[meteorite-list] Faster Than Light Neutrinos?

[Sterling K. Webb]

Remember thos faster-than-light neutrinos?

Well, now you can forget about them...

http://www.space.com/14654-error-faster-light-neutrinos.html

"Those famous neutrinos that appeared to travel 
faster than light in an Italian experiment last September 
probably did not do so after all. A faulty connection 
between a GPS receiver and a computer may be 
to blame for the mistake.

In September, and again in a repeat run in November, 
scientists on the OPERA team had detected neutrinos 
travelling from the CERN laboratory in Geneva to the 
Gran Sasso Laboratory near Rome at what appeared 
to be a light-speed-shattering pace. The neutrinos 
completed the trip about 60 nanoseconds faster than 
a beam of light would have done.

Though the physicists felt confident in their 
experimental setup, they and the rest of the 
scientific community suspected that the shocking 
result was probably due to some error, considering 
that light as the universe's speed limit is a 
central tenet of Einstein's theory of special 
relativity.

And indeed, in November, another group of physicists 
also working at Gran Sasso Laboratory demonstrated
that the neutrinos in question could not possibly 
have been traveling faster than light, because if 
they had, they would have given off a telltale type 
of radiation, which was not detected. 

Further complicating matters, even the OPERA scientists 
couldn't yet explain why the neutrinos clocked in 
as fast as they did. Now, according to Science Insider, 
sources familiar with the OPERA experiment say a fiber 
optic cable connecting a GPS receiver and an electronic 
card in one of the lab computers was discovered to be 
loose. (The GPS was used to synchronize the start and 
arrival times of the neutrinos).

Tightening the connection changed the time it took 
for data to travel the length of the fiber by 60 
nanoseconds. Because this data processing time was 
subtracted from the overall time-of-flight in the 
neutrino experiment, the correction may explain the 
seemingly early arrival of the neutrinos. To confirm 
this hypothesis, the OPERA team will have to repeat 
their experiment with the fiber optic cable secured.

When OPERA announced their results in September, the 
physicist and TV presenter Jim Al-Khalili of the 
University of Surrey voiced the incredulity of many 
in his field when he said that if the results 'prove 
to be correct and neutrinos have broken the speed of 
light, I will eat my boxer shorts on live TV.' It 
looks as if he, for one, has been spared that level 
of embarrassment."


Sterling K. Webb