Faster Than Light Neutrinos And Relativity II - A Million Dollar Bet
By Paolo Ciafaloni | November 6th 2011 09:24 AM | 134 comments | Print | E-mail | Track Comments

I live in Lecce, in the south of Italy. I work as a Particle Physicist for the italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN)....

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My recent article  on the relationship between Einstein's Theory of Relativity and superluminal neutrinos has triggered a series of comments. Some of them were reasonable, some others not. Among the reasonable doubts on this topic, there is a possible concern about the meaning of "limiting velocity", i.e. velocity that cannot be exceeded in the context of the theory. Could it be that we have found a new limiting velocity-  the one of neutrinos- and the theory still stands up with a new value for a fundamental constant c? Could it be that the speed of light is not well measured? Could it be that there are tiny matter effects that alter the speed of light in our measurements? The answer to all these questions is "NO" and the purpose of this article  is to clarify these issues. Let me state once again that:

"If we interpret OPERA results in term of neutrino velocity, then one has to modify Einstein's Relativity"

In order to understand why any discussion about the "real" value of the speed of light is pointless, let me rediscuss the issue of a limiting velocity without any reference to "speed of light" at all. Once again, the relevant formulae are the textbook ones mentioned in my previous article, and constitute a clear prediction of standard Lorentz invariance. For a free object:

$\left(\frac{E}{c^2}\right)^2-\left(\frac{p}{c}\right)^2=m^2 \;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\; \;\; (1)$

$v=\frac{\partial E}{\partial p}=c\sqrt{1-\frac{m^2c^4}{E^2}}\;\;\; \;\;\;\;\; \;\;\;\;\;\;(2)$

Here "c" is a universal constant (i.e. not depending on the particular object you use), while m is the mass of the object. E, p,v are well-defined and measurable quantities named respectively  "energy","momentum" and "velocity" of the object.  A free object is a non-interacting object that propagates freely. As an "object" you can take whatever you like: an electron, a proton, a neutrino, but also a Ferrari car if you wish. Needless to say, you shouldn't use Ferrari cars with the purpose of testing the theory of Relativity; more on this later.

The physical meaning of "c" is of a "limiting velocity": the velocity if all objects must be less-than-or-equal-to "c", and "c" is the value to which the velocity tends as the energy E tends to infinity. This statement must hold for all objects, and the measured value of "c" must be the same for all objects. Measuring "c" for a given object implies measuring the values for (E,p) and extracting "c" from eq. (1) or measuring the values for (E,v) and extracting"c" from eq. (2). Usually the measure is repeated many times for different values of E in order to improve statistical accuracy.

All objects must travel slower than "c"...hey but, wait a minute! What if the measured value of "c" is wrong? And what if "c" is the speed of neutrinos, rather than of light? These are unjustified doubts since, as I will now show, the measured values for "c" are significantly different when comparing results from electrons and from OPERA neutrinos. On the other hand, Einstein's Relativity predicts that "c" has a universal value, that cannot depend on whether I use neutrinos or electrons to measure it.  This is a clear contradiction; therefore Einstein's Relativity has to be modified if we interpret OPERA results in terms of neutrinos velocity.

We need now to be more quantitative. In order to compare neutrinos with electrons, let me introduce a reference value, which I call "zuppaspeed":

z=299792458 m/s       (3)

The introduction of this reference value, which has no physical meaning at this stage, is by no means a necessary step, but this what is usually done in order to compare different experimental measures of a single unique quantity: the "universal limiting speed c". Since the "zuppaspeed" is not a measured quantity, but an arbitrarily introduced one, it has the exact value given by eqn (3). Now, experimental data for the quantity
$\delta=(c-z)/z$ as measured for electrons (see for instance arXiv:0905.4346) and for OPERA neutrinos (arXiv:1109.4897) give

$\inline |\delta_e|\le 5\;\; 10^{-15}\;\;\;\;\;\;\ \delta_\nu=(2.48 \pm 0.28 (stat.) \pm 0.30 (sys.)) \times 10^{-5}$

The two values for delta should be compatible, since they refer to the same limiting velocity c; they are not compatible, game over. Relativity must be modified accordingly. And I have never mentioned "speed of light".

You should now not be much surprised to learn that the "zuppaspeed" is also known as the "speed of light in vacuum" as extracted from the Particle Data Group. But this is another story. Einstein has taught us that the speed of light is an invariant, not depending on the status of motion of the observer. It is very well measured, so we'd better use it a standard "ruler" instead of using a poorly defined, observer dependent quantity as the "meter".

Why shouldn't you use a Ferrari to test Relativity? There are probably many possible answers to this questions, but my time is over and I shall give my answer in another article. As for the million dollar bet, it goes as follows. I will give 100 dollars to anyone who, after reading this article, gives me strong arguments that convince me that I am wrong (I would like to bet more, but I am a poor man economically speaking). If
this doesn't happen, then Hank will give me 1 million dollars from the rich revenues he gets from Science 2.0. Since there are 1 million people reading Science 2.0, the probability that I loose is very high and I think this is a fair bet. Hank, are you reading this? Do you accept the bet?

If this doesn't happen, then Hank will give me 1 million dollars from the rich revenues he gets from Science 2.0. Since there are 1 million people reading Science 2.0, the probability that I loose is very high and I think this is a fair bet. Hank, are you reading this? Do you accept the bet?
Your physics is flawless and your logic is clever but your knowledge of economics needs some work.  :)
Ouch Hank, I take this as a refusal to accept my bet. That's unfortunate, for a moment I had hoped that my revenue could undergo a relativistic boost :)
Your expertise for judging this is based on what exactly?
With sadness I see another one depicting science totally one sided, brushing away all reasonable criticism by arrogantly brushing it aside and dismissing under the label "unreasonable" (even more unreasonable than the "limiting velocity" misinterpretation - which leaves me speechless as to the level of missing expertise here). Adding a spectacular headline does not exactly help the impression. Every day the picture becomes clearer and clearer and I am glad that in the wider public, the more people are educated about science the less they trust it - people are waking up. The public distrust of science and scientists is 100% justified and no oil company can be blamed for that.
Your expertise for judging this is based on what exactly?
I suppose I don't have your level of flawless expertise in all fields, like your comprehensive dissections of Australian culture, the IPCC, Apple customers, the Arab spring, geopolitics, pharmacology, the American elections and the cause of 9/11 and yet you still choose to share those with the world.  Hopefully you can pardon my one fragment of a comment designed to let Paolo know I am not giving him a million dollars.

Granted, you have slightly more experience in experimental physics but no more at all in superluminal neutrinos, so I can't figure out why you keep telling everyone else they are stupid.
Hank -
1) You judged specifically on the physics. Your expertise is what?
2) One thing is: A writer giving arguments supporting her opinion while neither falsely claiming professional expertise nor grossly misrepresenting other ideas (especially if those ideas are not already mainstream, in the latter case of course omission is not silencing). A totally different thing is: Somebody backed up by the authority of his professional position claiming expertise into something he is at most a semi-expert on [relativity theory is an extremely difficult separate field one needs to study for many years before publishing (as I have done by the way)] portraying a controversial issue completely one sided for the orthodox establishment opinion not mentioning the other side at all (in this case not main-stream, so this is silencing) but instead brushing it to the side with arrogant demeanor and deceiving with straw-man issues.

Do you guys really really not get it??? You seem to have no idea what is at stake here. This is not about stupid neutrinos. The more science knowledge goes up, the more people distrust science, as studies have shown just recently. Well, but I slowly get it, it is me who is the idiot here. There is actually no problem with the public's distrust in science. They are entirely justified. Gosh, and I actually believed all that 'global warming will kill us' stuff. What a complete idiot I was. Thank you guys for teaching me a valuable lesson.
Hi Paolo,

I like your betting strategy. And I also like your explanation of why the neutrino speed measurement fights with relativity - I have read and heard lots of nonsense on this issue, so it is nice to see a simple explanation in print.

Cheers,
T.
Before 23 years, I had proved mathematically that relative velocity may be more than light velocity. CERN proved experimentally that velocity of Neutrinos may be more than light, if this news will be confirmed then that will be new beginning of physics.
Please read paper "What is matter & dark matter is made up of?" on my web site www.maheshkhati.com. This paper may help to find solution to problems like what is dark matter? & about true relativity. I strongly oppose special theory of relativity

Thank you Tommaso, I particularly appreciate your comment. As for the betting strategy, it might be a good one, but it has failed for the moment :)
Dear Paolo,

your logic is perfect. For me it is absolutely clear that allowing neutrino speed faster than the speed of light would mean the end of relativistic physics as we know it. This is just too high a price to pay, in my opinion.

On the other hand, if we believe in the correctness of OPERA measurements, then the time of flight is 60 nanoseconds too short for the travel distance of 730 km. These time interval and distance were measured between the proton beam hitting the graphite target and the neutrino registration event in the OPERA detector. Again, if OPERA results are correct, then the timing of the two events cannot be questioned. This leaves us with only one uncertainty: the length of the path traveled by the neutrino.

Note that the space location from which the neutrino starts its journey is not known experimentally. It is only assumed that the sequence of trajectories proton->meson->neutrino is continuous (without gaps). We can be sure that the proton-meson transformation vertex is well localized, because similar events can be easily seen in bubble chambers. So, the most suspicious place is where the meson decays into a muon and a neutrino. There is no doubt that the meson's (pi-meson or K-meson) decay into the muon occurs locally. (The tracks of such decay events can be seen clearly in bubble chambers or emulsions.) However, it is not clear if the neutrino emerges from the same decay vertex. Experimentally, there is no evidence which would support the (crucial) assumption that meson, muon and neutrino trajectories are joined at the same decay vertex. It may be true that the neutrino trajectory starts very far (e.g., 18 meters away) from the meson-muon vertex, which would explain the missing 60 nanoseconds. This idea is not as stupid as it seems from the first sight. In my work http://vixra.org/pdf/1110.0052v2.pdf it was shown that the distant creation of neutrino can be accommodated within a very simple quantum relativistic model.

If we eliminate what's impossible (an error in the OPERA experiment and the superluminal neutrino speed) then we are left with something (the gap between meson and neutrino trajectories), which seems improbable but must be true.

Cheers. Eugene.
Dear Eugene,
Thank you for your comment about my "perfect" logic. I don't know whether we will have to modify Einstein's relativity, but let me say that if we will be forced to do this by a confirmation of OPERA results by  independent experiments, I will be very happy! Indeed, in that case I think we we will have to figure out a new predictive framework that is not evident at the moment: a lot of work has still to be done. In any case, there is one important effect of the OPERA results: we are forced to review our fundamental ideas, like the meaning of relativity and quantum mechanics. This is a very useful exercise for our minds, I believe.

Cheers Paolol
Paolo,

I agree with you that if OPERA results are confirmed then we have no other choice but to modify Einstein's relativity. The good news is that such a modification exists already: http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0504062 . See, especially, chapter 11.

Eugene.
Read your paper. You have come up with a rather elegant postulation of the difference based on sound (no pun intended) reasoning. Are neurtrinos superluminal or is there some kind of dimensional anomoly which may account for the trajectory gap? If inductive methods were used to test that hypothesis further it may yield confirmation that there are no superluminal neutrinos, just ones which appear to have a 60ns advantage by virtue of their dimensional separation.

Paolo:

I do note a slight typographical error in your equation (2):  The v, on the left-hand side, should be v/c.

Just a friendly correction.  :)

David
Oh, on the subject of typos:  You will probably want to correct the typo in your first mention of "zuppaspeed", where you wrote "zuppaspped" instead.

Just another friendly correction.  :)
Thank you very much for spotting the typos; I found two more myself. Yesterday my wife and my daughter were both ill, and playing the little doctor and housekeeper doesn't help concentration :)

Actually I will be very glad if you or anyone else help me improve my English, since it is not my native language.  Cheers Paolo.
"I will give 100 dollars to anyone who, after reading this article, gives me strong arguments that convince me that I am wrong"
Ever read about "emergent relativity"? I am not going to present you the arguments here, as you of course will not accept anything as "reasonable" that does not confirm your firmly held belief system, so it would be a waste of time. Let me nevertheless assure you: Even if you may turn out to be correct with the mere fact that light-velocity is the limit, to present it in the way you do it here while there are strong reasons to suspect relativity to be just a low energy emergent symmetry, is absolutely wrong. This is not what science was supposed to be once, but of course, this kind of screaming contest is what it has become. Is this Science2.0? I am afraid it is.
Sascha, I am not ignoring you because I believe I am right, nor am I ignoring you because I believe you're wrong. I am ignoring you because you are extremely aggressive towards me. Here is a (partial) list of your "comments" to what I have written:

- "First sentence already wrong" (actually, it was my first sentence ever on Science 2.0)
-  "Somebody backed up by the authority of his professional position claiming expertise into something he is at most a semi-expert on (..) portraying a controversial issue completely one sided for the orthodox establishment opinion not mentioning the other side at all (in this case not main-stream, so this is silencing) but instead brushing it to the side with arrogant demeanor and deceiving with straw-man issues."
-
"the "limiting velocity" misinterpretation - which leaves me speechless as to the level of missing expertise here"
"Even if you may turn out to be correct with the mere fact that light-velocity is the limit, to present it in the way you do it here while there are strong reasons to suspect relativity to be just a low energy emergent symmetry, is absolutely wrong. This is not what science was supposed to be once"

This is a serious problem for any form or relationship  you should wish to establish with me. Human relationships are far more important for me than science. So let me put one thing clear. Either you begin respecting  me as a human being or no form of communication will be possible with me. In other words, if you don't stop being overaggressive I will keep ignoring your comments, your theories, and your person altogether.

One of the first sentences from you: "you certainly agree with me that reading (and commenting) the rest of my post would be for you an unexcusable loss of precious time."
Passive aggressiveness, but I answered friendly and as a further gesture of well meaning even immediately put you on my friend-list.

I am only now on this article aggressive because you have been made aware of the arguments (and are probably also aware of the discussion on TD's column), yet nevertheless you decided to show utter arrogance by disrespecting all non-orthodox positions with no more than "Some of them were reasonable, some others not" and then adding your straw-man "reasonable" one. It is a kick below the belt nicely coded for all who get it (while non-experts like Hank and many lay readers likely do not get it - well done there - ten points). You state that those perfectly reasonable considerations by scientists you do not like are plainly not reasonable enough to even be mentioned, not even as reasonable as the clearly lay misunderstanding about c you call the only reasonable one. Sheer insult!

Do not pretend as if I want to have my personal opinion forced in! There have been almost 100 papers on this topic on the archive, not only holy Glashow and those sufficiently supporting certain biases.

Stop portraying this in psychoanalyzing ways as if am a hysterical housewife of Freudian interpretation and feeling "ignored" in my yearning for 'forming a relationship with you' (?!?). I am not interested even in reading/replying any more, at all, if certain person's responses are just to paint me as a crackpot in need of therapy sessions on the couch.

The issue is nothing else but: Does such discourse as done here by you and Dorigo help or does it polarize science cheerleaders versus the distrusting public. Yes, lay people do pick up on this stuff over time, however well you hide the bias.
Dear Sascha,
I don't understand much of what you write here (what is "TD's Column" for instance?) but on one point I have to correct you: contrarily to what you claim, I never stated that
"those perfectly reasonable considerations by scientists you do not like are plainly not reasonable enough to even be mentioned"

as anyone reading my two articles can verify. My point is, indeed, a very simple one. For the sakeness of clarity, once again:
"If one interprets OPERA data as an indication that neutrinos velocity exceeds that of light by 7 km/s, then one has to modify Einstein's Theory of Relativity"

Do you agree with this statement?
From what I have understood, I think that you fully agree with my statement. In case you don't, my bet was a way to challenge Science 2.0 readers (you included) to give arguments against this claim. Do you have any serious argument against my very simple claim? Have you found any flaw in my reasoning? Do you think my logic is wrong? Since mine is a quantitative argument, do you thing I am giving bad numbers?

Well, readers can judge for themselves whether your statement about reasonable implies unreasonable or not and at who that would be aimed.
My point is, indeed, a very simple one. For the sakeness of clarity, once again:
"If one interprets OPERA data as an indication that neutrinos velocity exceeds that of light by 7 km/s, then one has to modify Einstein's Theory of Relativity"
Well then you should perhaps write it like this and add the remark that this assumption is not supported by neutrino data anyway. However, you wrote:
Let me state once again that: "If we interpret OPERA results in term of neutrino velocity, then one has to modify Einstein's Relativity"
NO mentioning here of that you restrict this article to the assumption of 7km/h! Then going on as if 7km/h is implied by this general statement is plainly silencing all other interpretations. You write "in term of neutrino velocity" while having been made aware of that the supernova data, MINOS, OPERA, ... consistently point toward that 7km/h over the whole length cannot be the correct velocity (above 10c for short distances may be indicated). Yet you stick to an obviously inconsistent assumption (and even top it off with a straw man misconception about "enforced limit") because that makes superluminal neutrinos look silly.
Do you agree with this statement?
Which one? This article is clearly about paying me hundred dollars if I give good arguments against "If we interpret OPERA results in term of neutrino velocity, then one has to modify Einstein's Relativity". Well, I gave those arguments. Where are my 100 bucks? Or was it a million lira?
Well Sascha,
I notice that you have started being less aggressive and giving real arguments; I thank you for this.
On one thing you're right: In one (out of three) sentences I do not mention the famous 7 km/s. However it should be clear from the context, and from everything is written in my first and second article, that everything is based on this and on quantitative statements. You mention an article that I had not read. I invite you to give arguments in this post directly, otherwise it becomes a hard work for me: I should read all of the articles that are cited in the comments, which is impossible for me. In any case, I read your article and it is about tachyons, as far as I understand. As you can read from first article, tachyons are excluded on phenomenological grounds in the case of OPERA neutrinos.

Then, here you mention that neutrinos could go 10 times faster than light; this would be much, much more than 7 km/s. We can talk about this possibility, but it doesn't invalidate my claim.

Let me make another couple of comments.
- I am not excluding other possibilities; this would be tremendously arrogant of my part. Actually, I believe that one can almost always find "alternative" explanations, "ad hoc" mechanisms and so on.

- You mention the fact that my claim "makes superluminal neutrinos look silly".  It doesn't all. Actually, there can be no "demonstration" that neutrinos are not superluminal. That wouldn't be scientific. We must face facts, and interpret them. It is unavoidable that in order to interpret them we make certain assumptions. What I am stating here is that we have to modify some assumprtions in this peculiar case.

-In science, everything is about quantitative statement. If neutrinos went faster than light by 10-3 km/s, then my claim wouldn't hold. That's why I mention almost obsessively those 7 km/s.

In any case, I believe we are going in the right direction in order to begin a real communication; I'm glad about it.
I notice that you have started being less aggressive
Well, I do sadly not notice you being less patronizing and insulting and I have yet to hear a single apology for all the insults you have amassed by now.
On one thing you're right: In one (out of three) sentences I do not mention the famous 7 km/s.
The sentence is the very claim that you defend, the core of your "bet".
it should be clear from the context
No - the only thing that becomes clear this way is that you present the issue totally biased as if "neutrino velocity being responsible" is identical to the orthodox interpretation of 7km/h. You have been made aware of that this equals silencing the actually by the data indicated velocities yet you do it again.
and from everything is written in my first and second article ...You mention an article that I had not read. ... I should read all of the articles that are cited in the comments, which is impossible for me.
WOW!!! Lowly reader folk of Science2.0 and other scientists are supposed to read your first article and guess different than obvious interpretations of what you have clearly written here, but you oh busy master have not even looked at the one or two articles that you were told contains the very information that puts your writing here into doubt, something written for lay-people and clearly easy fare for you, and that was how many days ago already? Utter arrogance!
I guess you may just not understand. I do not even remember I mentioned that word much.
As you can read from first article, tachyons are excluded on phenomenological grounds in the case of OPERA neutrinos.
I guess you really did not understand much.
- I am not excluding other possibilities; this would be tremendously arrogant of my part.
EXACTLY! That is the first time you get it at least partially. Your complete refusal to look at reasonable objections to 7km/h that have been presented to you already after your first article is indeed "tremendously arrogant".
one can almost always find "alternative" explanations, "ad hoc" mechanisms and so on.
The totality of neutrino data clearly excluding 7km/h is not ad hoc artificial models - it is the data.
You mention the fact that my claim "makes superluminal neutrinos look silly".
Using wrong straw man arguments as input ensures to "derive" conclusions that cannot but make FTL particles look silly.
I believe we are going in the right direction in order to begin a real communication;
No - we are not. You are completely refusing any and all bias and insulting on your part although you are clearly very biased and patronizing.
Anyway - this is not about me. You are writing to the wider public here on Science2.0, so there is some responsibility coming with that. If you have no time to even look at any objections to your articles that others take the time and feedback to you, maybe you should just not go on writing. Again (like for the fifth time): The public is losing trust into science at an unprecedented rate because they perceive bias and partisan activism. A technological society in crisis that decides democratically cannot quite afford this.
Sascha, this is too much for me.
Your level has become so low that you just keep on insulting me. I am not going to reply to your comments anymore.
You guys need to get a room.

Hilarious.

We definitely need to get a room. But I'am afraid of the unpredictable consequences.
"If we interpret OPERA results in term of neutrino velocity, then one has to modify Einstein's Relativity"

What if we interpret it in terms of a tachyonic weakon that decays after ~20m? Tachyons are predicted by relativity, after all.

Warren,

then you still have the causality question unanswered. The effect (neutrino registration by the OPERA detector) is outside of the light cone of the cause (proton's hit of the target). If the Lorentz transformations of special relativity are assumed to be valid, then one can find a reference frame in which the effect occurs before its cause, which is absurd.

Eugene.
in which the effect occurs before its cause, which is absurd
It is not absurd as long as the "before" is only due to labeling outside of the future and past light-cones of the emission/detection events (i.e. at space-like distances in between the events). As long as it is ensured that "before" does not mean a space-time event inside the causal past (past light-cones), there is no problem. (I tried to explain that here - the membrane model referred to there is only an example; the conclusions are independent of the model.)
Sascha,

if I understand correcly (please correct me if I'm wrong) you don't see a problem in superluminal signaling if different observers have different properties, i.e., some of them can send superluminal signals while others can't. This is possible if the observers have different speeds with respect to the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Basically, you assume the existence of a preferred frame. For me this idea is troubling, because it kills the fundamental principle of relativity (the equivalence of all inertial observers independent on their speed), which was with us since the times of Galileo.

In my opinion, the relativity principle is the most powerful and beautiful invention in physics. So, I would prefer to stick with this principle for as long as possible. I think there are still ways to explain the superluminal behavior of neutrinos without sacrificing either the relativity or the causality principles.

Eugene.
I agree with you with respect to the relativity principle. However, I see causality as just as inelegant as a preferred frame of reference.

Neither relativity nor quantum mechanics imply causality. Field equations are solved in four dimensions, including time. "Causality" might be used as an argument to prefer some solutions over others, but we already know from quantum mechanics that solutions can be superposed: there is no reason to prefer causal solutions in this way.

Now, it is true that the idea of causality is useful for a naive understanding of the world - just as is the idea of a preferred frame of reference. Physics, however, has progressed well past what can be naively perceived with unaided human senses. We have pushed far enough past those senses that our naive intuitions are no longer a good guide for the reality that we are uncovering, no matter how emotionally appealing intuitions like "causality" may be.

If we abandon the principle of causality and allow ourselves to change our past, then nothing can prevent me from going back in time and kill my grandfather (sorry, grandpa!). Then I wouln't be born in the first place. Paradox.
I don't think so.

The fact that you travel back in time means that your precise state, when you materialize in the past, is both the effect of the attempted assassination and also the cause. State trajectories normally diverge exponentially but by placing the same microstate (of part of the system) at two points on a trajectory, time travel forces the system to select just one trajectory which leads to no contradiction.

Usual probabilities do not apply when the outcome of your action is the cause of it. So it will seem as though "something always happens" to stop you. But it's not coincidence, it's cause and effect. If you were very very careful you might eliminate all the obvious ways that nature would achieve consistency, but there are still plenty of very odd ways that it can be achieved, up to and including your grandfather coming back to life through a thermal fluctuation which is caused by thermal vibrations that you brought from his future and then set in motion. Yes it's that "unlikely" precisely because you have pinned the state trajectory down in two places. That doesn't leave it free to wander about.

This is due to be blogged some time but you may as well have a preview :)

Alright, it gets a bit more technical but not much more!
"some of them can send superluminal signals while others can't."
No, this is not what I wrote. Alice and Bob both send faster than light in the examples.
"you assume the existence of a preferred frame"
No! The CMB/membrane is just an intuitive example for a certain communication being restricted to a unique frame, say an arbitrary tunnel barrier. Readers have otherwise no intuition at all and simply cannot follow at all. With giving an intuitive example, at least perhaps 20% understood it.
"it kills the fundamental principle of relativity"
As I just pointed out, it does not, but even if it would (e.g. CMB example), that would be fine if the universe just happens to be that way. Science is not belief in dogma but testing. Relativity looks very much like an emergent symmetry. Moreover, the GR cosmology (CMB etc) actually kind of destroys its own relativity! The CMB is not just some imagined rocket ship.

Keep digging your hole. Ignore particle models of light. Ignore extinction theory. Ignore your eyes when V838 Monocerotis blew up. A century wasted on relativity and wave theory is far too long a wrong turn.

I find it amusing that even individuals with degrees unimaginable to myself, attack each other personally on a science website.

I have no knowledge in the fields of physics as I am just an 18 year old college student, however the comments I read (albeit the technical terms and the majority of theories went right over my head) are amusing considering you are all "professionals" and you are getting discouraged with one another and fighting like little kids.

Just my thoughts.

Hi Eric,
You are right that personal attakcs should be left out of scientific arguments. But we are humans, and everybody makes mistakes: actually, I personally make sure of making a couple of mistakes per day, in order to keep trained :) I believe making mistakes is a good way to learn in life.

On the other hand, you shouldn't be surprised that there are discussions (even rough ones) on a given scientific topic. I think that's the way science proceeds: by making mistakes, discuss, making mistakes again and then eventually agree on what we might call a "common framework". But we also know that this framework will need to be modified in the future. To this I should add that there is always a certain degree of uncertainty in our discussions. This happens because it is not always clear how to interpret our results, there might be ambiguities in the language we use and so on. But we think that our methods enable us to reach a certain degree of security about whether a statement is "true" or false". Nevertheless, we have to be patient: science is not based on dogmas and absolute thruths; if this were the case, there would be no discussions at all.

Cheers Paolo
Hi Paolo,

I hope this doesn't stir things up, but I feel the need to comment on what has been going on. Please bear with me.
Quite simply, the reason I now follow this website and have signed up is because of Sascha and the following article:

http://www.science20.com/alpha_meme/neutrinos_can_go_faster_light_without_violating_relativity-82950

(So whatever you end up thinking of me you, you have him to thank/blame)

Let me explain. When I first heard of the neutrino result like many of the wider community I was excited and hoped that it was true. Now I didn't for a minute think that relativity was wrong, and I remembered an article in New Scientist I think that said that light could be beaten if particles went through extra dimensions. Unless I am mistaken, string theory requires extra dimensions to exist, and certainly doesn't say they cannot be observed. Unless I am also mistaken, serious experiments have been done measuring gravity on small scales in an attempt to look for the effects of these extra dimensions. So we have the situation where a major theory followed by many people predicts extra dimensions and serious attempts have been made to find them. Also one of the reasons given for building the LHC was to look for such dimensions. So what do you think I expected to see when an experiment involving CERN appeared to show evidence for extra dimensions as allowed by string theory? Well, not what happened!

I expected to see string theorists claiming they were right all along, and other people calling the big physics a triumph, with of course notes of caution. I did not expect to see scientists coming very close to claiming an experimental result was impossible because it disagreed with theory. Whether you are polite about this, or perhaps excessively angry, someone with even the most basic knowledge of science knows that this isn't supposed to happen. I looked everywhere for an explanation involving extra dimensions and became more and more surprised when I didn't find one. I just don't know where people are coming from "defending Einstein". If someone points out that an aircraft doesn't fly in space, you don't respond by "defending" the laws of flight, you say "of course, there is no air in space". If an aircraft engineer tried to "defend" the laws of flight in this case, they would lose not gain my trust.

So please, can you read the above article by Sascha and give it serious consideration coming from the position that it has some sensible a priori chance of being correct. It is a simple and obvious explanation for what is going on, and is something that people not up with physics can easily understand. I have explained it to them.

So, is it simple, obvious and plausible, or is it simple, obvious and completely wrong/excluded by experiment? I'm sure many people want to know.

Best wishes,

Thor
Thor Russell
Thank you for your comment, Thor. This gives me the opportunity to shed some light on the scientific methods and on how scientists (usually) work. There are two different issues mixed in your comment; let my try to separate them.
A) Could extra spatial dimensions, dark energy, quantum gravity, vacuum properties or...ANY model you have in mind "explain", at least in principle, Opera superluminal neutrinos?
B) Does one need to modify Einstein's Relativity in order to account for OPERA superluminal neutrinos?

The answer to the first question, is, obviously, a big YES. If I add "at least in principle" it is because then one should give details of the precise mechanism explaining OPERA neutrinos and compare the prediction of the proposed model with experimental data.

The answer to the second question is, again, a big YES. This might not seem that obvious to the unexperienced reader, and this is why I have written  two articles on Science 2.0. In the first article I explain why the answer is YES (and why this is a QUANTITATIVE statement) and in the second I explain that this conclusion is true even without ever mentioning "the speed of light". Which is, imho, an important conceptual point which I have not seen explained elsewhere.

Now, there are at the moment 133 articles on the arxiv trying to cope with OPERA's measumerents. So frankly I don't understand why you think that scientists are not trying to understand what's going on. As far as I know, ALL of the articles assume Lorentz invariance, which unambigously predicts eqn. (1) and (2) in my article,  has to be modified. But it MUST be modified! Why? Because if Lorentz invariance, which is at the heart of Einstein's (special) Relativity, holds, then eqn (1) and (2) hold. Then, OPERA superluminal neutrinos are in contradiction with this.
Special Relativity, as you see from (1) and (2) that involve only basic math, is very simple from a formal point of view. Yet it is very predictive and powerful, and it is based on beautiful concepts such as homogeneity and isotropy of space, equivalence af all inertial observers and so on.

Then, I don't understand why you think that someone is "defending Einstein". No one is doing that! On the contrary, we are taking very SERIOUSLY the possibility that (special) Relativity Theory has to be modified, as the mentioned articles (possibly more than 133 by now) show. The next questions we ask ourselves are "HOW can this by done"? More precisely, one MUST alter (1) and (2), but how? If I modify it, what are the consequences? Are there any experimental results that are in contradiction with my hypothesis on the way (1) and (2) are modified by my model? And so on. I have been thinking about these issues for more than one month, yet I haven't published anything on the arxiv. Why? Because my "smart ideas" have, until now, been washed out by one set of experimental data or other. Again, a QUANTITATIVE statement.

I don't know why you "didn't for a minute think that relativity was wrong" and I don't know why you are convinced that "an experiment involving CERN appeared to show evidence for extra dimensions as allowed by string theory". I think that your second sentence is false, so you could maybe explain better what you mean. Let me point out that insinting on thinking that Relativity cannot be modified is an antiscientific attitude imho. Again, many scientists are taking this hyothesis into consideration very seriously.

Cheers Paolo
I don't understand why you say the answer to B) needs to be YES.
Sascha's post that i mentioned above explains quite clearly to me why the answer to that could be NO. If the speed of light in those other dimensions is much faster than in the normal 3 we inhabit, then clearly to me the neutrinos can get ahead of light without violating Lorentz.
Have you closely read his post? Is there experimental evidence that rules it out or is there something wrong with his theory? That's what I really want to know. He claims quite strongly that the answer to B) is NO in this case, and it seems to make sense, so why are you so confident in saying a big YES? Please explain what you disagree with him on, I would find it informative.

I don't think that relativity cannot be modified, just that Sascha's explanation appears simpler (though obviously not to other people).

Thor Russell
Hy Thor,
How could possibly Einstein know about String Theory when he wrote his Relativity theory in 1905? Can you answer to this question?

As far as I know, there's nothing wrong in Sacha's post.

Cheers Paolo

Quantum mechanics allows for tiny excursions outside the light cone that are perfectly consistent with Relativity. This may provide the most natural interpretation of OPERA anomaly, see below:

http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1162

Cheers,

Ervin

Erwin,

this idea is not bad. Actually, my first reaction to the OPERA news was that this kind of "excursion outside the light cone" has happened, indeed. There is one problem with this explanation, though. Only a small fraction of neutrinos can go outside the light cone. Most of them should remain subluminal. Moreover, the neutrino wave function outside the light cone should decay exponentially. In the experiment this would mean a wide spread of advance times, e.g., from 0ns to beyond 60ns with higher probabilities at the lower end of this spectrum. Contrary to that expectation, experimental neutrino advance times are concentrated around 60 ns with rather small uncertainty of about 10 ns. I don't think this result can be easily explained in the proposed model.

Eugene.
Eugene, you say:

"Only a small fraction of neutrinos can go outside the light cone. Most of them should remain subluminal. Moreover, the neutrino wave function outside the light cone should decay exponentially".

The excursion parameter outside the light cone is determined by the wavelength of the single-flavor neutrino which, in turn, depends on its mass. Assuming that all neutrinos in the beam are mu-type and have the same mass, there is no reason why only a negligible fraction would "leak" outside the light-cone.

The paper argues that is indeed the tiny mass of neutrinos that sets the resolution limit of the OPERA detector. As a result, what OPERA does is to actually enable a measurement of the smallest neutrino mass corresponding to the 60 ns advance time.

There may very well be some other subtle points that deserve consideration. My opinion is that we ought to think a bit deeper before deciding to discard this intriguing interpretation of the OPERA anomaly.

Ervin

Ervin,

take a look at Ruijsenaars, S.N.M. "On Newton-Wigner localization and superluminal propagation speeds" Ann. Phys. 137 (1981), 33, where the probability is estimated for an electron to go outside the light cone. The author gets some ridiculously small probability. Yes, one can make this number greater by special preparation of the initial wave function and by making use of the small neutrino mass. But still, the major part of the probability density is going to be concetrated inside the light cone and only small exponential tails will "leak" outside.

Even though this idea doesn't work. I like it much more than other exotic explanations involving extra dimensions, tachyons, etc.

Eugene.
I am speculating that, perhaps, there is some "coherent" enhancement of the leak probability or some other collective effect in addition to the tiny neutrino masses. Do we know enough about the propagation of ultra-relativistic neutrino beams in Earth to rule out these contributions?

Ervin

Heyo.

I got here by googling "coherent" along with the relevant OPERA neutrino searchwords. Anyhoo this might not be exactly what you're referring to since I know little of what you mean by leak BUT.. I just attended a talk today here at SFU (I'm a math grad) by M. Vetterli on the OPERA results and his take (apologies to him for misinterpretations) was that the results are due to noise in the room being picked up on neutrino detection. He showed that the signals they were dealing with have 2 kinds of noise in them: 1: random noise, which is expected and which basically cleans up by averaging, and 2: at the tail end of the signal, a bit of COHERENT noise which, incidentally, had a phase of 60ns. And which was sort of glossed over in the report. Interesting... I was actually disappointed, wanting a breakthrough and everything, but he also pointed out the supernova neutrino vs light detection experiment (sorry for not knowing the name of it but some of you probably do... was it a Japanese experiment?) would have had neutrinos arrive years before the light did (instead of 1 hour or so), if neutrinos were consistently superliminal at the speed suggested by OPERA results, as well as producing the causality paradox many here should be familiar with. Cheerio
Eric
P.S. maybe if they figure out the coherent noise source it'll be some serendipitous new effect... i know very little of physics.

Update: after reading the discussion more, my comment is not directly related to the ones I replied to
(sorry). Does anyone know if a coherent 60ns signal at the end of some neutrino detection means anything? I suppose it would involve knowledge of the instruments but thought I'd throw the question out there. Also, how is it that if a mu neutrino goes outside its cone of shame, it gets there faster, and doesn't violate causality? The paper mentions an anti-neutrino produced at Gran Sasso and going to CERN.

Hi Eric,
I don't understand very well what you're talking about. In any case here you mention a "paper". Which paper? Maybe If you tell me which paper you refer to I can give a look and let you know my point of view.

Cheers Paolo

PS As you see, at least in this article's "room",  random noise has loewered down a lot. :)
Hi Paolo, thanks for the reply. I meant

"Finally, it is inherent in our interpretation that there exists a set of reference frames in which
the temporal ordering of the space-like trajectory of a neutrino traveling from CERN to Gran
Sasso is reversed. For these observers the same process appears as the emission of an antineutrino
at Gran Sasso and its subsequent absorption at CERN. Such a relativity of processes
is necessary and suXcient for the causal structure of space-time to be preserved."
-- from the link posted by Eugene above: http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1162

As for the fishy coherent noise at the tail of the signal neutrino signal, there's a huge thread on the physicsforums.com I may have to search through, to see if anyone else discusses this, but I don't have time right now.

cheers
Eric

My name is Paolo. Interesting article, thx for your comment. However the authors don't give experimental support to their claim, they only say "maybe we are forgetting something". On this point I agree with them.

Ciao Paolo
@ Ervin, Eugene:
Please read my rather long reply to Thor's comment. Quantum effects could play a role here, but they have to imply  a modification of eqns. (1),(2)  in order to accunt for OPERA superluminal neutrinos.
Paolo,

The leak probability is a purely quantum effect with no classical analog. It does not lead to any modification of Special Relativity and it strictly preserves causality. Whether or not additional quantum effects related to propagation of ultra-relativistic neutrinos of high energies in Earth change the relativistic dispersion relations is an open question. In my opinion, the answer to this question requires further experimental and theoretical investigations. In particular, one needs to repeat neutrino experiments under different settings such as shorter baselines, shorter pulses and so on.

Ervin

Paolo,

In quantum mechanics your equations (1) and (2) are still valid, but they should be considered as operator equations for Hermitian operators of momentum (p), energy (E), velocity (v) and position (x). Position and velocity operators do not commute, so (simultaneous) measurements of these two observables are associates with uncertainties. Even though eigenvalues of v are confined strictly between -c and +c, you can still get |x1-x2|/|t1-t2| > c if you measure particle positions x1 and x2 at two time instances t1 and t2 (as has been done at OPERA). So, there is still a tiny chance for the particle to go outside the light cone without violating relativistic and quantum laws. This possibility has been discussed a lot, especially by Hegerfeldt:

G. C. Hegerfeldt, "Instantaneous spreading and Einstein causality in quantum theory", Ann. Phys. (Leipzig), 7 (1998), 716-725. http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9809030

I agree with Ervin that this is a valid superluminal effect. However, I think that this is not a good explanation of OPERA observations.

Eugene.
Eugene, you say

"I agree with Ervin that this is a valid superluminal effect. However, I think that this is not a good explanation of OPERA observations."

It remains to be seen if this is true or not. Although I feel the same way, I am not ready to dismiss this explanation yet.

But there are other possibilities. For example, strange as it may seem, OPERA, MINOS and SN1987a tell us that there it might be a counter-intuitive symmetry between photons and nearly massless neutrinos propagating large distances away from the inverse of the EW scale. This "would-be" symmetry reinforces Lorentz invariance regardless of the relative velocity of neutrinos or their average energy.

Ervin

Very nice comment Eugene, thanks. I'll get a closer look at what you mention here.

Cheers  Paolo
Like Thor, I would also like to see an explanation regarding (B). While I think some of Sascha's comments here are a little bit raw, I also perceive that T. Dorigo and P. Ciafaloni are not addressing this point. Apparently, I'm not the only layperson who feels this way.

And, also, thanks to all the writers (Hank, Dorigo, Sascha, Ciafaloni, etc.) for providing such interesting articles, it's always nice to visit this site and learn something new.
-Max

Thankyou. I expected I was not alone.I am satisfied with the responses they give regarding B) except for the very specific situation outlined in Sascha's post. I wish they would give this the attention it deserves and respond with a well reasoned response.
Thor Russell
I have read a lot of Sacha's comments, and I used to think Sacha was a complete prick. However, I have read more of his articles, and now I think he's a compete prick with decent and logical views.

His 'wave surface' explanation makes a lot of sense, and while it requires a lot of extra physics for it to be true, feels somehow intuitive. I guess the extra physics required makes it unpalatable to most physicists, who quite rightly want to modify as little as possible each step forward.

If you read his articles carefully on this topic, it's well thought out. I'd imagine there is no refutation because it could be true, and can't be shown as wrong. It's just an unlikely explanation.

Can I have \$100 dollars for pointing out that lose (as in 'to win or lose') is spelt lose, and not loose (as in 'not tight'). :)

Quote:
"Since there are 1 million people reading Science 2.0, the probability that I loose is very high and I think this is a fair bet."

Gosh, you're right about the typo Deano; thanks. But no, you can't have \$100 for this. Maybe you can ask Hank for one million :).

Paolo

To Sascha, Dean, Thor, Hank, David, Eugene, and all of the people that have commented here
To the 99% "silent majority" of readers

I am very happy that my article triggered a very exciting and lively debate. I am deeply grateful to all of the commenters: I have somehow learned something from all of them.  But for the moment being I have decided to stop replying to the comments here. Click here, and you will now why. You are warmly encouraged to post comments there.

But, I am not forgetting about the questions raised here. Not at all. I have only decided to postpone my answers for, say, a week from now. If you will have the patience to wait for me, I will be happy to continue discussing with you.

Best Regards   Paolo
That Sasha is a feisty one!

I'm No kind of expert - a naive philosopher who just might make good down the road. My interest in this area is mainly decoherence - from that, I'm thinking c may be the limit of information transfer. But Relativity? From my understanding, modern miniaturization has allowed Einstein's improvements to gravitation theory to be programmed into recent components that need to know such things... in this manner, calling for the fall of Relativity may be a few centuries early...

John:

I liked Hank's description of Sascha:  "He is the Scud missile of Science 2.0".  However, "feisty" also works.

David
Sascha, Paolo, Hank, Tommaso; I love you guys. (Hadda make another post to correct the previous misspelling of Sascha's name, if nothing else)

I'm an amateur scientist in that I may have reduced the equation of "faith healing" into the constituent variables of "electromagnetic communication and simulation," not your field, still needs work. :D

So I'm mostly Public, with nothing but good thoughts about Science 2.0. Keep up the good work. ;)

Thank you John. But what do you mean with "That Sasha is a feisty one!" in your previous message? Sorry, my knowledge of English is a very limited one.

Paolo
Sascha seems to be passionate. I'm no expert, mind, I've read a couple of these blog posts; I've seen the same type of thing in the past - it's love, dedication, intellectual certainty bought by experience. He is "of a type;" but of course, Sascha is his own man.

Hello Paolo,

Noticed a response to your blog on another blog that I follow, TGD diary. He seems to be having some trouble getting his comments published here and feels he may be being deliberately censored. Thought I would post a link for you just in case it's just a glitch (seems you have no trouble letting people disagree with you in the comments section(s). Cool blog, by the way. Enjoying it so far.

Hi Rob,
Do you mean that someone is actually mentioning ME in some other blog? Wow! How exciting! Something like "Paolo-becoming-worldwide-famous" going on here. Very different from the boring "Paolo-unknown-dude-from Lecce" I was used to! This was a good one :)
Dunno if there's censorhip going on here, but I think not. But there is possibly some glitch in the software. Look at this "cut-and-paste" from an E-mail I sent to Hank:

"Hi Hank,
I have a problem I don't understand. I got this mail stating that someone commented on y article. I have read the comment, but when I try to reply I get the message:
"The comment you are replying to does not exist"
which is a nice paradox to me :)  "

Hank, when you will make up your mind and call the head of the sofware department? lol

That was another good one.
Wow, not only is he mentioning you Paolo but he has also written a long rant about how he and other people are being censored at Science20. His comments and replies about the superluminal neutrinos that he says he was trying to post here are really interesting, I wonder why these comments were censored? I also have had a few comments on my blogs from anonymous people censored and deleted that I couldn't see what was wrong with them.
My latest forum article 'Australian Researchers Discover Potential Blue Green Algae Cause & Treatment of Motor Neuron Disease (MND)&(ALS)' Parkinsons's and Alzheimer's can be found at http://www.science20.com/forums/medicine
Sascha has actually seen comments that were not censored (were actually posted in the comments section) simply disappear, or being, somehow, "deleted" by who knows what or whom.

I believe Hank has been looking into the issue, but, so far as I know, even the cause remains unknown.

However, to think that a single individual (like Matti Pitkanen, or anyone) could be so (seemingly) consistently affected seems a stretch of credulity for a software "glitch" explanation.
While I don't know if he was or was not specifically affected as he claims, he has been around here before.  He tends to push a theory of everything and includes virtually everything including the kitchen sink.  As an example of an outline:
Homeopathy in many-sheeted space-time
1. TGD based model for homeopathy

2. Frequency signatures for the homeopathic remedies and endogenous frequencies in acupuncture

3. A sketch for the mechanism behind the homeopathic healing

4. TGD counterparts for the propagation and diffusion of coherence

5. Frequency imprinting and de-imprinting

6. A possible realization of water memory

7. Could virtual DNAs allow a controlled development of the genome?

8. Genes and water memory

9. Potential applications

2. Further experimental findings related to water memory

1. Genes and water memory

2. Water electric as protocell

3. A model for chiral selection

4. Burning water, photosynthesis, and water memory

3. DNA waves and water

1. The basic findings of Montagnier's group

2. Questions

3. TGD inspired answers to the questions

4. A quantum model for remote replication

4. Field codes associated with homeopathy and a model for the magnetic body

1. Plasmoids as primitive life forms associated with magnetic bodies

2. Field representations of information using codes

3. Priore's machine as a test bench for the model

4. Fields and genes

5. Magnetic mirrors, remote viewing and remote healing

5. The role of dark micro waves in living matter

1. Dark microwaves and metabolism

2. Poorly understood effects related to micro-waves

3. X-ray images and remote realization of intentionality

4. Explanation of tachyonic events using the same model

http://tgd.wippiespace.com/public_html/hologram/hologram.html#homeoc
So, frankly I'm not surprised.  Him and his merry band of whack-a-doodles seem to relish publishing all manner of nonsense, and simply use themselves as references.
Mundus vult decipi
Well, his article will get pulled if it is on homeopathy or something but his account is still active - it doesn't show he ever wrote anything.  Some people use fake emails to sign up so, if that happened, he never got a confirmation and thus did not click the link.

Paolo, I'd have an easier time sifting particle data than figuring out why some comments randomly disappear.  We will solve it, but it takes time because we can't reproduce it. Science 2.0 is a big voluntary love fest, which sounds superior to corporate media and is - until something goes wrong. Putting out a call for programming help for free is sort of pointless, we'd end up with a site that works like someone's homework. So most programming work gets done on the weekends and involves pizza and beer and reruns of "Farscape".

Oh, and Patrick.

Hi Hank, I'll give you my best bet:
1) The software intercepts all incoming comments that refer to external links. This is a sensible thing to do, otherwise this site would be FULL of robot-generated advertisements.
2) The software puts the intercepted comments somewhere, say in a directory.
3) Afterwards, the software analyzes and filters the intercepted comments using some criteria. The ones that are considered to be "good" can pass through, the others are deleted.

I see at least three mistakes here. The first one is that the software shouldn't generate automatic e-mails informing people that there is a new comment BEFORE filtering. This should be done AFTER filtering. This is clearly a bug. The second one is the "nice paradox" I mention above. Maybe the phrase could be changed to:

"The comment WERE replying to does not exist ANYMORE"
which is a better one. No Paradox

Third: obviously, the criteria are faulty and you probably need to change them. But then I don't know, I'm no computer expert. I have always hated computers.

Cheers Paolo
It doesn't delete them (well, unless there is now a bug) it makes them a different color only you or a moderator can see.  A moderated comment does not notify other commenters who have asked to be notified of comments, only the author. Any comment that is suspect (I am not sure how it determines that, it isn't just an external link, since those show up all of the time) goes into the moderation queue so if you find one does not exist, it was deleted by someone.

As I said, there may be a bug that causes some random comment to be deleted - if so, it is not reproducible, which makes it hard to track down. There is no built-in mechanism here that allows for comments or articles or anything else to be deleted automatically, they all require manual intervention.
Thanks for the explanation Hank. Then my bet was wrong, I'm afraid.....
Hank,

when you have a chance to look at the code, could you please address another issue: It seems that I cannot disable e-mail notifications about new posts. I have un-checked the relevant box in my Preferences, but the e-mails keep coming. As Paolo said, there are more notification e-mails than actual (filtered) posts, which is rather annoying too. This is not a big deal, of course, but fixing these small things would make the whole experience at Science2.0 so much better.

By the way, you have a great professional site! I couldn't believe that all this was made by just few enthusiasts and there is no mega-bucks enterprise behind it. Great job!

Eugene.
Thanks for the kind words, I'll take a look.  No one should get a notification (email) for a comment in moderation or when they uncheck that box.
i fully agree with Eugene on this one Hank: you are truly making the Internet a better place, or at least this is my opinion. Good good idea you had with Science 2.0.

Cheers Paolo
Well here is what Matti Pitkanen wrote about neutrinos, that he says was deleted and/or censored by Science20. Hopefully it is not a problem me posting this for him, as presumably if there is something wrong with these comments then the moderators can delete this post :-
Paolo Ciafaloni wrote a blog posting with the title "Faster Than Light Neutrinos And Relativity II - A Million Dollar Bet". As a long term unemployed happy to receive even the 100 dollars (not million) promised in the posting, I posted a comment to his blog. Since Science2.0 has already earlier (but strange enough, not before these nasty superluminal neutrinos) censored out my comments, I find it reasonable to publish the comment also in my own blog. May be Paolo sees my comment and sends these 100 dollars. I really need them.Here is my comment.
All boils down to what one means with maximal signal velocity. I have tried to explain at my blog and also in Science2.0 blogs that the situation changes completely, if one accepts a modification of special and general relativities in which space-time is 4-surface in some higher-D space-time time of form M4×S, S internal compact space (fixed to S=CP2 from the condition that one obtains standard model symmetries). Poincare invariance is not lost and gravitation transforms to sub-manifold geometry.
The point is that light-like geodesics representing orbits of relativistic particles in geometric optics approximation at space-time surface are not light-like geodesics of M4×S nor M4 in general unless the 4-surface is just the flat canonical imbedding of M4. Space-time surface is in general warped and curved and although the motion still takes with light-velocity locally it is not along straight line in M4 so that it takes longer time to travel from point A to point B. The maximal signal velocity is reduced its absolute upper bound assignable with a travel along light-like geodesic of M4.
Using the terminology of TGD: the maximal signal velocity along neutrino space-time sheets of many-sheeted space-time could be (but need not be) higher than for photons. This velocity could depend on the length of the travel explaining SN1987A case or scale this length. It could also depend on particle species and relativistic electrons would provide a highly interesting test case. The velocity could slightly differ for different neutrinos. Given particle species could even arrive along several different space-time sheets: this could explain two arrival times for SN1987A neutrinos and the problem of two Hubble constants that has caused heated discussions among cosmologists.
Needless to say, OPERA could be for TGD what Mickelson-Morley was for special relativity.See this. this and this. Matti Pitkanen
To my surprise I managed to get my comment to the Science2.0 and received a question from Eugene Stefanocich. I tried to answer but censors were awake at this time and I got "Access denied" as a responce. Therefore I will answer to Eugene here. I can only hope that Eugene happens to pop up at my blog.
Here is Eugene's question.-------------------------Matti,what are predictions of your theory for future neutrino experiments? In particular: 1) what will be the time advance if OPERA-type experiment is repeated with a different base length? 2) do you expect to see any difference if tau-neutrinos (which emerge from mu-neutrinos as a result of oscillations) are registered by the OPERA detector? 3) what is your prediction for the MINOS experiment if it is repeated with better accuracy and statistics?Thanks. Eugene.
And here is my response which failed to pass through the censorhip.-------------------------Eugene,thank you for good questions. I would be happy if I could answer at precise quantitative level but I cannot. This would require a detailed model for neutrino space-time sheets and this I do not possess. What I have to say about the effective superluminality can be found from this article.
The general predictions and partial answers to some of your questions are here.
1. There is no energy dependence. There is particle and scale dependence. There is an argument suggesting that the velocity is higher for neutrinos than for photon and for photon higher than for relativistic electron. The difference between neutrino families is expected to be small if the proposed mechanism based on electroweak interactions is correct: this because of the universality/flavor independence of electroweak interactions.

2. The dependence on the length scale of the orbit should be via p-adic length scale and therefore piecewise constant. This kind of jump would come at half octaves of basic length scale and might be therefore observable. Increasing or decreasing the distance between CERN and receiver by a factor of sqrt(2) could reveal this effect.

3. The distance between CERN and Gran Sasso is 750 km. If I understood correctly, the distance travelled by neutrinos in MINOS experiment is 734 km (see this). 734 km is slightly above p-adic length scale L(151+2*46)= 2^(46)*L(151)=2^(46)*10^(-8) meters= L(243)=703 km. If I take p-adic length scale hypothesis seriously then the result should be same.

4. In cosmic scales one can estimate maximal signal velocity for photon: a very rough estimate using imbedding of Roberston-Walker cosmology as Lorentz invariant 4-surface is 73 per cent from absolute maximum (for light-like geodesic of M^4). For SN1987A neutrinos and photons the velocity difference would be much smaller than in shorter scales suggesting that the deviation from absolute maximum approaches to zero at very long distance scales.
1.One possibility is Delta v/c (Lp) propto Lp-n propto 1/p-n/2, where Lp propto p1/2 is the p-adic length scale. By p-adic length scale hypothesis the p-adic prime p satisfies p≈ 2k. n is an exponent which need not be an integer.
2 Second suggestive possibility is logarithmic dependence on Lp and therefore on p. Matti
My latest forum article 'Australian Researchers Discover Potential Blue Green Algae Cause & Treatment of Motor Neuron Disease (MND)&(ALS)' Parkinsons's and Alzheimer's can be found at http://www.science20.com/forums/medicine
It's no problem, his conspiratorial rant is entertaining enough.  It certainly helps us calibrate him.
Wow. This guy is clever. Really. And he has an impressive scientific knowledge. Really good one.
Yes, and in one of his links above he is trying to communicate with Sascha about his million times the speed of light splashing neutrinos blog, I wonder if Sascha has seen that communication where he says :-
Dear Sascha,
I would be critical about two points :-
1. I would take Poincare invariance and general coordinate invariance as a starting point. I am not sure whether your arguments are consistent with these requirements.
2.The assumption that neutrinos slow down and have gigantic maximal signal velocities initially does not seem plausible to me. Just the dependence of the maximal signal velocity on length scale is enough to understand the difference between SN1987A and OPERA. What this means in standard physics framework is not however easy to understand.
And a whole lot more.......

My latest forum article 'Australian Researchers Discover Potential Blue Green Algae Cause & Treatment of Motor Neuron Disease (MND)&(ALS)' Parkinsons's and Alzheimer's can be found at http://www.science20.com/forums/medicine
Hi Helen,
What is "rant"?
Cheers Paolo
Hi Paolo, in my opinion a 'rant' is when a person repeatedly gets annoyed about something and then expresses their sometimes slightly blinkered viewpoint in an emotional or angry, often quite long stream of words or 'rant'.
My latest forum article 'Australian Researchers Discover Potential Blue Green Algae Cause & Treatment of Motor Neuron Disease (MND)&(ALS)' Parkinsons's and Alzheimer's can be found at http://www.science20.com/forums/medicine
What an interesting word! Thank you for helping me improve my English.

White Panther
Yes its an interesting word to anyone who is not in the process of actually ranting about something :~) May I ask you Paolo, why do you call yourself the White Panther, is the name somehow connected to the Pink Panther?
My latest forum article 'Australian Researchers Discover Potential Blue Green Algae Cause & Treatment of Motor Neuron Disease (MND)&(ALS)' Parkinsons's and Alzheimer's can be found at http://www.science20.com/forums/medicine
Oh no no Helen. I have always loved panthers and felines in general. I know panthers are black, but I prefer thinking myself as a unique person, and that's the reason of the "white". I was born in the 1965, so the nick I generally use in the Internet is

whitepanther65
There is no mechanism to censor people.  We use Akismet to moderate spam but they are the world leader so if they are making errors there isn't much we can do.  If we accept something it is supposed to modify their algorithm to let it in.  Comments can be removed by the authors, sure, but that is rare, and only when the commentary is wildly off topic. I read the comment on his site and it didn't seem like a problem.

Now, we have had a recurring issue where comments have deleted seemingly at random in the last 2-3 weeks. The log doesn't show anyone doing it but it happens and it is a result of 5 years of spaghetti code behaving in strange ways.  It takes an awful long time to fix a bug that is not reproducible so the authors and commenters can hopefully show a little patience.  The downside to not being an evil media conglomerate, even if it is more traffic than evil media conglomerate sites, is these are real people working on this stuff and no one wants to work for free, even if they like reading here.  :)

If he has had this problem before, why wouldn't he just get an account here?  Then he never has to deal with a captcha again.

Edit: I just searched and he does have an account here. We have no way to see the password so we can't send it to him but we can reset it for him, or he can do it through the site.
Dear Hank and others,
I had already given attempts to send any comments to Science2.0. To my best knowledge I have an account (with possibility to write postings) so that it begins to seem that some outsider has an access to Science2.0 and can do all kinds of manipulations. To my best understanding I have signed in just now and can write and it is interesting to see whether I get "Access denied".

Since Gerhard Adam's used the opportunity to make under a belt comment in a situation in which I cannot comment, I try to get my  response through. Gerhard's comment is an example of the  usual demagogy with horror words like homeopathy. Personally I am do not believer or disbeliever in homeopathy but as a scientist with imagination take a more creative attitude than the usual skeptic one: suppose water memory is real, can I explain it using the new view about space-time?

Concerning water memory (explaining homeopathic effects) I just mention the work of the group led by HIV Nobelist Montagnier providing hard evidence for water memory,  strong indications about the role of electromagnetic radiation in living matter as a communication  and control tool, and also suggesting a new representation of genetic code in nanoscale.

Hi Matti! Water memory? Looks like an interesting possibility. What do you mean here?

Cheers Paolo
PS Your name sounds nordic to me. Where do you come from?

Cheers Paolo
Sorry, but you gave up any claim to serious scientific endeavor when statements like this are made in papers:
Japanese doctor Masaru Emoto knew from his own practice that water, alone can heal many diseases.
http://www.scienceoflife.nl/html/essays_by_o_o_11.html

or

Relonics is a new complete exact science of control, regulation and coordination in complex, super – complex, and in systems with infinite complexity. It has its own ontology, epistemology, epistemics, methodology, relonic languages, fully operational generic domain-free platform technology and tools.
http://www.scienceoflife.nl/Kvitash_11_Living_Systems.pdf
There is nothing scientific nor creative about trying to explain phenomenon before establishing whether it is real.  Instead, you've tried to lend credence to a medical practice that has no basis in science and yet is allowed to practice treatments on people.  This has enabled countless practitioners of an untested, unreliable, and potentially dangerous (since it may prevent more appropriate treatments) to be applied to individuals without a shred of evidence supporting its worth.

So, I don't find such endeavors creative.  I find them grossly irresponsible.  If you want to demonstrate creativity, then perhaps some effort in actually replicating experiments and providing hypothesis would be appropriate, rather than simply putting forth more nonsensical gibberish in the hopes of explaining something that hasn't been demonstrated to exist in the first place.
Mundus vult decipi
Gerhard, you say
"There is nothing scientific nor creative about trying to explain phenomenon before establishing whether it is real."

Thank you, thank you very much! I was waiting for a sensible comment like this one.  I fully agree with you Gerhard. 100% full total agreement.

Cheers Paolo
It worked at this time. At least the message is visible in the window! Thanks for those who suggested to try still once!
Dear Paolo,

water memory is an old concept: I learned about it in CASYS conference in Liege for more than decade ago I think and was forced to change by prejudices about water memory. As we know, Benveniste is one of the pioneers in the field and had to pay a high price for it. What has been observed by Benveniste and his follows including HIV Nobelist Montagnier is that water seems to be able to code information about and mimic biologically relevant aspects of some molecules- I would guess that polar molecules, which are biologically active, are such molecules.

Benveniste and his followers claim that it is possible to abstract these frequencies and create the biological effects of the molecule purely electromagnetically. Water would be able to build symbolic representations: this is certainly one of the key aspects of intelligent behavior and life. These biologically relevant aspects would correspond to very low frequency part of the electromagnetic spectrum of the molecule: frequencies would vary down to ELF frequencies in few Hz range at least. The frequencies cannot correspond to molecular transitions and the natural conjecture is that they are cyclotron frequencies and frequencies associated with magnetic transitions. This radiation would be responsible for the biological role of these molecules.

Cyclotron frequencies for biologically relevant ions have been known to induce strange quantal effects in vertebrate brain since seventies (the work of Blackman and others). Standard quantum theory does not allow this: the energies are ridiculously small as compared to thermal energy at physiological temperatures. In TGD framework the attempt to explain this leads to a rather interesting vision about quantum biology.
Matti, this is total nonsense for me. I have a question for you:
How do you TEST what you call "water memory" to see wheter it is real or not?

Ciao Paolo
Wow! I hadn't realized it was my first one!
Paolo, you might be interested to know or already know, that according to Lubos Motl's Reference Frame  :-
'OPERA is going to release a new public announcement in two days or so in which they will still describe faster-than-light motion of neutrinos between CERN and Central Italy even though the spacing between the pulses in the new measurements will have been reduced to just 2 nanoseconds'....
...'So within days, everyone will probably have to get used to the fact that the OPERA neutrino speed anomaly has nothing to do with the shape and duration of the pulses. I still believe that a subtle time-independent bug in the whole GPS system's quantification of either positions or times is the most likely explanation of the crazy result; it's followed by other relativistic effects that the experimenters could have incorrectly incorporated; and then by the shocking scenario involving a violation of relativity'.
My latest forum article 'Australian Researchers Discover Potential Blue Green Algae Cause & Treatment of Motor Neuron Disease (MND)&(ALS)' Parkinsons's and Alzheimer's can be found at http://www.science20.com/forums/medicine
Hi Helen,
this is a very interesting rumor. I will wait and comment it when there will be some official announcement from the OPERA collaboration.

Ciao Paolo
There was a book published many years ago called "Physical Optics" by Robertson. I heard about it from author Joseph Cater and I went to the University of Winnipeg library and checked it out myself. The Robertson book claimed that an experiment was done and the speed of light did vary by more than the experimental error.... and this was 30 or 40 years ago. So, if scientists can bury their head in the sand 30 yrs ago, rest assured they will do so again this time.

According to Cater, a naval research team also photographed a spot of light interacting with another particle that had a speed of v+c (where v was the speed of the particle). This was also hushed up.

Then there was the direct experiment by Georges Sagnac that put a light source on a turntable and then had the light split to go around a path outside of the turntable. When the turntable was given a spin, the light beams did not arrive at the same team. Direct proof against c being constant was now had. Of course, relativists at the time just incorporated this into their theory called it a 2nd order effect of relativity. Direct evidence against their theory incorporated into their theory. Wow. The arrogance and ignorance.

The idea of water memory should not be too difficult to understand for anyone living in information society. Instead of molecules the information about molecules would remain in "homeopathically" treated water.
We know that we are 75 per cent of water and biology is basically information processing so that it shouldn't be too surprising if also water had primitive memory. Whether this is possible in the framework of standard physics, is of course far from clear and the hostility towards the idea is probably due to the fact that it is very difficult to imagine mechanisms of water memory in standard physics. As a matter fact, entire biology is a gigantic anomaly in standard physics framework.
The "homeopathic" treatment consists of a repeated dilution and mechanical agitation, no witchcraft of any kind.
The testing of water memory is what Benveniste and followers as experimentalists have done. Suppose that you have some bioactive. Add these molecules to water and perform the treatment. Only the information about the presence of the molecule should be there or not even that if skeptic is right. Look whether the water has the same biological effects as the original molecule. For instance, you can add to water biomolecules to which the original molecule has biological effect. This was done by Benveniste.

If one accepts the empirically born hypothesis that electromagnetic radiation by molecule at low frequencies- ELF and VLF- could be responsible for the biological activity of the molecule you can study this radiation and try to identify the relevant frequencies or perhaps temporal patterns of this radiation and look whether they produce the same biological effect as the molecule. You can "record" the electromagnetic spectrum of molecule at low frequencies. This was done by Benveniste and is done by his followers. Also Gariaev and many others in Russia and Popp who introduced the notion of biophoton has done this research.

You can easily find references to the pioneering work of Benveniste who was labeled as a swindler in the attack of skeptics. I have myself experienced the hostily of this species of strong believers and noticed that they have a remarkably lowered ability to think rationally. I do like arguments based on names but here I find it best to appeal authority and add some references to the work of the group led by HIV nobelist Montagnier.

L. Montagnier, J. Aissa, S. Ferris, J.-L. Montagnier, and C. Lavall'e , "Electromagnetic Signals Are Produced by Aqueous Nanostructures Derived from Bacterial DNA Sequences", Interdiscip. Sci. Comput. Life Sci., 2009. http://www.springerlink.com/content/0557v31188m3766x/,

L. Montagnier, J. Aissa, C. Lavelle'e, M. Mbamy, J. Varon, H. Chenal, "Electromagnetic Detection of HIV DNA in the Blood of AIDS Patients Treated by Antiretroviral Therapy", Interdiscip. Sci. Comput. Life Sci., 2009,vol 1, pp. 245-253, http://www.inpharm.cz/files/ext/EMS-a-HIV-AIDS.pdf,

"DNA waves and water", http://arxiv.org/abs/1012.5166.

"Scorn over claim of teleported DNA", New Scientist, http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20927952.900-scorn-over-claim-of-t... .

Water memory can be made also visible. See this

To my opinion, biology represents a fantastic new world is waiting for theoretical physicists ready to give up the dogma of reductionistic materialism and ready to ask what biology can give to physics rather than what biological phenomena reductionistic physicist can accept.

Matti, why do you refuse anwering to my really simple question? Haven't you read it?

"How do you TEST what you call "water memory" to see wheter it is real or not?"

I am beginning to suspect that you're a genuine crackpot. And that your little friend Montagnier is a crackpot as well. Or maybe you're just kiddin'?

Ciao Paolo

PS Relax man. TAKE A BREAK. Go get a beer or something. There are more important things in life than stupid memory of water, you know?
Wow this argument still going on ... you will get to do it all again :-)

Those pesky nuetrinos still refuse to lie down and do the right speed by looks
http://motls.blogspot.com/2011/11/opera-neutrinos-ftl-even-at-3-ns.html

Even Lubos was at a loss .. something you may never see again.

Dear Paolo,
I just explained how water memory can be tested and is tested. I gave you references. I gave a link to Youtube video which directly demonstrates water memory visually for anyone able to see You can also visit my homepage and read the appropriate chapters. This is really all I can do. You have of course freedom to suspect that Montagnier is crackpot and that I am a crackpot  if you want to do so. This is up to you. I have done my best ;-).

By the way, I am now receiving enormous number of  emails telling about new comment to my post. Something is still wrong and I suspect that some malevolent third party has access to Science2.0.

@ Matti, Uglybb
No no sorry Matti, my fault. I was angry with someone else and I discharged my anger against you. It's a foolish thing to do, I know, but I keep doing things like these once in a while. I apologize with you, I see you're a good fellow. I really don't know if you're a crackpot, let alone Montagnier.
I'll give a look at the memory of water sooner or later, but now I'm totally in the neutrino thing. I don't understand this new result from OPERA, and I'm in a state of total confusion, much in the same way Uglybb reports about Lubos....

Cheers Paolo
I don't know why Western media (except Lubosh, of course) keep silent about this new verification of the neutrino anomaly. Russian press is all over it. They quote an interview with a member of the OPERA collaboration, who said that new measurements showed 57 nanosecond time advance. She also said that they have double-checked all possible sources of errors and found nothing. They are now preparing a major publication. She also said that MINOS collaboration in the US is going to repeat their experiment within the next 3 months. My prediction is that MINOS will not see any anomaly, because (in contrast to OPERA) they measure the time of flight between two neutrino detectors. I am willing to bet my money on this prediction.

Eugene.
There's nothing to keep silent about.  I agree Lubos wrote a terrific piece but there isn't anything new in what they are saying.   Paolo has already agreed to bet \$100 so take him up on it.
I agree there's nothing to keep silent about. Science should be about communication, not silence.  Hank, what does "take him up on it" mean?

Jeez, the new result from OPERA was a big surprise for me. I fell like I'm losing 100\$ and I can't afford it :( Will have to work really HARD on it.

Paolo
Sorry, "take him up on it" is English slang for 'get Paolo to bet \$100'.
Thanks Hank. I couldn't figure out what it meant even by looking at the dictionary.
I will not take up on Paolo's bet, because I agree with him: neutrinos move (slightly) slower than the speed of light. The origin of the OPERA anomaly is in the emergence of neutrinos far (18 meters) from the meson decay vertex. This will be proven by the (negative) result of the MINOS experiment. I have \$100 to back up my claim.

Eugene.
Hi Eugene,
what do you mean by "time of flight between two neutrino detectors"? I thought the MINOS concept was similar to OPERA's one.

----Paolo-----
Paolo,

MINOS experiment has two neutrino detectors: near detector (ND) and far detector (FD). The near detector is at Fermilab several hundred meters away from the graphite target. The far detector is in Miunnesota. The time interval is measured between neutrinos striking the two detectors. See arXiv:0706.0437. Since neutrinos move with the speed of light between the two detectors and my predicted displacement of the neutrino production has no effect in this setup, MINOS people will not see any time advance.

Eugene.
Thank you for the very nice explanation Eugene, I appreciate.

Cheers Paolo
Since neutrinos move with the speed of light between the two detectors and my predicted displacement of the neutrino production has no effect in this setup, MINOS people will not see any time advance.
Let's hope Fermilab have the good sense to measure the time from the neutrino production to the near detector as well, then.

Hank, since I'm confused by current OPERA situation and I am not thinking much about neutrinos, I've tried to workaround economics a bit, the way you suggested I should do. I've come up with the following proposal:

Why don't you give me 2500 dollars monthly net salary? In exchange I will write two articles for "Science 2.0" every month.

Do you accpt my proposal?
At current rates, those articles would generate \$9 per month. Even an economic genius like Berlusconi could not convince me that trading \$2500 for \$9 is a good deal, so there is little chance you could do so - and he always brings girls.

You have an uphill climb.
\$9! Where's my 2c then?
Thor Russell
Oh Jesus, guess I'll have to workaround economics a little bit more.

Hank, I'm sure there's a bug in your software. I have logged in, but I get this message:

How can this happen?

Ciao Paolo
Dear Paolo,
I am also busy with this neutrino thing;-) but in friendly mood just now;-). This neutrino thing was after all where all this fuss began. I hope it is now over. As a hopeless crackpot trying to sell his pet theory everywhere and to everyone, I cannot resist the temptation to give a link to my newest blog posting

Matti

P.S. Do not forget those 100 dollars;-).
Not forgetting the 100 dollars; working hard in order not to lose them :)

Ciao Paolo
Hi guys,It's 3 am in the morning here in Arnesano, LEcce, Italy. I think I understand what's going on. But that can't be. I mean, yes i have an idea but its so unlikely...so unlikely it requaires an incredible amount of coincides. i menai it cant be  im so confused.
]better go to sleep now. iiiiiiiiii  tired so so tireMaybe i was ight, after all
Yep, you sound tired Paolo! Sleep tight.
My latest forum article 'Australian Researchers Discover Potential Blue Green Algae Cause & Treatment of Motor Neuron Disease (MND)&(ALS)' Parkinsons's and Alzheimer's can be found at http://www.science20.com/forums/medicine
Ok guys,
looks like this time I hit a really HUGE one.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I think
1) Einstein's theory of special relativity is right
2) OPERA measured the speed of light to an unprecented level of accuracy.

Ok, I still may be wrong. But IF I am right Hank, there are three logical consequences;
1) You exist
2) You are lucky you didn't accept the bet. You would have lost one million dollars, babe
3) You should work around your beliefs in economics just a little bit.

If I'm wrong, I don't exist.

Cheers Paolo

PS White Panther is dead, I can't find him anymore

I am right.
Tu quoque?
I do not have a physics degree. I don't have a great fundamental understanding of the math that goes into the theory of special relativity. I do have a friend who seems to somewhat understand the math, and he pointed out a few things I would like you to clarify for me if you will Paolo. In your article your say 'Einstein has taught us that the speed of light is an invariant, not depending on the status of motion of the observer. It is very well measured, so we'd better use it a standard "ruler" instead of using a poorly defined, observer dependent quantity as the "meter".' Isnt the definition of a meter established by SI defined as 1/299,792,458 of a second of the speed of light in a vacuum?

Also, he pointed out something else I need some help explaining. You claim that neutrinos, electrons, and photons are free objects. However, don't neutrinos interact weakly with radioactive matter so as to possibly change the rate of decay? Isn't a photon interactive because it can be refracted or or absorbed? He also says that electrons are interactive because they are captured in atoms.

Here's some of his comments on how a neutrino moving faster than the speed of light does not require a rethinking of special relativity. "Special relativity doesn't assume a value for c, just that c is the the speed which massless non-interacting waves must travel. If it turns out that muon neutrinos fit that definition better than light waves, then so be it. Not much is changed. In fact, this was more or less already known, as the photon interacts strongly with all four forces, whereas the neutrino interacts only with the weak nuclear force. This is assuming the muon neutrino is faster than the photon."

Hi McNugen, very briefly:

"Isnt the definition of a meter established by SI defined as 1/299,792,458 of a second of the speed of light in a vacuum?"

Right. So you see, the standard ruler is the speed of light, and the meter is derived from the value of c.

"You claim that neutrinos, electrons, and photons are free objects."

Never done such claim. As a matter of fact, only neutrinos can be treated as free objects. First, they interact very rarely. Second, in the case of OPERA neutrinos, the ones that do interact in their travel from cern to gran sasso never reach OPERA. Neutrinos that reach OPERA MUST have propagated freely.  Electrons and photons are free objects only in particular circumstances.

"Special relativity doesn't assume a value for c, just that c is the the speed which massless non-interacting waves must travel. If it turns out that muon neutrinos fit that definition better than light waves, then so be it. Not much is changed..."

Ciao Paolo

Hi Paolo, any news in this direction?

Paolo Ciafaloni wrote (November 6th 2011 09:24 AM):
> The physical meaning of "c" is of a "limiting velocity": [...]
> Measuring "c" for a given object implies measuring the values for (E,p) and extracting "c" from eq. (1) or measuring the values for (E,v) and extracting"c" from eq. (2).

No:
Arguably, "measuring c for a given object" does not necessarily imply (require) first measuring "E",
or at least the ratio "E / m", at all.
Instead, apparently, the "proper flight duration, tau" (of the object) might be measured,
as well as the "time-of-flight, t" (of the remaining setup),
or at least the ratio "tau / t" of these durations.
Given a "value for v" as above, then, apparently, "c could be extracted" as
"v / Sqrt[ 1 - (tau / t)^2 ]".

p.s.
> I will give 100 dollars to anyone who, after reading this article, gives me strong arguments that convince me that I am wrong (I would like to bet more, but I am a poor man economically speaking).
As a substitution I'd also welcome that you write an article reviewing just what you mean by "measuring the value for v".

The last time I posted on here was November 7th, and I read through all the comments again, and it is all still very interesting. I'm patiently waiting for any ground breaking news, so I just thought I'd comment once more.

Eric

sigh, just accept that in an unlimited space/universe so that everything is possible (no end = all is possible)...and that we will never comprehend everything. There are faster things than neutrino's and light...there are faster things then the next we will find...

reality will find a way to make everything possible. science is nice to explain relative things in the right moment of space/time (whatever we understand of that). don't be smart about or say Einstein is right or wrong....he was right at that given moment (and the years after which his theory wasn't disproven)

reality will find a way to make everything possible. science is nice to explain relative things in the right moment of space/time (whatever we understand of that). don't be smart about or say Einstein is right or wrong...

I’ve been waiting for so long to see an article, that would be able to help me with this problem. Now I’m not unhappy anymore. I wish I found this a long time before.