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Physics Start‑class Mid‑importance

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Superluminal results

Well, this article is going to need some updating soon. OPERA is about to become either very famous or very INfamous in the physics world.--Grapplequip (formerly LAR) (talk) 23:06, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

I added mention of the news in this article. Unfortunately I don't know enough about OPERA (or have time right now) to check what else is out of date in this article, so I've left the "Out of date" tag intact. --Grapplequip (formerly LAR) (talk) 00:03, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

On second thought, as no one has explained why the article is outdated, I've decided to removed the outdated tag. It seems odd to simultaneously have "current event" and "outdated" tags on the article. I'm going to add a current event tag at the top of the article now that information about is in the lead. Note, I have every intention of fixing the info I've added in the article, as well as removing the section in the lead, if this experimental result turns out to be false, which I fully expect to happen. For the moment, however, it is big news.--Grapplequip (formerly LAR) (talk) 00:13, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

The paper seems to diagram a "proton beam" traveling all the way to Italy through the Earth. This surely can not be correct, so how are they keeping their clocks up to date with the required accuracy? Hcobb (talk) 16:23, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

The beam passes through several hundred kilometers of the Earth's crust. What exactly is your confusion? --OuroborosCobra (talk) 17:08, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Neutrinos can pass right through the Earth, but protons? Hcobb (talk) 18:46, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

The section states: "This result has not been detected by previous experiments; for instance, in 2007, Fermilab reported results consistent with neutrinos traveling at lightspeed." This is incorrect, at least the first sentence. While the results were certainly not 6-sigma, they did give a velocity higher than the speed of light:

A total of 473 Far Detector neutrino events was used to measure (v-c)/c = 5.1 +/- 2.9 x 10^-5 (at 68% C.L.).

See also this this science blog: One experiment based out of Chicago, a few years ago, found marginal evidence that neutrinos might move just a tiny bit faster than the speed of light, at 1.000051 (+/- 0.000029) c.

Those results can be called consistent with the speed of light, but that's because it was a low (not even two) sigma event, meaning there's a chance of maybe 3% for these results to occur by accident. DS Belgium (talk) 19:01, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

I think most likely is they didn't measure the distance between CERN and OPERA correctly, bearing in mind also that the OPERA lab is deep underground.

Misplaced Pages articles are about WP:Verifiability, not truth. The truth that the scientist speaking on behalf of Opera was being very conservative in his quote about Fermi isn't very relevant (at 2 sigma). It doesn't change what he said. He claimed that Fermi's results may contradict OPERA's. That he said it is more important than whether or not there actually is a contradiction. He says that there was. --Wragge (talk) 22:32, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Clarification to earlier point: an interpretation by a participant in a WP:SECONDARY source trumps any WP:OR or blog opinions, even/especially when those are based on primary source data. --Wragge (talk) 22:48, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

you are saying that wikipedia rules insist on presenting clearly erroneous statements not merely as quotes, but as facts? And trusting a newspaper more than scientific publications? And a source is less trustworthy than another source telling us what the first source told us? So a third source commenting on the second one would always trump both of them, and so on? How many sources do you want?

• http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/09/neutrino-experiment-sees-them-apparently-moving-faster-than-light.ars
• A press release of CERN saying the same thing is also interpretation? http://www.fnal.gov/pub/today/
• http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/334715/title/Neutrinos_seen_to_fly_faster_than_light

Tell me, have you any source that claims the Fermi results didn't show velocities higher than c? The way the article reads now is blatant misleading crap. "Previous experiments have not detected statistically significant faster-than light motion" "measurements were consistent with neutrinos traveling at lightspeed". You know damn well that those results were even more consistent with a higher than c speed. And for the record, I don't believe the results, but wikipedia is supposed to be objective, not choose wording and sources to create a false impression just because the results are likely embarrasing for scientists. DS Belgium (talk) 13:49, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Could the timing be affected by gravitational time dilation? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.80.119.67 (talk) 00:41, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

I would think it's possible, sure. However, from what I understand of the design of this experiment and the way gravitational time dilation works, this would cause the beam to appear slower than would be expected (since the beam travels through the earth, putting it through lower gravitational potential) instead of faster. Take this comment for what it is, though: the barely-literate semi-informed ramblings of a physics student who graduated more than 10 years ago. (lol) 206.28.38.227 (talk) 02:10, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

I've gone and restored some of the stuff that was removed about CERN/Fermilab/T2K spokesmen's statements. I don't know who removed the quotes to begin with, but if there's an issue, let's talk about it before doing so again, eh? Thanks. Also, I predict this incident is going to require its own article sometime in the not too distant future. Most likely in the same vein as Fleischmann–Pons Cold Fusion article, unless something truly stupendous has occurred. Hopefully it doesn't turn out to be quite so embarassing for OPERA as that was for Fleishchmann and Pons. After all, there're 160 physicists working on OPERA.--Grapplequip (formerly LAR) (talk) 07:17, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Balance and language in the article

Hi all,

It's clear that taking a level-headed approach is essential in handling the superluminal thing. I was the first to put up news about it in this article yesterday, and I apologize if the tone of my edits was insufficiently skeptical. Some of the revisions made since have actually made the artical seem less skeptical, however, which is why I restored my sentence from yesterday in the end of the lead.

On another note, I noticed that all of the quotes I included from the folks at OPERA and CERN were removed in the superluminal section, even though they were fully cited. I believe those quotes were balanced and worth including, and plan to restore them. I think the inclusion of such quotes will make the article more accessible to the general public, who might have a greater than usual interest in it at the moment. I fully support the detailed, technical language being included as well.--Grapplequip (formerly LAR) (talk) 06:59, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

That's a fair point; after all, this page got 10.9k views yesterday. So I would say now that it's fine if you want to include a representative selection of quotes of various physicists. Apologies for removing them so quickly without a discussion.

For reference, the physics community tends to deal with unexpected announcements by being cautious but skeptical. But it's much harder to figure out reasons for the skepticism if you aren't familiar with the topic or know of contradictory work, and just hear it being a bit sensationalized in the media, after all. Seleucus (talk) 13:39, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Personally, I don't see direct quotations from related physicists a show of insufficient skepticism. If anything, I'd see it as being similar to the statements made by proponents of a fringe theory (for example, quoting Bart Sibrel on the Apollo Moon Landing hoax accusations page). For all intents and purposes, that's what this whole superluminal travel hullabaloo is...a fringe theory that now relies on further scientific work to either debunk or support.

That said, the actual non-quotation article wording does need to remain sufficiently skeptical. This announcement potentially challenges something that's widely accepted as a physical constant, and while it's not necessarily the Einstein-demolishing paradigm shift the Daily Mail would have you believe it's a pretty extraordinary claim and as such requires extraordinary evidence placed under extraordinary scrutiny. 206.28.38.227 (talk) 16:20, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

The article seems too sceptical to me and not sufficiently neutral. In particular the section calculating the time difference for neutrinos from supernova SN1987A looks like original research - the result here is based on neutrinos travelling through a few hundred kilometers of the Earth's crust, extrapolating the result to 168,000 light years is a big jump without a reference. This is certainly not a fringe theory, the results have already been checked and repeated over the past three years before being made public. The claim is extraordinary but does not contradict widely accepted physics. There are many papers available discussing the possibility that neutrinos are superluminal particles, including ones referring to SN1987A as supporting evidence. I understand the desire to maintain a healthy level of scepticism, but I think it more likely the media is in overplaying the significance of the result rather than the physicists at the OPERA experiment not being sufficiently thorough. Rattle (talk) 17:02, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Hi all, I essentially agree with the statements made above, though I do want to clarify just a wee bit. In spite of my comparison (see the superluminal results talk section) of this incident to the Fleischmann-Pons "Cold Fusion" incident, I think it is a little premature to start comparing the claims being made here to moon-landing conspiracy theories. There is nothing "fringe" about the science being done here in that sense. From the looks of it, far from making outlandish claims and jumping to conclusions, the CERN-OPERA collaboration scientists are essentially saying "Here we have this totally anomalous measurement, can someone please help us figure out whether it is an experimental error or not?" The language they've used to describe the situation fully accomodates skepticism. This is exactly what they should be doing as scientists. Ereditato and friends may yet turn out to be cranks, but they haven't made any procedural missteps (ethically speaking, not in regards to their experiment) yet. And even if they do turn out to be wrong (which is very, very likely), I doubt their error will prove to more than an honest (if foolish) mistake, rather than the kind of willful falsification or wishful thinking that has characterized so many other, similar incidents in science. I think the honest mistake outcome particularly likely, considering the number of scientists involved in the experiment. I agree that we need to be careful in how we deal with information from mainstream newspapers, who tend to do a terrible job of discussing these things, but we shouldn't shy away from using quotes in those sources if they are from expert scientists. I think we all concur on this, again I just wanted to clarify.--Grapplequip (formerly LAR) (talk) 16:41, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Just wanted to say that I think you're being a bit too literal in regards to my above "fringe theory" comment. I'm not directly comparing this to the moon hoax stuff, nor do I think what's being done at the OPERA is in any way "pseudoscience". I was just using the moon hoax stuff as an example of highly contentious subject matter using appropriate quotations from people who are directly related to said subject matter, and my "fringe theory" analogy was a simple illustration that this alleged discovery is not as of yet widely regarded as scientific fact (i.e., it is not definitive proof of superluminal travel and from what I understand with conversations with colleages most currently believe this to be experimental error...but that's what makes scientific discovery fun!).

Anyway, the whole point of this is whether or not including these quotations is Misplaced Pages:NPOV, and I personally believe it is. All the people directly related with this experiment, while excited about this potential discovery, seem to be remaining appropriately skeptical while the scientific community at large takes a closer look at the data. In fact, the only people who seem to be heavily slanted one way or the other are the media outlets reporting the story. With that in mind, I think actual quotations are fine as long as the views of the secondary sources are kept out of the article since they seem to want to push some kind of "Einstein was wrong" agenda. 206.28.38.227 (talk) 19:08, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

What is right?

The article claims with no uncertainty that the neutrinos connected with SN1987A really came from SN1987A, but now I'm not so sure, so I think this article shouldn't be so sure either. The article SN1987A claims that:

At 7:35 a.m. Universal time, Kamiokande II detected 11 antineutrinos, IMB 8 antineutrinos and Baksan 5 antineutrinos, in a burst lasting less than 13 seconds. Approximately three hours earlier, the Mont Blanc liquid scintillator detected a five-neutrino burst, but this is generally not believed to be associated with SN 1987A.

28 antineutrinos are pretty convincing, but why were there happenstance 5 unrelated neutrinos 3 hours earlier? Are antineutrino bursts that common? I think there is some small chance that the 28 antineutrinos may in fact be something else, and that the article shouldn't be so certain in its formulations, that might in fact be interpreted as biased against the OPERA claims. Rursus dixit. (bork!) 17:12, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Another remark: WP:OR refers to undue synthesis (WP:SYNTH). I think it is not undue to apply simple formulae as in section References part Notes. Simple maths should not be regarded as research at all, so the are simply not justified. I'll delete them. Rursus dixit. (bork!) 17:27, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

The issue is not the formula, it is in using the supernova as contradictory evidence without reference. This result may be a special casse which does not apply in a vacuum or over longer distances. Rattle (talk) 17:57, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

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