Einstein in error?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Simon's comments "sweeping statements" and "fantasy ideas" reflect not so much the views/attitudes of Scientists themselves as the way that new ideas are presented to the general public in newspaper and TV news reports. Whilst Scientists themselves will qualify their comments with caveats and illustrate their findings with technical data, these tend to be omitted from Media reporting in order to make eye-catching headlines, and/or because editors don't think we can cope with complex ideas and/or because they have far more important stories to print. (Years of research demonstrating the validity of Einstein's ideas? Not worth the column inches. Some overpaid football player in a drunken orgy with a trio of transgender Soap stars? Hold the front page!)

No different from Arts reporting, in fact!

To get a fairer idea of new ideas (in Science, Art ... and, probably, Football and Continuing Drama!) we have to rely on the more specialist journals: something that not everyone has the time, money or inclination to do regularly. As a result, these sad myths and misconceptions about people and their ideas become "popular".

[Flosshilde]

The point of all this meandering is that everyone is being very cautious about whether this result is real, or an experimental artefact. They say they have repeated it thousands of times, but this is to some extent illusory substantiation: there's only one large hadron collider and it is what it is, complete with its human engineering imperfections; its a practical construction, not a theoretical concept.

I assume that this means that to meaningfully replicate the results the experiment would have to be carried out on a different particle accelerator? The USA govt has announced that although they are closing their particle accelerator they will try & replicate the neutrino reults on it.

http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/09/30/us-usa-atom-idINTRE78T4Q620110930?mlt_click=Master+Sponsor+Logo_6_More+News_sec-col1-m1_News

[Quarky]

"The best explanation of the special theory of relativity, is given by Einstein himself in his original paper"

Some more light bed time reading:

E = mc2 paper: http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein/E_mc2/e_mc2.pdf

bending of light rays by sun: http://qss.stanford.edu/~godfrey/phy...v_on_Light.pdf

His foundation paper of the general theory of relativity is not yet in the public domain, boarders will be distressed to note.

[umslopogaas]

#32 Flosshilde

Yes, that's what I was trying to say. If you get a strange research result while using a certain machine, its either a genuinely strange result, or an artefact of the machine. Repeating it many times on the same machine wont strengthen the argument one way or the other. If you can get the same strange result on a different machine, the argument is strongly in favour of a genuinely strange result. If you cant, its an artefact of the first machine. Unfortunately we only have one large hadron collider (well, it did cost rather a lot and it does take up a lot of space). The only other possible candidate is the American machine (I think this is the Tevatron), but as far as I understand, they are closing it down and its uncertain if they will be able to do the work before it is decomissioned. So we may be stuck with this uncertainty until someone else (Americans, Russians or Chinese?) builds another machine capable of the work.

[vinteuil]

what I have not understood is how they were able to identify the neutrinos at the Gran Sasso observatory as the ones sent from CERN. I was under the impression that we were being bombarded by billions of neutrinos per square inch every second. Did they put special labels on the ones they were sending from CERN - paint them a special colour - or were these CERN neutrinos of a distinctly different kind from the other types of neutrinos whizzing about and through everything? And again - I thought part of the problem with neutrinos was they almost never interacted with anything - so how did they 'catch' them in their passage??

[tony yyy]

what I have not understood is how they were able to identify the neutrinos at the Gran Sasso observatory as the ones sent from CERN.

They appear to measure the leading and trailing edges of the pulses on transmission and then try to match them with those observed on reception. See, e.g., here. There's been a lot of discussion about the validity of the timing, which is rather complicated. I'm sure many years of thought has been put into it but it would be very easy to make a subtle error and I don't think they can they easily make a direct comparison with light using the same equipment.

[Quarky]

They appear to measure the leading and trailing edges of the pulses on transmission and then try to match them with those observed on reception.

The paper published by CERN is very readable, and contains some useful explanatory diagrams (see Figure 5): http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1109/1109.4897.pdf

[Flosshilde]

Umslopogaas, I think the article I linked to said that the USA scientists were going to try & replicate the results in their machine, even though they are closing it down, which does seem a bit contradictory.

[aeolium]

A BBC2 programme presented by Marcus du Sautoy explores this issue tonight (Wed 19/10/11 9 pm). It seems to have disappeared from news reports but there may be some updated information provided in this programme.

[johncorrigan]

A BBC2 programme presented by Marcus du Sautoy explores this issue tonight (Wed 19/10/11 9 pm). It seems to have disappeared from news reports but there may be some updated information provided in this programme.

I found it very informative and interesting. Particularly liked this joke, which though hardly a knee slapper, amused me. My apologies if someone already posted this.

Barman says, 'Sorry! We don't serve Neutrinos.'
A neutrino walks into a bar.

[umslopogaas]

Flosshilde #38. As far as I recall, although the US is closing down the Tevatron, there is a bit of time left before they do, so they are going to squeeze in a few last-minutes experiments before the deadline. I know very little about such machines, but I imagine that to close one down is not simply a matter of flicking the off switch, there'll be supercooled magnets full of liquid helium that have to be drained, all very complicated and horribly expensive if you get it wrong.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

... am i correct in recalling de Sautoy as saying that the experiment did not involve the large hadron collider? ...excellent proggie imho

[aeolium]

I think it does not involve the hadron collider, Calum, but another facility at Cern which was the recipient of the neutrinos fired from the San Grasso device.

I too thought it was an excellent programme and also interesting, in the latter part, for considering the issue from a mathematical perspective. I hope there's a follow-up next year.

[gurnemanz]

I found it very informative and interesting. Particularly liked this joke, which though hardly a knee slapper, amused me. My apologies if someone already posted this.

Barman says, 'Sorry! We don't serve Neutrinos.'
A neutrino walks into a bar.

Or...

"Neutrino"
"Who's there?"
"Knock, knock"

Much of the programme went above my head. What I sort of grasped was that since Einstein and quantum mechanics contradict each other they have posited string theory as a "theory of everything" under which we inhabit a "brane" (membrane) which is only one part of a universe of many dimensions (one slice in a loaf of bread was the homely analogy). In our brane, Einstein's speed limit for light applies, so that the speedy Italian neutrino must have somehow temporarily left our "brane" for a dimension where it could travel faster than light and then come back in again .

[MrGongGong]

don't worry the prof will be along in a moment to tell us all that its all rubbish and "made up" nonsense
unlike virgin birth, of course !

I thought this was a great programme nice bit of brain stimulation