Faster than light, Impossible?

[Peter Harris]

It seems there may be a sort of averaging problem going on. I will certainly keep my eye on this.

[Martin]

Neutrinos still faster than light!
The team behind the finding in September that neutrinos may travel faster than light has carried out an improved version of their experiment - and found the same result.

If confirmed by other experiments, the find could undermine one of the basic principles of modern physics.

Critics of the first report had said that the long bunches of neutrinos used could introduce an error into the test.

The new work, posted to the Arxiv repository, used much shorter bunches.

It has been submitted to the Journal of High Energy Physics, but has not yet been reviewed by the scientific community.

bbc.co.uk

I think it might be the tape measure or sat nav that's at fault. Those Tom Toms are only accurate to a few yards[]

[Wilko]

I know these particle physicists are much, much cleverer than me, but one thing puzzles me. The speed of light is only constant in the medium through which it travels (a vacuum is usually used as a reference) It has a different speed when travelling through glass -hence the bending by a prism to produce a rainbow effect. Since these neutrinos are being fired through rocks (I guess) how do the boffins know what their speed should be ? They can't be comparing it with visible wavelengths since they can't travel through rock - or can they?
PS If this is the expanation (which I very much doubt), wouldn't 'Little Bill' Rigby be proud? - he'd have to take back all those things he said about me in my reports!
DW

[anacortesdamp]

When we first came across neutrinos in physiscs, I thought the teacher said "latrinos". Ever since, I've pictured them as little people who look after public toilets in Italy.


Frank