Analog SFF, June 2012 by Dell Magazine Authors

Author:Dell Magazine Authors
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Dell Magazines

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Department: THE ALTERNATE VIEW: ODDS AND ENDS #5

by Jeffery D. Kooistra

My last Odds and Ends potpourri column came out three years ago, in June of 2009. Enough short subject material has accumulated since then to write fifteen new ones, so here is the fifth installment in the series.

Some of you may have been dismayed to read what I had to say about those FTL neutrinos in my April column when Dr. Cramer had covered the same story in his March column. When the story broke, I honestly thought that it had come too late for Dr. Cramer to discuss it and meet his March deadline. I thought April was the soonest either of us could get to it. So I was surprised to open up my March Analog and find the Cramer take on FTL neutrinos that I fully expected couldn't have appeared until May.

Yet, had I known his column would beat mine to press, I still would have written about the subject (although I would have taken into account the extra familiarity with the details that seeing Cramer's piece first would have given the readership). After all, finding particles traveling faster than light in the way the folks at CERN did, and verifying the validity of that result, could easily be the scientific finding of the century. Nobody in his right mind could think that either Cramer or Kooistra would even be able to not write about it, or refrain from revisiting it.

Speaking of which, the OPERA experiment was redone with a variation shortly after I submitted my April column. It wasn't an independent confirmation because it was performed by the same people at the same facility using the same equipment. Nevertheless, the new measurement addressed and eliminated a possible source of error, this supposedly being in the shape and duration of the collision pulses that produced the neutrinos. Recall that the FTL neutrinos were measured to have arrived about 60 nanoseconds early. However, the pulses that produced the neutrinos lasted longer than that, so it was argued by some that these were smeared out too wide to measure accurately. To address this criticism the experiment was redone, only this time around the pulses were three nanoseconds wide, nice and short with respect to the 60 nanosecond FTL signal. As physicist and science blogger Lubos Motl (he's also an extremely vocal string theory advocate) put it on his blog: “It's effectively equivalent to measuring the speed of individual neutrinos.” (motls.blogspot. com/2011/11/opera-neutrinos-ftl-even-at-3-ns.htmlmore) Once again, the neutrinos showed up about 60 nanoseconds early, laying that criticism to rest.

Since writing the April column, I've become more confident that the FTL result will turn out to be true. My reasons aren't particularly scientific. It's just that this time around with a jaw-dropping, unexpected claim (unlike with say, cold fusion) the critics have been less rabid and more polite, and the researchers in the best position to validate the result are being allowed to go ahead and do just that. A few months ago I would have been willing to bet a chocolate sundae that the findings would hold up.

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