In a message dated 9/26/2011 6:24:03 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
bnettles@uu.edu writes:
Two statements concern me. "Mesons decay in flight into neutrinos in a
1000 m long vacuum tunnel.” At the top of page 5. Then, "The point where the
parent meson produces a neutrino in the decay tunnel is unknown.
However, this introduces a negligible inaccuracy in the neutrino time of
flight measurement,
because the produced mesons are also travelling with nearly the speed of
light." I don't completely follow their subsequent argument as to why this
1000 m distance produces "negligible inaccuracy." The "superluminal"
neutrinos could be produced anywhere in that 1000 m, and the superluminal
distance delta is only 20 m. I follow their timing method, somewhat, but this
1000 m decay tube is bothersome.
If the neutrino is produced at the beginning of the tunnel this just means
it traveled a longer distance at a faster speed. This uncertainty can't
make the neutrinos travel at less than the speed of light. No?