CERN discovers FTL particle (possibly)

funny thing is this had nothing to do with the CERN machine...

the rate of beard stroking and horlicks quoffing has grown exponentially at labs overnight thanks to this revelation

woah. Maybe theres fuckloads of other particles also going FTL that weve not even discovered yet cos they are going way too fast to detect.

  On 9/23/2011 at 9:13 AM, lumpenprol said:

funny thing is this had nothing to do with the CERN machine...

funny how?

  On 9/23/2011 at 9:20 AM, essines said:

  On 9/23/2011 at 9:13 AM, lumpenprol said:

funny thing is this had nothing to do with the CERN machine...

funny how?

It's probably a "your machine is bigger than mine" kinda thing. Also funny is that it had actually a lot to do with the CERN people.

/returns to training

  On 9/23/2011 at 9:17 AM, feltcher said:

woah. Maybe theres fuckloads of other particles also going FTL that weve not even discovered yet cos they are going way too fast to detect.

nice one

The article run at the BBC is a bit more descriptive:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15017484

  Quote

Neutrinos sent through the ground from Cern toward the Gran Sasso laboratory 732km away seemed to show up a tiny fraction of a second early.

The result - which threatens to upend a century of physics - will be put online for scrutiny by other scientists.

maybe you need a timemachine to detect them

  Quote

The team prepares a beam of just one type, muon neutrinos, sending them from Cern to an underground laboratory at Gran Sasso in Italy to see how many show up as a different type, tau neutrinos.

In the course of doing the experiments, the researchers noticed that the particles showed up a few billionths of a second sooner than light would over the same distance.

 

The team measured the travel times of neutrino bunches some 15,000 times, and have reached a level of statistical significance that in scientific circles would count as a formal discovery.

 

But the group understands that what are known as "systematic errors" could easily make an erroneous result look like a breaking of the ultimate speed limit, and that has motivated them to publish their measurements.

 

 

  On 9/23/2011 at 9:25 AM, goDel said:

  On 9/23/2011 at 9:20 AM, essines said:

  On 9/23/2011 at 9:13 AM, lumpenprol said:

funny thing is this had nothing to do with the CERN machine...

funny how?

It's probably a "your machine is bigger than mine" kinda thing. Also funny is that it had actually a lot to do with the CERN people.

 

/returns to training

i don't know why the machine comes into this, y0!

  On 9/23/2011 at 9:38 AM, essines said:

  On 9/23/2011 at 9:25 AM, goDel said:

  On 9/23/2011 at 9:20 AM, essines said:

  On 9/23/2011 at 9:13 AM, lumpenprol said:

funny thing is this had nothing to do with the CERN machine...

funny how?

It's probably a "your machine is bigger than mine" kinda thing. Also funny is that it had actually a lot to do with the CERN people.

 

/returns to training

i don't know why the machine comes into this, y0!

dude, i hope yours is big enough to raise issues like these.

/starts running on thin ice

The speed of light thing isn't just one law though, if that turns out to be wrong it offsets a whole bunch of stuff that has been based on it. Probably.

  On 9/23/2011 at 12:32 AM, sup said:

how did they know there wasnt just 2 same particles along way apart

Probably because neutrino interaction is so rare that the chance of a random interaction happening at the same time as the they fire off their beam, 15 000 times in a row - is HIGHLY unlikely.

  On 9/23/2011 at 9:13 AM, lumpenprol said:

funny thing is this had nothing to do with the CERN machine...

The experiment was done at one of the CERN labs, but not the LHC - which is probably what you are thinking of.

  On 9/23/2011 at 2:40 AM, m u st co n t r ol t h o 4 said:

hate that speed of light prohibition too.

It's not really a prohibition, it's just the outcome of E = mrelc2 when you reach such speeds - mass becomes infinite.

awesome!

but, what does it mean then: neutrinos have no mass or the equation is wrong?

This is another case of XKCD raising a valid point from beneath a massive, pulsating blanket of smug.

  On 9/23/2011 at 10:11 PM, Cryptowen said:

This is another case of XKCD raising a valid point from beneath a massive, pulsating blanket of smug.

i'm surprised people still read/like it

  On 9/23/2011 at 10:11 PM, Cryptowen said:

This is another case of XKCD raising a valid point from beneath a massive, pulsating blanket of smug.

*under blanket*

Thats the best place to raise valid points from!

  On 9/23/2011 at 11:54 AM, impakt said:

  On 9/23/2011 at 12:32 AM, sup said:

how did they know there wasnt just 2 same particles along way apart

 

Probably because neutrino interaction is so rare that the chance of a random interaction happening at the same time as the they fire off their beam, 15 000 times in a row - is HIGHLY unlikely.

 

  On 9/23/2011 at 9:13 AM, lumpenprol said:

funny thing is this had nothing to do with the CERN machine...

 

The experiment was done at one of the CERN labs, but not the LHC - which is probably what you are thinking of.

my point was this thread is slightly misleading, just like the story about the woman who died after injecting fat in her face, but it wasn't the injection that killed her. In this case CERN was involved in the experiment, but we can't say "the LHC is finally starting to pay off!" as it didn't involve the LHC. That's all.

since CERN != LHC that's quite a pointless remark

There's a lot more research going on at CERN than just the LHC. The LHC will start showing results in the next couple of years. There's a massive amount of data to be sifted through before anything conclusive can be presented. It's not like they smash a handful of hadrons together, watch what happens and write a paper about it.

  On 9/24/2011 at 2:46 AM, lumpenprol said:

  On 9/23/2011 at 11:54 AM, impakt said:

  On 9/23/2011 at 12:32 AM, sup said:

how did they know there wasnt just 2 same particles along way apart

 

Probably because neutrino interaction is so rare that the chance of a random interaction happening at the same time as the they fire off their beam, 15 000 times in a row - is HIGHLY unlikely.

 

  On 9/23/2011 at 9:13 AM, lumpenprol said:

funny thing is this had nothing to do with the CERN machine...

 

The experiment was done at one of the CERN labs, but not the LHC - which is probably what you are thinking of.

 

my point was this thread is slightly misleading, just like the story about the woman who died after injecting fat in her face, but it wasn't the injection that killed her. In this case CERN was involved in the experiment, but we can't say "the LHC is finally starting to pay off!" as it didn't involve the LHC. That's all.

That's what I said.

God is just playing tricks on those silly scientists again