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Author Topic: CERN has accidentally the everything.  (Read 59972 times)

Azkanan

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CERN has accidentally the everything.
« on: September 22, 2011, 03:23:39 pm »

Lightspeed results baffle at Cern
By Jason Palmer
Science and technology reporter, BBC News

The neutrinos are fired deep under the Italian Alps at Gran Sasso
Puzzling results from Cern, home of the LHC, have confounded physicists - because it appears subatomic particles have exceeded the speed of light.

Neutrinos sent through the ground from Cern toward the Gran Sasso laboratory 732km away seemed to show up a tiny fraction of a second early.

The result - which threatens to upend a century of physics - will be put online for scrutiny by other scientists.

In the meantime, the group says it is being very cautious about its claims.

"We tried to find all possible explanations for this," said report author Antonio Ereditato of the Opera collaboration.

"We wanted to find a mistake - trivial mistakes, more complicated mistakes, or nasty effects - and we didn't," he told BBC News.

"When you don't find anything, then you say 'Well, now I'm forced to go out and ask the community to scrutinise this.'"

Caught speeding?

The speed of light is the Universe's ultimate speed limit, and much of modern physics - as laid out in part by Albert Einstein in his special theory of relativity - depends on the idea that nothing can exceed it.

Thousands of experiments have been undertaken to measure it ever more precisely, and no result has ever spotted a particle breaking the limit.

But Dr Ereditato and his colleagues have been carrying out an experiment for the last three years that seems to suggest neutrinos have done just that.

Neutrinos come in a number of types, and have recently been seen to switch spontaneously from one type to another.

The team prepares a beam of just one type, muon neutrinos, sending them from Cern to an underground laboratory at Gran Sasso in Italy to see how many show up as a different type, tau neutrinos.

In the course of doing the experiments, the researchers noticed that the particles showed up a few billionths of a second sooner than light would over the same distance.

The team measured the travel times of neutrino bunches some 15,000 times, and have reached a level of statistical significance that in scientific circles would count as a formal discovery.

But the group understands that what are known as "systematic errors" could easily make an erroneous result look like a breaking of the ultimate speed limit, and that has motivated them to publish their measurements.

"My dream would be that another, independent experiment finds the same thing - then I would be relieved," Dr Ereditato said.

But for now, he explained, "we are not claiming things, we want just to be helped by the community in understanding our crazy result - because it is crazy".

"And of course the consequences can be very serious."

BBC © 2011
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A pool of Dwarven Ale.
WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS ?

Zrk2

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Re: CERN has accidentally the everything.
« Reply #1 on: September 22, 2011, 03:25:25 pm »

HA! Now the sci-fi novels I occasionally think of writing will have one less crime against physics!
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KaelGotDwarves

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Re: CERN has accidentally the everything.
« Reply #2 on: September 22, 2011, 03:30:18 pm »

AP article which the BBC one may be derived from:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_BREAKING_LIGHT_SPEED?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

I need to visit CERN now that I've been to Fermilab. :D

Neutrinos, ruining everything since forever.

Bdthemag

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Re: CERN has accidentally the everything.
« Reply #3 on: September 22, 2011, 03:33:11 pm »

Well everything I know about physics is a lie, wait! That means I can fly!
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olemars

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Re: CERN has accidentally the everything.
« Reply #4 on: September 22, 2011, 03:33:43 pm »

Quote
"And of course the consequences can be very serious."

Tie down everything, gravity ends tomorrow.
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forsaken1111

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Re: CERN has accidentally the everything.
« Reply #5 on: September 22, 2011, 03:33:50 pm »

Now I want to read the sensationalist article which claims CERN's findings spell the doom of mankind and Cthulhu will rise from the ashes to form a new utopia and that he consumes rule-breaking neutrinos!
« Last Edit: September 22, 2011, 03:40:27 pm by forsaken1111 »
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Boksi

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Re: CERN has accidentally the everything.
« Reply #6 on: September 22, 2011, 03:34:10 pm »

Dammit, I was about to post this :(

Well, it's still neat. Did those neutrinos get a ticket, though? They were breaking a law, weren't they?
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Leafsnail

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Re: CERN has accidentally the everything.
« Reply #7 on: September 22, 2011, 03:35:11 pm »

I'm pretty sure I've already read about neutrinos doing weird stuff like this due to their uncertain and ever changing mass.  I guess it's cool that it's been confirmed though.
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Roboboy33

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Re: CERN has accidentally the everything.
« Reply #8 on: September 22, 2011, 03:35:30 pm »

TAKE THAT GM THAT KICKED ME OUT OF HIS GAME SOME YEARS AGO!
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▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ஜ۩۞۩ஜ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

SHUT UP AND ENJOY THE CATS

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ஜ۩۞۩ஜ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

Jopax

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Re: CERN has accidentally the everything.
« Reply #9 on: September 22, 2011, 03:36:36 pm »

FUCK!
RUN!

I feel too close for comfort to the stuff these guys are doing, i mean, what is stopping them from turning that giant faster-than-lasers cannon over to my little corner of the globe ;__;
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KaelGotDwarves

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Re: CERN has accidentally the everything.
« Reply #10 on: September 22, 2011, 03:37:06 pm »

Now I want to read the sensationalist article which claims CERN's findings spell the doom of mankind and Cthulhu will rise from the ashes to form a new utopia and that he consumes rule-breaking neutrons!
Neutrons are not neutrinos.

/pendantic

MetalSlimeHunt

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Re: CERN has accidentally the everything.
« Reply #11 on: September 22, 2011, 03:37:33 pm »

Neutrinos, ruining everything since forever.
Neutrinos are a lot like mischievous people that you really want to hate for all the trouble and police response that they cause, but are just too damned charming to dislike.
Quote
"And of course the consequences can be very serious."

Tie down everything, gravity ends tomorrow.
Tarran better get his shit together for this, or we're going straight into the sun.


In any case: ==> Humanity: Invent FTL
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Willfor

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Re: CERN has accidentally the everything.
« Reply #12 on: September 22, 2011, 03:37:51 pm »

I realize that they can only be cautiously optimistic, but the way this was worded made me think that they were saying something like "Oh no, suggesting anything about how our basic assumptions might be wrong goes against the HOLY WRIT OF SCIENCE." I'm not saying they are saying that, but that's my mental image of how they were saying it.

Sorry, never mind me, I'm just amusing myself.
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forsaken1111

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Re: CERN has accidentally the everything.
« Reply #13 on: September 22, 2011, 03:40:10 pm »

Now I want to read the sensationalist article which claims CERN's findings spell the doom of mankind and Cthulhu will rise from the ashes to form a new utopia and that he consumes rule-breaking neutrons!
Neutrons are not neutrinos.

/pendantic
I know, simple typo. :)

Fix't it
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Urist Imiknorris

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Re: CERN has accidentally the everything.
« Reply #14 on: September 22, 2011, 03:41:15 pm »

I realize that they can only be cautiously optimistic, but the way this was worded made me think that they were saying something like "Oh no, suggesting anything about how our basic assumptions might be wrong goes against the HOLY WRIT OF SCIENCE." I'm not saying they are saying that, but that's my mental image of how they were saying it.

Sorry, never mind me, I'm just amusing myself.

I'm just waiting for someone to seriously say that this finding "proves" that all of science is a lie.
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