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It's a simple calculation to show that if the mesons are traveling at a relatively paltry 99.9% of the speed of light, they arrive at the end of the 1000 m tunnel 3 ns later than a pulse of light would. The only way this effect could account for the 60 ns discrepancy is if some significant fraction of the mesons were traveling at 0.96 c or less. In any event, because this is clearly central point, I have a strong hunch that the researchers have taken it into account.
John Mallinckrodt
Cal Poly Pomona
On Sep 26, 2011, at 3:23 PM, Bill Nettles wrote:
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.
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