At the 25th International Conference on Neutrino Physics and Astrophysics in Kyoto today, CERN Research Director Sergio Bertolucci presented results on the time of flight of neutrinos from CERN to the INFN Gran Sasso Laboratory on behalf of four experiments situated at Gran Sasso. The four, Borexino, ICARUS, LVD and OPERA all measure a neutrino time of flight consistent with the speed of light. This is at odds with a measurement that the OPERA collaboration put up for scrutiny last September, indicating that the original OPERA measurement can be attributed to a faulty element of the experiment’s fibre optic timing system.Case closed.
Now, I'd like to hear from all those theorists who posted all those silly papers on ArXiv formulating the concept of superluminal neutrinos. What do you have to say for yourself?
Zz.
Edit: this article from Science has more details and more links.
2 comments:
I imagine your parting comment was done somewhat in jest, but I still wanted to say something about it. Shouldn't we let experimental results encourage us (the field, not me) to explore new theoretical understandings of things? I know they maybe jumped the gun a little, but I'm happy to see that we can be so responsive to new ideas.
Only when it is warranted, meaning the result has been verified. Look at what happened with high-Tc superconductors. By all means, embrace it! But when it is suspect, one is simply making a fool of oneself by jumping too quickly on unicorns and fables that do not exist.
Zz.
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