on Monday, "No, coffee is bad for you." on Tuesday, "Wait, coffee really is good for you." on Wednesday, "Latest study proves coffee is bad for you." on Thursday, they reached the conclusion that science doesn't have a clue what it's talking about. No wonder they flock to the false certainty of religion. It's the only place where someone will give them a straight answer. Even if it is the wrong answer.

Somewhere in our educational process people have to be taught to understand just exactly what science is and how it works, and that science is not about once and for all final truths, but about successive approximations and continuous refinement.

[rhett o rick]

5. I was just telling my wife that the other day. "Those Nutella particles surely cant go faster than

the speed of light". You know what, she wasnt even listening.