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comment by b_b
b_b  ·  4843 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Faster than light neutrino possibly discovered!
What does E equal now? Good question. Maybe this is why neutrinos are so hard to capture and detect. By the numbers they gave it seems like they are seeing a difference of 0.0025% or 7200m/s difference. Seems like a lot, given how sensitive their instruments must be. But, as was pointed out, there haven't been any detected influxes of neutrinos ahead of supernovae, which is what would be expected if the neutrinos are faster. All seems pretty weird.




mk  ·  4843 days ago  ·  link  ·  
But, as was pointed out, there haven't been any detected influxes of neutrinos ahead of supernovae, which is what would be expected if the neutrinos are faster.

Crud, now we are going to find out that the universe isn't there at all, -it's just a believable backdrop for an experiment that has been going on. :/

Here's the Wikipedia entry about the neutrino burst 3hr before that SuperNova: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SN1987A#Neutrino_emissions

I haven't done the calculation, but my guess is that 3 hours is too close considering this apparent difference. Unless there were other previous undetected bursts? Interestingly, the article mentions: Approximately three hours earlier, the Mont Blanc liquid scintillator detected a five-neutrino burst, but this is generally not believed to be associated with SN 1987A.

b_b  ·  4843 days ago  ·  link  ·  
SN1987A, according to Wikipedia, is 168000 light-years away. At a difference of 0.0025%, the neutrinos should have arrived 4.2 years earlier. I wonder if they had any functioning neutrino observatories in December 1982 that they could use to verify?
mk  ·  4842 days ago  ·  link  ·  
Maybe not. One neutrino 'telescope' (DUMAND) was planned as early as 1976, but never came on line. It seems that scintillators picked up SN1987A, but I'm not sure how consistent detection would have been in 1982.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino_detector#Telescopes