You can't travel faster than light after all - phew!

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You can't travel faster than light after all - phew!

Post by Rum » Thu Feb 23, 2012 1:28 pm

Looks like it was a faulty switch... :bored:

From the beeb: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17139635

Faster-than-light neutrinos could be down to bad wiring

What might have been the biggest physics story of the past century may instead be down to a faulty connection.

In September 2011, the Opera experiment reported it had seen particles called neutrinos evidently travelling faster than the speed of light.

The team has now found two problems that may have affected their test in opposing ways: one in its timing gear and one in an optical fibre connection.

More tests from May will determine just how they affect measured speeds.

The Opera collaboration (an acronym for Oscillation Project with Emulsion-Racking Apparatus) was initially started to study the tiny particles as they travelled through 730km of rock between a particle accelerator at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern) in Switzerland and the Gran Sasso underground laboratory in Italy.

Its goal was to quantify how often the neutrinos change from one type to another on the journey.

But during the course of the experiments the team found that the neutrinos showed up 60 billionths of a second faster than light would have done over the same distance - a result that runs counter to a century's worth of theoretical and experimental physics.

The team submitted the surprising result to the scientific community in an effort to confirm or refute it, and several other experiments around the world are currently working to replicate the result.

A repeat of the experiment by the Opera team will now address whether the issues they have found affect the ultimate neutrino speed they measure.

The two problems the team has identified would have opposing effects on the apparent speed.

On the one hand, the team said there is a problem in the "oscillator" that provides a ticking clock to the experiment in the intervals between the synchronisations of GPS equipment.

This is used to provide start and stop times for the measurement as well as precise distance information.

That problem would increase the measured time of the neutrinos' flight, in turn reducing the surprising faster-than-light effect.

But the team also said they found a problem in the optical fibre connection between the GPS signal and the experiment's main clock.

In contrast, the team said that effect would increase the neutrinos' apparent speed.

Only repeats of the experiments by Opera and other teams will put the matter to rest.

"These latest developments show how hard the OPERA team is working to understand the results," said Dave Wark, a particle physicist from the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK and committee member of Japan's principal neutrino facility T2K.

"Just as it would have been unwise to jump to the conclusion that the initial results were the result of an anomaly, it would be unwise to make any assumptions now. It is the nature of science that theories have to be tested, re-tested and then tested again".

In a statement, the Opera collaboration said: "While continuing our investigations, in order to unambiguously quantify the effect on the observed result, the collaboration is looking forward to performing a new measurement of the neutrino velocity as soon as a new bunched beam will be available in 2012."

Meanwhile, the Borexino and Icarus experiments, also at Gran Sasso, the Minos experiment based at the US Fermilab, and Japan's T2K facility are all working on their own neutrino speed measurements, with results expected in the next few months.

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Re: You can't travel faster than light after all - phew!

Post by Animavore » Thu Feb 23, 2012 1:31 pm

Libertarianism: The belief that out of all the terrible things governments can do, helping people is the absolute worst.

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Re: You can't travel faster than light after all - phew!

Post by Coito ergo sum » Thu Feb 23, 2012 1:33 pm

We need faster than light travel.

If we don't have that, then we can't visit the stars. That would suck.

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Re: You can't travel faster than light after all - phew!

Post by Animavore » Thu Feb 23, 2012 1:37 pm

Of course we could. Though it may take generations. Unless we develop suspended animation.
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Re: You can't travel faster than light after all - phew!

Post by Rum » Thu Feb 23, 2012 1:56 pm

Never happen. I used to think it might one day but its too big an ask.

We may just get to Mars with humans, but even that is tougher than we ever thought it would be.

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Re: You can't travel faster than light after all - phew!

Post by Faithfree » Thu Feb 23, 2012 1:59 pm

“Yesterday”
Although it may look like a forum, this site is actually a crowd-sourced science project modelling the slow but inexorable heat death of the universe.

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Re: You can't travel faster than light after all - phew!

Post by Faithfree » Thu Feb 23, 2012 2:00 pm

What do we want – “Faster than light travel”
When do we want it -
Although it may look like a forum, this site is actually a crowd-sourced science project modelling the slow but inexorable heat death of the universe.

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Re: You can't travel faster than light after all - phew!

Post by HomerJay » Thu Feb 23, 2012 2:00 pm

The problem is mass, so as long as we work on astral projection, or codify identity so all we are transmitting is binary data, it'll work just fine.

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Re: You can't travel faster than light after all - phew!

Post by Rum » Thu Feb 23, 2012 2:04 pm

HomerJay wrote:The problem is mass, so as long as we work on astral projection, or codify identity so all we are transmitting is binary data, it'll work just fine.
Still limited by light speed. Four years to nearest star etc..

Also presumably you would need a 'receiver' at the other end - so a couple of hundred years sending that first..

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Re: You can't travel faster than light after all - phew!

Post by klr » Thu Feb 23, 2012 3:00 pm

I saw this news coming.


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Re: You can't travel faster than light after all - phew!

Post by Audley Strange » Thu Feb 23, 2012 4:07 pm

Rum wrote:Never happen. I used to think it might one day but its too big an ask.

We may just get to Mars with humans, but even that is tougher than we ever thought it would be.
"too big an ask?" What are you a fucking retarded Australian baby?

Sorry you're getting the brunt of it Rum, but I'm fucking sick of Oz speak proliferating through the Beeb and then fucking public outside using it without thinking. Control your diction!!!
They're putting words in your mouth.

While I'm at it. Sea change does NOT mean a quick change overnight, it means the fucking opposite, a gradual almost un-noticable change.

AAAAAAAAAAAAaAAARGH!!!!!


*Jumps out of window*
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Re: You can't travel faster than light after all - phew!

Post by HomerJay » Thu Feb 23, 2012 4:25 pm

See Change means a new Pope, shirley?

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Re: You can't travel faster than light after all - phew!

Post by Audley Strange » Thu Feb 23, 2012 4:48 pm

:lynchmob:
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Re: You can't travel faster than light after all - phew!

Post by Ronja » Thu Feb 23, 2012 4:54 pm

Audley, are you feeling stranger than usual? :ask:

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Re: You can't travel faster than light after all - phew!

Post by Audley Strange » Thu Feb 23, 2012 5:03 pm

Image

Only this banana can answer that.







Well what are you waiting for? Go on ask it!
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