In a message dated 9/26/2011 11:47:04 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
Paul.Nord@valpo.edu writes:
Kamiokande became operational in 1983. That was the first big detector.
It might not have been up and running in time. It was probably not well
calibrated for another year. The conspiracy theorist in me wants to point
out that it seems much too convenient that this new result is just outside of
the range that could be refuted by Kamiokande.
Some people are claiming that the neutrinos in the OPERA experiment are
much higher energy than supernova neutrinos and therefore might have
different properties (speed, for example).
Paul
))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
We have had a lively discussion on this on the physics list I manage, Dr
Vic Stenger's atoms and void list on this. I also have a personal interest
in this having suggested back in 2003 along with a lot others that neutrinos
might in fact be Tachyons. There was some hint of this in the SN 1987A
data , though this is refuted by many. Also the 4.5 PEV knee in the cosmic ray
spectrum and the end point mass squared measurements in beta decay for
neutrinos consistently return values less than 0 though with error bars into
positive values. However, , while this is an interesting possibility, it's
chance of being correct are admittingly small. The OPERA results are
perplexing they indicate an impossibly high velocity for the muon neutrino based
on SN 1987 A data and the mass squared difference between nu_1 and nu_2.
Someone suggested that assuming neutrinos are Tachyon, perhaps some form of
MSW effect might effectively give the nu_1 mass eigenstate a high enough
mass value to get these very high speeds. Well maybe. The most likely
possibility is that the OPERA results are erroneous. See below.
In a message dated 9/23/2011 4:48:13 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
vic.stenger@COMCAST.NET writes:
Note that while the measured time difference is 6 sigma, (v-c)/c is only 1
sigma.
Vic
I just did this fast but the value they are getting makes no sense in
terms of supernova data. They are claiming
(v-c)/c= ( 5.1 +-2.9) E-5
This is far too fast to match up with supernova data. It works out
to be on the order of
delta(t)/X= 2E5 seconds/LY
delta(t)= S*{ (c-v)/v*c}
That's an impossible value.
It would mean that the neutrinos would lead the gamma flux by on the order
of 1 E10 seconds for SN1987a ( 168,000 LY)
Of course the electron neutrinos would be slower , but the flavor mass
split based on flavor oscillation data isn't enough to make that much
difference.