ICARUS already had a very compelling result to initially challenge OPERA's superluminal neutrinos claim. Then OPERA revealed that they had some timing errors in their electronics that could sway things one way or the other. Now comes the most direct challenge so far of the OPERA's result, again from ICARUS, which not only use the neutrinos created from the same source (CERN), but also with detectors that are in almost the same location as OPERA!
THREE weeks ago the OPERA collaboration in Italy found a possible glitch that may account for its startling finding last September that elusive particles called neutrinos move faster than light, in flagrant disregard of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. Now the first crosscheck from a rival experiment seems to vindicate the overwhelming majority of physicists who were convinced all along that some error must have crept in to OPERA's analysis. On March 16th the ICARUS collaboration posted a paper on arXiv, an online repository, which reports that neutrinos they looked at are not travelling faster than light, after all.I'm sure the OPERA's folks will still redo their measurements (if they haven't started already considering that the LHC is back circulating protons). But so far, in terms of experimental results, there hasn't been anything to support such superluminal neutrinos.
Zz.
1 comment:
Could it be that Einstein’s Special Relativity fails to confirm the ICARUS result?
Dear all,
It is known that the recent ICARUS finding was in agreement with Einstein’s Special Relativity Theory (SR). When the result was announced to the public, Professor Carlo Rubbia, Nobel laureate and spokesperson for ICARUS said that: “Our results are in agreement with what Einstein would like to have,” (1). Given that I thought that Einstein’s SR should not encounter any difficulty in confirming the ICARUS result, particularly the lower limit of δt= 0.3 - 4.0 (stat) - 9.0 (sys) = -12.7 ns. Which falls within the limits of the speed of light.
I tried to perform the calculations using the above value for δt and the distance D from the point of departure at CERN to the destination point at Gran Sasso (D = 730,085 km - 55.7 (± 0.5) m. My calculations (and I checked several times) yielded a complex number!!
I would appreciate it if someone could provide the correct calculations.
Many thanks in advance,
Ahwah
(1) See: Geoff Brumfiel, Neutrinos not faster than light- ICARUS experiment contradicts controversial claim, Nature News, 16 March 2012 Corrected: 19 March 2012.
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