New theories emerge to disprove OPERA FTL neutrinos claim

[tayga]

Yes, that's right. Physicists are apparently trying to disprove experimental findings with theoretical arguments.

– It’s been just two weeks since the Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus (OPERA) team released its announcement claiming that they have been measuring muon neutrinos moving faster than the speed of light, causing an uproar in the physics community. Since that time, many papers (perhaps as many as 30 to the preprint server arXiv alone) have been published seeking ways to discredit the findings. Thus far though, only two seem credible.

http://physicsforme.wordpress.com/2011/ ... omment-935

I posted a comment. It's awaiting moderation:

How on Earth can a theoretical position disprove an experimental claim? That’s pseudoscience and nonsense of the worst kind.

The results need validating or invalidating by further experiment or data analysis. If you are prepared to ‘disprove’ a finding with a theoretical argument we might as well pack up and go home – Science would be finished.

[jjohnson]

You are right, except that it's better terminology to use "falsify", or even the article's "discredit" than the word, "disprove". Physics, and theories in general, are not disproved in the sense that mathematical theories are, or can be. Theories are supposed to be as good a model possible under the current limitations, but are subject to being replaced or supplemented by better findings or measurements and observations, a better theory (simpler or possibly completely different in methodology), or even "discredited" if based on faulty data or knowingly falsified data.

But we all get what you say: trying to discredit a set of experimental data by saying "theory says otherwise" can't falsify the data or its observed result, although it could help point toward looking at other measurements or observations that were neglected or overlooked in the experiment.

One wonders where is the rush to see if the experiment can be duplicated elsewhere with similar outcome? What, no scientific curiosity here? Too costly? Not in this grant cycle? Good lord, this is the constancy of the speed of light.

Ho hum.

[tayga]

You are right, except that it's better terminology to use "falsify", or even the article's "discredit" than the word, "disprove".

I agree, Jim. The subject line I wrote is actually the headline of the article. I personally wouldn't use 'disprove' outside a legal argument.

(As an aside, I'm watching a TV documentary about 'Dark Flow'. The voiceover just explained that the more the Standard Model of Cosmology fails, the stronger it gets. What?!?!? )

[jjohnson]

Yeah; say wha-a-t? "To save the village, we had to destroy it." Right.

[jjohnson]

BTW, I just read this about FermiLab doing some testing of their own to see if they can duplicate the CERN results. Someone is thinking about taking the right action.
Jim

[tayga]

Well THAT is the way to do science.

BTW a colleague mentioned that she had read something about the good folks at Tevatron making similar findings a while ago where the discrepancy between the speed of neutrinos and photons was identical. I'm trying to dig it out now...

[tayga]

OK. I've managed to join the dots now. The Fermilab MINOS team, not Tevatron, are going to RE-ANALYSE RESULTS from 2007 that are similar to the CERN finding.

Back in 2007 the MINOS experiment presented the intriguing results of a very similar test of the speed of high energy neutrinos. Much like OPERA, MINOS employs an artificial beam of neutrinos (at slightly lower energies of 3 giga-electron volts) that traverses a similar distance through the Earth – in this case traveling 734.2986 kilometers from just outside Chicago to a 5.4 thousand ton detector sitting 700 meters down in a former iron mine in northern Minnesota. Four years ago the MINOS collaboration published a constraint on the velocity difference between neutrinos and light of about 0.005% with an uncertainty of 0.003% at a 68% confidence level – in favor of super-luminal motion. It didn’t get the same fanfare with the public, but it definitely set tongues a-wagging in the particle physics community.

It now looks like the MINOS people are going to both go back in and re-analyze their data in an effort to reduce their level of uncertainty, and to try to perform some new experiments.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/lif ... neutrinos/