He who laughs last laughs: neutrinos do not travel faster than light

Icarus experiment scientists at the Italian Gran Sasso laboratory reported that a new measurement of the neutrino flight from CERN to Gran Sasso revealed that no speed violation of the laws of relativity had been committed

Icarus experiment scientists at the Italian Gran Sasso laboratory reported that a new measurement of the neutrino flight from CERN to Gran Sasso. The Ikaros experiment which re-examined the same beam that the scientists estimated was somewhat faster than light, and proved that the neutrino particles do not cross the speed of light in their flight between the two laboratories.

In 1905 Einstein accepted the law of relativistic velocities. Einstein tested two reference systems, the first he called K and the second he called k. Along the X-axis of K, a point in the second system k moves at a constant speed. Einstein wrote down the simple equations of motion for the point. Then Einstein asked what the motion of the point is with respect to the system K. Using a set of Lorentz transformations, which he presented in his relativity essay, he obtained the equations of motion for his point. And from these equations Einstein got the law of relativistic velocities in the general case and for that point moving along the X axis.

From this law, Einstein came to a far-reaching conclusion: "It follows from this equation that by combining two speeds that are smaller than c, a speed smaller than c is always obtained. In addition, it follows that the speed of light c cannot change by connecting with a 'speed smaller than that of light'".

What does Einstein tell us here? Einstein makes two separate claims: first, no signal transmission faster than c is possible - and this is an argument against supersonic speeds. In addition, it is impossible to accelerate a particle with sub-light speed even to a speed c.

More than a century after Einstein wrote these things, it turns out that the above conclusion did indeed stand up to the experimental test. Or in the popular saying "Einstein was right".

Remember the famous nitrites that made headlines in September 2011? An experimental group worked for three years on an experiment that timed about 16,000 packets of neutrinos sent from the CERN facilities in Geneva. They crossed the Earth and hit the OPERA (Oscillation Project with Emulsion-Tracking Apparatus) particle detector at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy and it seems that they arrived 60 nanoseconds faster than the speed of light allows (with an error margin of 10 nanoseconds). The experiment was defined as a sigma 6 success because the neutrinos are tachyons and move at supersonic speed - "sigma 6" means an almost perfect success.

But most of the physicists did not believe it and looked for the error in the experiment: and they began to calculate and look for the error in the GPS array and look for the error in that maybe the group did not take into account some relative effects between the sending source at CERN and the receiving station at Gran Sasso. In addition quantum and general relativity models have been put forward and the number of ideas put forward to look for the error can now provide scripts for science fiction books as well as Steven Spielberg movies.

The server to which researchers from all academic institutions in the world upload academic articles, the ArXiv, was flooded with articles looking for the error in the experiment. But researchers have also been looking for new theoretical models for tachyon neutrinos to the extent that it will eventually be discovered that they exist... models within the framework of string theory, quantum gravity and other fantastical models. Most researchers aligned themselves with Einstein's conclusion from his theory: no signal can travel faster than the speed of light.

In light of the wall-to-wall criticism of the researchers, the OPERA team decided to repeat the experiments and again found that neutrinos travel faster than light. Maybe a little slower than they thought, but still the results left the researchers with many question marks.

But now it seems that the problem has been solved. A loose cable connection is the simple answer to the whole problem: the researchers at CERN discovered that a bad fiber optic connection between the GPS unit and the computer caused a deviation of 60 nanoseconds and drove the whole world crazy. When they realized that the problem was in the cable, it was strengthened and the difference disappeared. The difference of 60 nanoseconds seems to be due to the time it took for the data to travel through the cable and this completely explains why the nitrites arrived 60 nanoseconds faster.
So not relativistic effects and GPS effects that were not taken into account and not incorrect time dilation calculations and not general relativistic effects that were forgotten; The problem is a simple technical problem that they didn't pay attention to...

They didn't teach you in the engineering faculty and in general in physics studies in laboratory classes: first you will check the simple experimental set-up: are the cables in order? Are the connections reinforced? And this before you start the experiment and devote three years and a lot of money to the experiment?

The detectors ICARUS and OPERA will nevertheless perform the experiment again and now additional experiments are being carried out with the help of these two detectors together with the cosmic ray particles. But it seems that the mystery regarding the tachyon nitrite experiment that drove the whole world crazy has finally been solved. In the message issued by CERN to the media it is written that the OPERA team acted with scientific integrity. Although it was discovered that "the evidence is beginning to indicate that the OPERA result is a by-product of the measurement", but at the end it was written that "this is how science works". And this last sentence is the most important: science progresses by making mistakes. You can't dare without making mistakes. Even Einstein himself made countless mistakes before he arrived at the equations of his theory of relativity. And so we also make countless mistakes when we try to test the results that derive from his theories.

Meanwhile Einstein may be sitting up there laughing and repeating his 1907 explanation:
"The law of the addition of velocities yields an interesting conclusion, there is no possible effect that can be used for an arbitrary signal and it propagates faster than light in a vacuum" and Einstein explained: a signal that propagates at super-light speed from cause to effect in the reference systems of two events will propagate from effect to cause in another reference system that moves relative to the first. That is: "This result means that we have to take into account as possible a transmission mechanism by which we can achieve a result that precedes the cause. Even though this conclusion, in my opinion, does not contain a contradiction from the logical point of view, it contradicts the nature of all our experience to such an extent that it is enough to prove the impossibility of the assumption W>c". That is, no speed greater than c is possible.

Einstein himself actually says here that he is against traveling back in time, even if someone comes along and invents a machine (mechanism) that will succeed in reversing the order of cause and effect.

And see here the picture of Einstein laughing at the whole world: