Special relativity both synchronizes time in the tachyon neutrino experiment and solves the problem in the experiment. Tachyon neutrinos part II

Dr. Gali Weinstein

For the first article in the series

The OPERA neutrinos experiment found that the neutrinos beam they created at CERN near Geneva arrived at the Gran Sesso laboratory in Italy about 60 nanoseconds earlier than the speed of light would allow. Roland Van Aalborg from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands wrote an article in which he offered a fairly convincing argument regarding an error that was the basis of the experimental arrangement of the OPERA experiment: the OPERA experimenters did not take into account the movement of the different clocks - CERN+OPERA and the GPS satellites in relation to each other. And instead they considered everyone to fit into one global reference system. When you make this mistake and do not take into account the relative movement between the clocks, you get that the neutrinos arrive 32 nanoseconds earlier at each station. Since there are two stations (CERN and Gran Sesso) the nitrites arrived according to Van Aalborg's calculation 64 nanoseconds earlier.

The OPERA experiment is primarily a measurement of distance and time. Let's start with the distance. The position of the neutrinos produced at CERN was measured using GPS. The location of the Gran Sesso laboratory is more difficult to measure because it is located deep underground, under a mountain at a depth of a kilometer. The opera team writes in their article that they measured the distance of 730 kilometers to an accuracy of 20 centimeters.

now is the time There is a problem with the clock synchronization. The experiment consists of three different reference systems: the first is CERN (there is a clock at CERN) and the second is Gran Sasso (there is another clock in Gran Sasso). They do not move relative to each other. Send a neutrino beam between one frame of reference and another frame of reference. Now imagine another reference system, the GPS satellites in orbit above the Earth. The clocks in the GPS satellites send signals at the speed of light and since the speed of light is constant in relation to all reference systems (and independent of the satellite's speed) they can be considered as a reference system at rest. So we have three reference systems at rest one relative to the other. How do we synchronize clocks between these three reference systems? The researchers defined one universal reference system - universal time - which would include these three reference systems. But it turns out that the argument here is wrong!

Van Alburg showed that such a universal reference system cannot be defined. Although according to special relativity the speed of light does not depend on the frame of reference, the travel time of the satellite does depend on the frame of reference. That's why we have two reference systems: one of the experiment on the ground: CERN and Gran Sesso and the other of the clocks in orbit (the GPS satellites). Since the two systems are in motion relative to each other, relative effects come into play that must be taken into account and seem not to have been taken into account in the OPERA experiment.

There is also a philosophical problem, the GPS technology and the aforementioned synchronization could not have been carried out without Einstein's theory of relativity... and the same technology is used to test Einstein's theory as well as to disprove it. How is this possible? We will leave the discussion of this question to the philosophers of science and return to his issues.

Let us examine the argument in more detail. Imagine the OPERA experiment. A clock placed next to the SPS Super Proton Synchrotron at CERN and an observer standing next to it. Now imagine another watch standing next to the OPERA detector and an observer standing next to it. In SPS, a beam is created by accelerating protons to 400 GeV, the protons are ejected with the help of a magnet towards a graphite target, where nutrients are created that decay into neutrinos in a vacuum tunnel. The neutrino beam consists almost entirely of a beam of ionized neutrinos with an energy of 17 GeV.

To improve accuracy, identical Septenario PolaRx2eTR GPS receivers and identical Symmetricum Cs4000 atomic clocks were placed near the CERN and Gran Sasso observers. Standard GPS receivers are able to determine the time with an accuracy of between 100 nanoseconds and a few microseconds. However, the Septenario GPS receivers in the neutrino experiment used special algorithms and geodynamic models that reduced additional errors. The Swiss Meteorological Institute calibrated the two GPS systems and the atomic clocks, one at Grensso with the other at CERN. And this calibration was verified by the German Meteorological Institute. And so they achieved a precision of up to a few nanoseconds, the level required to measure the travel time of the neutrinos.

So far we have synchronized two clock systems in two reference systems (CERN and OPERA) that do not move relative to each other. We will call this reference system the CERN-OPERA reference system. As remembered in special relativity, Einstein easily synchronized clocks in a single frame of reference.

The Septenario GPS receivers contained an enhancement designed to calculate the time offset between the local atomic clocks and the GPS satellite clocks. The GPS satellites were orbiting 20,000 kilometers above and they transmitted a very precise time signal to the Septenario GPS receivers. Therefore, the travel time of the GPS signals from the transmitter to the receiver had to be taken into account.

The researchers applied relative corrections to the signals coming from the GPS satellites to bring them as close as possible to a universal time coordinate that is equivalent to a single inertial reference system they called a global geodetic reference system. This already complicated the measurement of time because it was necessary to synchronize the clocks of Gran Sasso and those of CERN with those of the GPS satellites in a very complicated way.

Because of this level of accuracy and due to effects of atmospheric transit, it was not yet possible to use the GPS signal to synchronize the universal time coordinate to the necessary level of accuracy on the order of nanoseconds desired in the OPERA experiment. To advance beyond this level of accuracy, the OPERA experiment researchers used an atomic clock (time transfer component) that calibrated the difference in the time signals in each GPS receiver. It was a very accurate atomic clock that could be moved from place to place. The researchers marked the entire length of the path at CERN and Grenoble with GPS receivers and used the time transfer component to set universal time.

At first physicists tried to look for an error in the calibration and claimed that the experimenters in the OPERA experiment did not take into account effects of general relativity. A physicist named Carlo Contaldi of Imperial College proposed that the central distortion is due to time slowing due to the movement of the atomic clock (the time transfer component) along the 730 km path in a non-uniform gravitational potential. This introduces some relative time distortions. And so there is a discrepancy between the time shown by the clock at the end of CERN - where this atomic clock was initially synchronized and then set off - and the time it shows when compared to the clock in the Gran Sesso laboratory. This effect is on the order of 3 nanoseconds. Contaldi claims that this time-slowing effect must be taken into account as well as the time-slowing when the atomic clock is at rest and not moving at all between CERN and OPERA. And this effect was not taken into account when performing the experiment. And so the discrepancy in times is greater due to the slowing down of times due to the non-uniform gravitational potential.
However, Contaldi's claim is not sufficient to explain the results of the neutrino experiment. We will therefore return to the special theory of relativity.
Let us examine the arrangement at the principle level. Let's imagine an imaginary viewer riding on the neutrinos beam. How does he see the beam sent from CERN to Gran Sasso? He rides along the horn along an underground tunnel towards Gran Sesso. Along the tunnel there is an atomic clock that travels along with the beam until it reaches its destination at the OPERA detector.
This is exactly Einstein's famous thought experiment that he came up with at the age of 16: Einstein rides on the beam of light. Einstein specifically said that such an observer would see the light beam moving at the speed of light relative to it.
Let's imagine a viewer outside this complex of the tunnel that connects CERN to Gran Sesso. Next to it are watches and GPS satellites. It means that this observer is moving relative to the 730 km orbit that connects CERN to Gran Sasso. He would still see the neutrinos beam traveling at or near the speed of light. But according to special relativity the positions of the neutrinos source at CERN and the OPERA detector at Gran Sasso are now changing. From this observer's point of view, the OPERA detector is moving toward the neutrinos source at CERN. As a result, the observer standing next to the GPS satellites will measure that the neutrinos beam moves a distance that is shorter than the distance measured by the observers in the reference system on the ground.
In the OPERA experiment, the experimenters did not notice this phenomenon because they were thinking about the Septenario PolaRx2eTR GPS receivers and the Symmetricum Cs4000 atomic clocks and the universal time they were able to set on the ground, and they did not think about the reference system in orbit, that of the GPS satellite clocks; That's where the synchronization actually takes place.
Roland van Aalborg corrected this error: he compared the travel time in the two reference systems, that of the GPS satellite clock and that of the CERN-OPERA system. The experimenters in the CERN-OPERA system measure the travel time of the neutrinos beam. This travel time is not equal to the travel time calculated by an observer sitting next to the GPS satellite clocks. In the reference system of the GPS satellite clocks, the OPERA detector moves towards the neutrinos beam emitted at CERN. In the OPERA experiment, the clocks orbit the Earth with GPS satellites above the Earth's surface in a fixed plane tilted at an angle of 55 degrees to the equator.

That is, they move from west to east roughly parallel to the CERN-OPERA orbit. Therefore it is easy to calculate their movement. The time measured by an imaginary observer who is near the GPS satellite clocks is longer because of the lengthening of times.

What is the difference between the time measured in the CERN-OPERA reference system and the time measured in the GPS satellite clock reference system when relativistic effects are taken into account? That is, what is the difference between the time in the CERN-OPERA reference system and the time measured in the OPERA experiment? Van Alburg calculates that the time difference is 32 nanoseconds shorter than the time measured in the CERN-OPERA reference system. Since this difference applies to each end of the experiment and it is about two ends - CERN and OPERA, multiply the result by two and get 64 nanoseconds, almost exactly the figure that the OPERA team actually measured in the experiment.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/06/opera_and_general_relativity

to the first article in ARXIV

to the second article in ARXIV

To the news in Universe Today on which this article is based