Wibble?

Wibble?

Theory-shattering experimental results aside, it is interesting to see the reporting of the reaction of the physicists in this, which can be summed up as "What the?! Did you see that? Hey, George, you try it!" Which is a nice change from the usual science reporting of "We've proven everything is wrong!" as a reaction.

Mind you, this is the sort of thing that makes physics so exciting - even to a lay-person such as myself.

On the gripping hand, such a result is so unlikely that it does strike me as being some sort of experimental error or co-incidence.
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-09-cern-faster-than-light-particle.html

Comments

  1. Possibilities keep occurring to me. E.g. high-freq share trading deals in tiny time slices. If they can encode share prices using neutrinos (even using a basic serial code) and whizz it out to Saturn and back, will the data then pre-date the actual share prices?

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  2. (Note that I don't believe HF trading benefits anyone, but they have the money to spend on this kind of research.)

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  3. So if I offer to buy the shares from you now at the price they are going to be in three hours, would you accept?

    I'm looking forward to seeing this sort of interchange appearing in one of your books!

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  4. I was thinking about neutrino communication from London to NY for HF trading myself :) Got to have an advantage in being able to go directly through the earth even if it doesn't arrive before it leaves... But yes, I'm hoping they checked this result pretty thoroughly, only 20m out and it's invalid. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/09/22/faster-than-light-travel-discovered-slow-down-folks/#more-38090

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  5. Hopefully not due to earthquakes shifting the crust around - although 20m is rather a lot to miss.

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