Enemies of Science Can Stop Gloating About the Fast Neutrinos
Scientists were accused of disbelieving faster-than-light neutrinos because the particles violated Einstein's revered theory. But in reality, scientists were skeptical because such results need to be duplicated to be believable.
Enemies of Science Can Stop Gloating About the Fast Neutrinos
It’s amazing to see the anti-science spins some people attached to the headlines last fall that physicists had observed faster-than-light travel. The alleged speed limit violators were invisible particles called neutrinos that CERN physicists sent in a beam 646 miles through the ground. The particles appeared to travel that distance 60 nanoseconds faster than the speed of light.
Neutrinos are a very hard-to-observe form of matter, first postulated by Enrico Fermi in the 1930s to explain why a small amount of mass seemed to be carried away from nuclear reactions. The first neutrinos were detected in the 1950s.
They’re generated in the sun and other stars in enormous quantities - 100 billion neutrinos zoom through a spot the size of your thumbnail every second. At night, they stream through the Earth and come out the other side. They’re not only invisible but they tend to pass through matter without leaving a sign.
Some commentators, such as Charles Krauthammer, reported that physicists were upset, even devastated by this result and reluctant to accept the idea because it violated special relativity and they revere Einstein.
This is hardly the case. Scientists were skeptical because it was a single, unconfirmed result that involved complicated equipment and indirect measurements. Indeed, the latest press release from CERN suggests some mechanical glitches that might have fooled the physicists into thinking they’d detected faster-than-light travel. A mistake is what most physicists suspected all along:
The OPERA collaboration has informed its funding agencies and host laboratories that it has identified two possible effects that could have an influence on its neutrino timing measurement. These both require further tests with a short pulsed beam. If confirmed, one would increase the size of the measured effect, the other would diminish it. The first possible effect concerns an oscillator used to provide the time stamps for GPS synchronizations. It could have led to an overestimate of the neutrino's time of flight. The second concerns the optical fibre connector that brings the external GPS signal to the OPERA master clock, which may not have been functioning correctly when the measurements were taken. If this is the case, it could have led to an underestimate of the time of flight of the neutrinos. The potential extent of these two effects is being studied by the OPERA collaboration. New measurements with short pulsed beams are scheduled for May.
It's true that the initial results would have violated Einstein’s 1905 theory of special relativity, which showed that the speed of light is constant (in a vacuum), while time and space can expand and contract. According to Einstein, faster-than-light travel allows reversals of cause and effect. It would be possible, for example, to see a crime scene in which the victim collapsed from a bullet wound before the shooter fired.
The result also contradicted measurements scientists have made of neutrinos travelling a much longer distance, from a supernova that exploded in 1987. Those neutrinos travelled 168,000 light years and arrived no faster than expected.
Penn physicist Gene Beier said other labs in the United States and Japan are already gearing up to try to confirm the original result. They may continue their experiments, and everything will eventually get sorted out. Yes, physicists were reluctant to embrace the initial result, but they were willing to put in the effort to get a more definitive answer. “I think most scientists are quite open-minded and are prepared to deal with any deviation from what might be the current orthodoxy,” he said, “but it has to be supported by experiments and those experiments have to be believable.
If the neutrino result is wrong, it should serve as a cautionary note about other single studies, especially those involving health or human behavior. Single studies with counter-intuitive results are often trumpeted by press releases, and these days press releases go directly to the public rather than getting investigated by journalists.
In the unlikely event the original result is correct and neutrinos really did violate the speed limit, Einstein’s legacy will be fine. Relativity works under most circumstances – the GPS in your phone wouldn’t work if it was completely wrong. But if the faster-than-light neutrinos were real, they might lead physicists to a bigger, more all-encompassing theory. There are already known discrepancies between Einstein’s theory and quantum mechanics, which describes matter at a sub-atomic level. So we know there’s something more out there. Physics isn’t finished describing the universe yet. Einstein would almost certainly be pleased.
Krauthammer says you can't have neutrinos kicked out of bars they haven't entered yet; or have them say "ouch" before they walk into bars. Drum roll. Sounds pretty neat to me; if I could see people shooting at me before they purchased the gun, then maybe they could be arrested ahead of time. It boggles the mind.— jxxphilly- I fail to see what so called "enemies of science" have to do with this? Why do you feel the need to have enemies? If the science is true, and not tainted by politics, it will win out. So what if someone thinks the world was created in six days, what does that have to do with you? By the way, what do you think of nuclear power as a viable energy alternative, and the supposedly pro-science crowd that fights it at every turn?— jmc
- There are "enemies of science"; scientists don't need or want them, they exist. Science will will out eventually, unless the enemies drag us back into a dark-age orthodoxy, which is is precisely what "someone [who] thinks the world was created in six days" would like to do. If science provides evidence and reasoning that disputes the existence of creator(s), god(s), and the superstitions and myths people believe, then science gains enemies, and that is what is has to do with science and us.
Nuclear power as a topic is bit off track here, but the science and technology are excellent except for the problem of waste disposal and unforeseen catastrophes, such as Fukushima, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island. Any opposition by those in science is based on the public safety aspect of the science and technology - anyone who ignores this could rightly be considered ignorant. Unless we have comprehensive plans to deal with the problems of nuclear technology, using it is not wise.— GaryAllan - Nuclear power is not science-neutral. It has health risks, i.e., the plants can melt down or malfunction as we have seen. It's not clear how to dispose of the waste. These are medical/science issues militating against uncritical embrace of nuclear. jmc: Just because there's a nuclear lobby of scientists doesn't mean they've got a lock on all the good arguments. You can't analogize nuclear fears with anti-vaccination hysteria.— jxxphilly
- Faye, this will hardly stop the enemies from gloating. Where before they may have thought it was wonderful that Einstein was finally being brought down a peg, and that physicists had it wrong for a century (BTW, faster than light particles are not forbidden by Special Relativity, which only indicates that anything with mass cannot be accelerated from rest to the speed of light), and cried "Hurray!", now they will simply mock the researchers who made the technical error, despite that fact that even conceiving of and constructing an experiment of such complexity is far beyond all but the the most sophisticated of us.
Fortunately, this is truly a case of science done right. Controversial results, after considerable analysis, are posted to the world for consideration and criticism. Results are redone with more sophistication, and apparatus checked. Flaws in all aspects are made public again for consideration. No matter how it turns out, science has advanced and we have a clear and good example of how it should be done.— GaryAllan - I believe that the original proposal of a neutrino was not done to account for missing mass. The mass of the neutrino is very small, and was long assumed to be zero. IIANM, the neutrino was proposed to account for conservation of momentum when a neutron decayed: the resulting momentums of the proton and the electron were not enough, so a third unobserved particle was postulated to carry the extra momentum.— thoms
- I learned about Tachyons in physics class a long time ago. If I could have emoloyed them well, I could have seen the ruptures and eddies created by the super-tachy. There was supposed to be a barrier that could never be crossed, a limiting force in the order of nature, where things could enter realms forbidden to them from neither above light speed nor below.
Recently, there was a blog report of of a syper fast tachyon that left behind a fast-eddie which erased itself and the blog report of its existence. It appears that a couple of enormous worm-holes entered a realm that those seeking truth via the scuentific method of honest scrutiny should neither approach nor cross.
The warping of information tachyons present via fast-eddies and violation of limits that should be neither approaced nor crossed will challenge scientific standards of what is "fair and accurate" reporting.— Daniel Hoffman - Charles Krauthammer is an M.D., a intelligent-design debunker, and an atheist. Hardly what I consider the credentials of an 'enemy of science'.
The mistake only confirms his claim. Science goofs, no matter how well meaning the participants. The presence of cynics is irrelevant. EVERY claim has doubters and detractors. So? The point is the mistake was only verified 4 months later. Some may take 4 years...others 40. Civilization is always somewhere within that paradigm. Krauthammer is hardly being an enemy of science in acknowledging its limitations.
As for the question of why so called 'friends of science" (ie. liberals) do not embrace nuclear energy, the answer is the same as to why they oppose natural gas. It's abundant and cheap. The hardcore left cannot support any mechanism that perpetuates the socio/economic status quo. It's goal (often stated, like Occupy) has always been nothing short of upending the traditional power structure that it invariably struggles to compete in, using the tool of Big Government and its regulations. Pushing windmills, solar panels, and toy cars while denigrating fossil fuels and atomic energy furthers that equaling of the playing field in their minds.— Fred Berry - Fred, the question is 'what is a "liberal"? and for that matter 'what is a "conservative"?' In this political year it would be helpful for know precisely what people mean. In this context you seem to mean anyone who would like environmental and health guarantees before going ahead with an energy plan is a liberal. So if fracking were delayed a while to do geophysics independently to verify the potential side effects, as in Ohio recently, or nuclear is delayed to ensure waste disposal is done and seismic protection is designed in is seen as "liberal" to you rather than prudent and in fact conservative in an engineering sense. Orwell would be amused (an appalled) by the twisting of language in modern America.
We need to cut fossil fuels to reduce pollution and protect health (which would result in reducing health expenditures and help to balance the budget. We need to cut fossil fuel use to cut climate change, since CO2 waste is inexorably raising the global mean temperature regardless of what the lunatic fringe of climate science "skeptics" thinks, every major government organization in America is planning for warming, including the Armed Forces.
We need all new ideas for energy production, but responsibly with full payment for the consequences (pollution) as we go.— GaryAllan - Very good comments, GaryAllan. Krauthammer's academic credentials don't necessarily make him a friend of science; he's a climate skeptic and leads a charge that has only 1 in 4 Americans expressing confidence in scientists. Deepak Chopra is an MD too....— jxxphilly
In pursuit of her stories, writer Faye Flam has weathered storms in Greenland, gotten frost nip at the South Pole, and floated weightless aboard NASA’s zero-g plane. She has a degree in geophysics from the California Institute of Technology and started her writing career with the Economist. She later took on the particle physics and cosmology beat at Science Magazine before coming to the Inquirer in 1995. Her previous science column, “Carnal Knowledge,” ran from 2005 to 2008. Her new column and blog, Planet of the Apes, explores the topic of evolution and runs here and in the Inquirer’s health section each Monday. Email Faye at fflam@phillynews.com.
Reach Planet of the at fflam@phillynews.com.
