A Place For Science: 10/21/11

About 3 weeks ago the OPERA neutrino experiment at Gran Sasso laboratory reported FTL neutrinos. Since than, many explanations came about to explain how this surprising measurement was probably an error, discussions like (the inconsistencies) of tachyons, the problematic relation on astrophysical data, environmental explanation on experimental details, and general relativity effects.

But farther on this note, OPERA scientist thought that maybe they could send a "bit" of information to travel FTL. However, even thought FTL is still in debate OPERA assumes that the "measurement is correct and that there is no systematic shift in the measured data". They thought that based on this assumption it was possible to send a "bit" of data at FTL, with an experimental setup and of course to see if there was any mistakes on the Lorentz symmetry or errors in the causality principle.

So far there is no errors on the Lorentz symmetry as well as the on the causality principle based on the experiment, thus, the intend to send a "bit" of information was unsuccessful meaning that it was not possible to send information at FTL.

BUT!! this argument goes far beyond.

Scientist at CERN/OPERA have considered that just because the experimental setup was particularly set on a time length of 10000ns, scientist objected that maybe, by improving the luminosity and the position of the experiment or putting the neutrino detectors much much more farther away...the sending of a signal faster than c might be indeed possible. The bad news is that this might be an extrapolation (construction of new data points) meaning that nothing will change by changing the experimental setup. This is because the Lorentz symmetry (The feature of nature that says that experimental results are independent of the "orientation" or the boost velocity of the laboratory through space) and the causality principle (the description of cause and effect) are our basic understanding of nature.

So far CERN/OPERA scientist believe that the rejection of at least one of these "basic understandings of nature" (Lorentz symmetry or causality principle) might be because of the actual "transmission" of the "bit" of information sent at FTL and not by an extrapolation in the experimental set.

The group of scientist who wrote the paper on the experiment at CERN quoted: " Nature may be subtle, protecting these basic principles with the help of some not yet understood 'censorship' mechanism".

What sort of mechanism is this?? if such mechanism has a censorship on this principles, it is quite unusual to see neutrinos having the ability to travel Faster-Than-The-Speed-Of-Light, therefore, an error must be going on somewhere on this measurement. Why can a particle travel faster than c and a "bit" of information can't? It smells like rotten fish to me, and quite honest we will never know if this experiment was incorrectly set up until we get farther results from other institutions that have measured the neutrino speed and confirmed that, indeed, it is possible that neutrino particles travel faster than light. Until than, my best guess would be that physicist don't have a theory to explain why information goes slower than the speed of light and the apparent measurement of a neutrino particles shows the possibility to break the universal speed limit, meaning that the "basic understanding of nature" might not be "so basic" until farther results.