This is according to an official statement from the "Opera" headquarters, following leaks by scientists about a malfunction in the connection of the optical cable between the GPS receiver and the main clock
The Oprah partnership, which made headlines in September with the groundbreaking claim that its people had detected faster-than-light neutrinos, identified two possible sources of error in the experiment.
If indeed the original results remain valid despite considering these faults, they will undermine Einstein's special theory of relativity, one of the cornerstones of modern physics.
Oprah collected data suggesting that the neutrinos created at CERN near Geneva and sent 730 kilometers to a detector at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy arrived 60 nanoseconds too early if a light beam had passed the same distance and it appears that the measurements were made carefully and reached a level of statistical significance.
However, from Opera's data that started circulating on the net yesterday, it appears that two possible problems were discovered in the operation of the devices. As many physicists suspected, the two possible glitches are related to the system's pioneering use of GPS signals to synchronize the atomic clocks on either side of the neutrino beam. First, the lapse of hours between the arrival of the sync signal had to be taken into account, and Oprah now says that this was not done the right way. Second, there is a possible fault in the link between the GPS signal and Opera's main clock.
Anonymous sources cited a blog on the site Science Insiders In which it is claimed that an error may have occurred in the experiment. The report suggests that the connection may be responsible for the 60 nanosecond difference. Opera's official response only says that there are two possible sources of errors at points opposite each other and they are still working to track them down.
"The Oprah Partnership, while continuing to verify the results of the Neutrino Velocity Experiment, has identified two issues that may significantly affect the reported results. The first is an oscillator used to timestamp the event between the GPS synchronizations. The second point is related to the optical fiber link after inserting the external GPS signal into Opera's main clock."
"These two issues may adjust the neutrino's movement time in both directions (lower or even higher). While we continue our investigation, to quantify the impact of these factors on the observational results, the partnership wishes to move forward and make new measurements of the neutrino particle velocity once the upgraded beam becomes available in 2012. A comprehensive report of the validation and results will soon be available to the scientific community and scientific agencies.” .
Karen Hagner, an Opera team member from the University of Hamburg in Germany, said: "At this time, the partnership has decided not to provide a numerical statement, as we need to have more comprehensive discussions about the findings."
As I recall, the day after the discovery he said Prof. Jacques Goldberg of the Technion who participated in the faster-than-light neutrino experiment in an interview with the scientist website that it is necessary to examine all possibilities before declaring the death of relativity.
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About 24 hours ago (March 16) it was leaked that the "Ikaros" team reached results that negate the results of the "Opera" team. In the aforementioned Icarus experiment: the speed of neutrinos *did* not exceed the speed of light, subject to measurement errors.
The Icarus team is an alternative team of physicists to the Oprah team (it may include a Nobel Prize winner in physics, or the above serves as a consultant to the team). According to what I understood - the Ikarus team used the same particle accelerator at CERN that the Opera team used and also sent neutrinos to the same laboratory in a bunker in Italy (called "Sasso Grasso"?). Also—compared to the Oprah team—the Ikaros team used a different type of neutrino detector and used different clocks.
From what I understand this coming May (or later), the Opera team will repeat their experiment while fixing their devices (but continuing to use the same devices).
All this, advertising on BBC news (probably)
A short article and a simple mathematical explanation why it is not possible to exceed the speed of light
Found on the site
http://www.mourici.022.co.il/
Or search mourici.022 on Google
Click on the kisser and a PDF file is attached at the bottom
In Compton's error article that explains why to this day there are still believers in the transition to the speed of light
to Gali Weinstein,
The Opera team practiced and continues to practice scientific hand hygiene.
Below is the text summarizing their article:
In conclusion, despite the large significance of the measurement reported here and the
robustness of the analysis, the potentially great impact of the result motivates the continuation of
our studies in order to investigate possible still unknown systematic effects that could explain the
observed anomaly. We deliberately do not attempt anything theoretical or phenomenological
interpretation of the results.
The scientific community as a whole harnessed similar caution as well. Both in a theoretical examination of possible alternatives, both in expenses for additional experiments in Opera and in initiating experiments in other laboratories.
On the other hand, a standard - the facts, the analysis and the reasoning - which is the basis of a statement that appears in your response, for example: "This proves that the OPERA team was not sufficiently knowledgeable in the theory of special and general relativity. ” leaves room to hope for more.
Yair
Waves do not need to be too complicated, they did calculate correctly GPS satellites are an old thing and deviations from all kinds of effects are corrected by every phone today.
Someone connected a 10 meter optical connector instead of 2 meters as it should have been.
Anyway, now an interesting question arises.
In complex experiments (like most experiments today), there are many factors that can cause errors. Then the whole experiment gives rise to a wrong result. Reality and strong physical principles do not always come to the aid of physicists to discover their mistake.
http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2012/02/breaking-news-error-undoes-faster.html
The experiment and the articles and the buzz about the speed of light did nothing but good for the physical sciences because they gave people something to think about and an area that may not be familiar to many to ponder. The average Joe on the street doesn't think about quanta and relativity and the like, but here's a story that almost everyone has heard of because it brought something exotic to the non-science press. It must have produced a lot of false thoughts, but in my opinion it's for the better - because false thoughts are better than no thoughts at all. There is no such thing as bad publicity because any publicity in the field of science is good. Even if it's a mistake they found and fixed. Without it, another day would pass with lots of things in physics that no one but professionals had heard of.
There is no such thing as "Einstein's special theory of relativity" there is only "special theory of relativity" and there are such books in funny Hebrew that translate this to "reduced relativity".
The problems with the GPS in the OPERA experiment were identified very quickly after the experiment was carried out. It's a shame the OPERA team didn't listen to those who identified these problems. If they had listened, the team would have spared themselves the embarrassment of submitting the preprint they posted to ArXiv for publication in the journal.
This proves that the OPERA team was not sufficiently familiar with special and general relativity. And I'm talking about the modern formulations, including their technological applications and the exact calculations they perform using the theory of relativity - while taking into account all the interfering factors. And that's before making funny statements like "Einstein was wrong", "to replace the theory of relativity" etc.
I published articles about this with you a few months ago.
The only experiment that can disprove the claim that "nothing moves faster than light" is by sending photons and neutrinos side by side. And only then if the neutrino arrived before the photon, then the claim was disproved.
Calculations and relying on devices are very indirect relative to the claim. Because there will be many options. Just an example: it can be assumed that the neutrino's trajectory passed a small black hole and this actually caused it to take a longer trajectory...
This example (although not so realistic) proves that it is not possible to disprove the determination of the speed of light as the upper limit by measuring distances. Because a lot of things are assumed about the path that the particle takes without even seeing that path).
In general, speed is defined as a local derivative, therefore measurement over a large distance does not meet the speed definition. And also because of this consideration the rebuttal falls.
In short, the only scientific experiment with which certainty can be disproved is the one I described at the beginning.