The End of Story of Faster Than Light Neutrinos?

Recently some possible explanations of the faster than light neutrinos were announced. And guess what, after all of these mind blowing speculations of neutrinos travelling through other dimensions or Einstein's theories being wrong it's likely that all of this fuss was basically due to a flawed cable.

So there are two likely explanations - one is basically that one of the cables had a flawed connection, which caused a slight discrepancy, while other explanation is that a timing instrument called an oscillator had a problem.
as CERN press officer Arnaud Marsollier said, the flawed cable connection could account for the 60 microsecond difference between the measured neutrino speed and the speed of light. Although further tests will be needed to fully confirm the explanation, it's the most likely explanation we have.

So I don't know what you think about this guys, but I'm quite happy that the experiment was not confirmed and Einstein's theories still hold. I think we already have too much unsolved questions in the world of physics these days so the fall of Einstein's theories would simply be too much.

  

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Some Explanations for Crazy Neutrinos

So as you all know neutrinos have been behaving in a rather bizarre way these days. And even though thousands of headlines already declared Einstein's theories wrong, in reality more independent tests are needed to confirm the results. So meanwhile let's check out some possible explanations for this strange behaviour of neutrinos.

This pictures illustrates how the experiments were done:

Source

Perhaps the most famous explanation is that neutrinos might be travel some of the way in another dimension, which enables them to complete the journey faster. This short cut scenario would explain the strange results without challenging relativity. Perhaps the simplest analogy would be travelling between two points on the surface of Earth through a tunnel instead of travelling on the surface. The main problem however is that extra dimensions still belong to the more exotic theories of physics. That is there is no direct proof of any extra dimensions yet. Also, if neutrinos could do something as fancy as extra dimensional travel we should have detected it when observing massive supernova explosions, which enable quite accurate predictions of the speed of neutrinos. However, no such faster than light travel was ever detected.

Of course there are scientists who think that neutrinos have indeed travelled faster than light. However, according to physicist Sheldon Glashow, if neutrinos were indeed travelling faster than light in vacuum, they would radiate electron-positron pairs and would simply lose energy. This change in energy would be noticeable in the OPERA experiment, however no energy loss was detected. So this means that there simply is some kind of systematic error or that something really bizarre is going on.

So the other possible explanation might be some kind of unknown factor, which messes up the experiment and gives faster than light results. After the famous results were published, scientists were flooded by emails asking whether they included rotation of the Earth, general relativity, continental drift and other similar factors to their calculations. So far it seems that everything was included, as even the second experiment gave positive results that neutrinos travelled faster than they should. Yet, one of the newest explanations says that the anomaly in the speed of the particles could be explained having in mind that satellites were used to accurately determine the distance between Cern and Gran Sasso. And since the satellites where moving relatively to the observers on Earth, the calculations should be slightly different, which could give a change in the results of about 64 ns., which is very close to the result found in the experiments.

So even though there are many great as well as crazy explanations all of them have to be examined and checked. It will take long and hard work to test all of this, but as history shows, every great revolution in science starts with a crisis.

Also some guys sent me this crazy video. It's a song about neutrinos and it's so cheeeeeeesy. Actually, it's one of the strangest songs I've seen, but check it out :D

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So What's Going on With Neutrinos These Days?

Remember those crazy neutrinos in Gran Sasso labs? Well the shocking results just got a little more convincing when new results were published  as the guys from the OPERA collaboration released new updated results.

So the results were updated as scientists in the Gran Sasso laboratories repeated their tests in a slightly different way. This time they fired very short and small pulses of neutrinos, which basically made their job at detecting the speed of the particles much easier. What they observed was that neutrinos still travelled faster than the speed of light in vacuum by about 0.00000006 seconds. So the shocking results survived the first test successfully. But don't start burning the books of relativity quite yet, as such profound results must be tested by at least one independent experiment to confirm. Also, even if neutrinos indeed travel faster than light, it's not the end of the world as there are some interesting theories, which suggest why neutrinos might travel faster than light (including time travel and other dimensions). Also check out this video. Cheers

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More on Faster than Light Neutrinos

So as the problem of the faster than light neutrinos at the OPERA experiment at CERN is still hot, let's check out this video about the physics behind detecting neutrinos and other strange but interesting stuff regarding the famous discovery at Gran Sasso.

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Faster than Light Neutrinos and Other Crazy Stuff...

So if you're wondering what the hell is going on in CERN these days here's the answer. Check out these great videos about what the hell those crazy neutrinos have been up to.

And some more insights from Brian Cox:

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