--- On Sat, 9/24/11, Horace Heffner <hheff...@mtaonline.net> wrote:
> In the CERN OPERA results, neutrinos arrived about > 2.48x10^-5 the travel time sooner than expected. For a > 168,000 ly trip the expected photon arrival delay time Dt > should be > > Dt = (2.48x10^-5)*(168,000 yr) = 1521 > days = 4.17 years Right. But either way, Sher's claim that "(it's) crazy" doesn't really hold up. Kamiokande wouldn't have seen anything anyways if they had arrived that much sooner. The facilities weren't up and running, or just barely. It would be interesting if they DID have some preliminary data to see if there was a spike around that timeframe. > The CERN result did not show any dependence on neutrino > energy in the range checked. If neutrino energy is not > a factor then the size of the burst only has to do with the > number of neutrinos arriving, not the difference in time > from neutrino arrival to light arrival due to distance. I don't know if neutrino energy by itself has anything to do with their speed. I don't see any reason why they couldn't have different speeds due to different initial conditions. That is to say, technically, the oscilloscope sitting across the room from me has more energy (on a per mass basis) than an individual alpha particle being emitted from the Am-241 source in my smoke detector. But the alpha is moving far, far faster. Put another way, how much of the neutrino's energy is expressed as kinetic energy? How/what is required/done to make the neutrino move at a given speed? I do recall reading, years ago, in Cramer's Alternative View column about an experiment purporting to measure the rest mass of the electron neutrino as being the square root of a negative number. I.E., tachyonic. I don't know what came of it. At the very least, it's something to think about. > Another variation of the hypothesis exists if sound can > travel on strings at superluminal speeds. The > interaction then involves a neutrino-virtual-photon string > merging on the arrival side and similar string separation on > the departure side. If the string vibration propagation > speed is not instant, but significantly larger than c, > the same result occurs - an early arrival of the > neutrino. In the case of the OPERA experiment this > merely means the 18.1 meter cumulative tunneling distance I > calculated would be replaced by a longer cumulative distance > during which neutrinos effectively travel at the speed of > sound in the strings. The neutrinos then are momentarily > converted from a separate string into a vibration, a pulse, > traveling on a momentarily merged string. Regardless of the mechanism, does it still provide the same result, arrival of information at the destination at t < D / c? If so, it is still FTL, and could conceivably be used for the transfer of data. Don't get me wrong, figuring out HOW it works is bloody interesting, but the big thing at the moment is, it seems to me, can it transfer information faster than light in free space. If so, it is nothing short of wonderful. --Kyle
