Author Topic: Particles break E=MC^2 equation  (Read 5661 times)

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Offline Eniliad

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Particles break E=MC^2 equation
« on: January 20, 2012, 07:56:13 pm »
Quote
NOV 21 2011
Geneva - Physicists at CERN have rerun tests conducted in September which suggested that neutrinos travel faster than light. The latest results are consistent with those of the first received with skepticism after faults were found in the experiment design.

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/314640
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Offline Jack Mann

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Re: Particles break E=MC^2 equation
« Reply #1 on: January 20, 2012, 08:30:16 pm »
Here's a comment by Phillip Plait.  To summarize, it didn't confirm that they broke relativity, but it eliminated one possible source of errors.  However, a lot of scientists also felt there might be a problem with the way they timed things, and this experiment used the same timing methods as the first.  So, this is interesting, and potentially big news, but it's a little premature to say that they've actually proven it.  They're just closer.

I haven't heard anything since the November experiment, so as far as I'm aware, they're still working on getting a more conclusive result.
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Offline Vene

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Re: Particles break E=MC^2 equation
« Reply #2 on: January 20, 2012, 08:33:17 pm »
This has been disproven already. Have a link.

Offline Eniliad

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Re: Particles break E=MC^2 equation
« Reply #3 on: January 20, 2012, 09:46:23 pm »
Damn it, you spoiled my fun. I was planning all the time-machine-related murd-

I mean... ice cream.
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Offline Jack Mann

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Re: Particles break E=MC^2 equation
« Reply #4 on: January 20, 2012, 10:26:37 pm »
It should also be noted that the scientists at CERN never said they'd broken the lightspeed barrier.  They only said that those were the results, and asked other researchers to check them to figure out what was going on. 
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Offline Neal_Darex

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Re: Particles break E=MC^2 equation
« Reply #5 on: January 22, 2012, 10:33:49 am »
This has been disproven already. Have a link.

That doesn't "disprove" anything.  The article essentially describes why a specific means for how the OPERA anomaly could be is impossible without leaving tell-tale signs.  That's all.  Furthermore, it says absolutely nothing as to why we are getting the results we're getting which is still very much unexplained and debated.  It could very well be just timing errors (and it most likely is) but we won't know for sure until we finish our upgrades to our own neutrino detectors and Fermilab runs their own experiments.  There's also a very tiny chance we've stumbled upon previously unknown physics.  But until these things are sorted out, nothing about this is officially refuted.

Offline Yla

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Re: Particles break E=MC^2 equation
« Reply #6 on: January 22, 2012, 02:43:15 pm »
What does this have to do with energy-mass-equivalence?
Not all relativity is E=mc2.
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Offline Jack Mann

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Re: Particles break E=MC^2 equation
« Reply #7 on: January 22, 2012, 03:14:28 pm »
E=MC^2 is relevant here because that's the property of relativity that makes superluminal travel impossible for anything that has a rest mass.  Neutrinos have a rest mass, albeit a very small one.  Therefore if they have traveled faster than the speed of light, then something is wrong with our current understanding of physics.
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Offline Undecided

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Re: Particles break E=MC^2 equation
« Reply #8 on: January 23, 2012, 01:05:18 am »
I wouldn't say that that particular property makes it impossible, because superluminal particles can also satisfy that equation. Here's the way I understand it:

Every particle has a given energy E and a given momentum p.
Every type of particle has a rest mass m0. The rest mass is important because for every particle of a given type, the energy and momentum must satisfy the equation (it's called the mass-shell equation):
E^2 - p^2 c^2 = (m0)^2 c^4.

Here c is the speed of light. The velocity of a particle is defined to be v = (p/E) c^2 (that's the momentum divided by the energy, multiplied by the speed of light squared).

With some algebra, you can get from the mass-shell equation:

v^2 = c^2 - (c^6/E^2) m0^2.

Now, E and p are always real numbers. This means that m0^2 is real. There are three possible cases:

  • m0^2 > 0. Most types of matter fall into this category (electrons, nuclei, etc.) They are restricted to speeds less than the speed of light.
  • m0^2 = 0. Most force carriers fall into this category (gluon, hypothetical graviton, photon). They travel at exactly the speed of light.
  • m0^2 < 0. These particles have imaginary "rest mass". They always travel at speeds strictly greater than the speed of light. We don't know of any particles like this.

The experiments that directly measure neutrino mass always give upper bounds (or, put another way, all we know directly about neutrino masses is that they're very small). The experiments that tell us indirectly about neutrino masses don't tell us their masses, but instead the differences in rest mass squared. Quantum mechanics aside, it is possible for the mass-squared of any of the neutrinos to be negative without having a violation of special relativity alone.

The issue is not with special relativity: it's with quantum mechanics. Quantum field theory says that tachyons should never exist and that they are in fact a sign that the vacuum state you have chosen for it is unstable, and that you need to choose a new vacuum, one which inevitably does not contain any tachyons. Every quantum field theory I am aware of that has "tachyons" is like this.
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