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I suspect they have simply measured something wrong, how far would their distance measurement have to be off? About 20m i think, quite a big mistake for a physics experiment.
What about frame dragging or something?
While you're waiting, read the free novel we sent you. It's a Spanish story about a guy named 'Manual.'
Why is there not more about this from academic sources, why the low key reports 'the discovery would overturn a key part of Albert Einstein's 1905 theory of special relativity'. And the rest, this would be monumental, it would be back to the drawing board for most of physics since Einstein. Surely not.
...that measurements over three years...
Huh. And they kept this kept under wraps for 3 years? Doesn't make sense.
I suspect they have simply measured something wrong, how far would their distance measurement have to be off? About 20m i think, quite a big mistake for a physics experiment.
Where does 20m come from? In one billionth of a second light travels 30cm so "a few billionths" suggests a distance error of more like 1-2m than 20.
Timing errors seem unlikely but distance... how DO you measure 700Km that accurately when the sensors are often underground? What's the precision of GPS and does it work underground?
Where does 20m come from? In one billionth of a second light travels 30cm so "a few billionths" suggests a distance error of more like 1-2m than 20.
Timing errors seem unlikely but distance... how DO you measure 700Km that accurately when the sensors are often underground? What's the precision of GPS and does it work underground?
Distance = speed * time = 299,792,458 m/s * 60 * 10^-9 seconds = 17.9875...m
Edit: Ah, the BBC article didn't mention the time. Here's where I found it I think.
Antonio Ereditato, who works at the particle physics centre of the Geneva-based organisation, said measurements over three years showed the neutrinos moving 60 nanoseconds faster than light over a distance of 730km between Geneva and Gran Sasso, Italy. http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/science_...l?cid=31198370
It is a brave soul who makes such a claim in the face of a century of physics.
The results shall need to be repeated at a difference facility, different team, different equipment before such claims can be verified, surely?
Someone else is going to have a look tomorrow:
Ereditato declined to speculate on what it might mean if other physicists, who will be officially informed of the discovery at a meeting in CERN on Friday, found that OPERA's measurements were correct.
Presumably they haven't measured the distance directly with light, as it mentions the particles travel through water and rock. So I wonder how they measured the distance accurate to less than 18m.
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