New Neutrino Results from an Independent Group - Einstein was Right

Results from a European research team called Icarus show that neutrinos do not move faster than light. The team is headed by Carlo Rubbia, who is a Nobel Prize winning particle physicist and former director of CERN. Icarus is a similar experiment to OPERA, which is the group that had measurements of neutrinos above the speed of light. Recent information from OPERA suggests the possibility that their measurements could be off due to some poor pieces of equipment in the experiment.

This is a wonderful example of how science works. One must have some thick skin at times, because when you publish results of any experiment, by definition it must then undergo the scrutiny and questioning of the community. Peer reviewed articles, reproducible experiments that can be tested and looked at independently, debate, talks and conferences, and so on, all provide opportunities for scientific world to question your work. It is necessary to be skeptical. It is necessary to keep an open mind. It is necessary to listen.

We will see how this continues to unfold and proceed, but it is interesting to watch and learn.

Seeing How the Science Process Works - A Possible Colossal Discovery?!

As we will see in class when we look at some relativity, Albert Einstein developed the theory with 2 assumptions, which we tend to call Einstein's postulates. The first is that the principle of relativity holds true (this dates back to Galileo and Newton), and that the speed of light is a constant and the speed limit in the universe.

A new result at a CERN neutrino experiment has a neutrino moving faster than light! Now, prior to announcing the result, the scientists on the experiment spent months going through their data, their analysis methods, the hardware and software that were used to make measurements, checking uncertainties, redoing calculations, and so on. They were well aware that announcing this was going to make the physics world go ballistic, so they double and triple checked everything they could think of. And now, with the news out there and the world paying attention, they want the scientific world to scrutinize their work and try to either confirm or dismiss the result.

This is a wonderful example of how science is supposed to work! There is a century of tests that confirm relativity's predictions and implications. Now comes a single result that concludes a foundational assumption of the theory is flawed. The science world, which grew up with relativity as one of the two fundamental theories on which the entire discipline rests, are, of course, naturally skeptical of any attempt to displace Einstein. I am admittedly part of that camp, as my own work at Fermilab required relativistic predictions and outcomes...and it all held up under our measurements. But, at the same time, we need to be able to accept new information and knowledge and results from good experiments. Nothing in science is absolutely sacred! In fact, one could argue that we already know that relativity and quantum mechanics are not the absolute final theories of Nature - even relativity breaks down inside black holes, for example. We know we need some new physics at some point in time.

So let the confirmation games begin, as I would imagine a good number of physicists are already thinking about how to reproduce the experiment. Only two labs in the world will be able to do similar experiments, those being Fermilab and a Japanese neutrino experiment. Will the results be confirmed or dismissed? Most scientists are 'biased' and believe something must be wrong with the experiment making this claim. But never say never in science. Instead, we will need to do our job and try to find the truths of the universe, whatever those may be.

Addendum (10/8/2011):
There is tension within the OPERA Collaboration, which is the group that did this work at CERN. Nearly half do not want to formally publish this result yet in a professional journal since they think more tests and re-tests need to be done in order to have additional confidence in the results. Check out this article for more details.

The Basic Principle of General Relativity - Principle of Equivalence

Einstein published General Relativity in 1915. Similar to special relativity, where he only considered frames of reference moving with constant relative velocity, general relativity is based on simple principles that lead to fantastic consequences. In this case, Einstein reasoned that the Principle of Equivalence was the fundamental building block concept for gravity. It states that the effects of acceleration on a system are indistinguishable from the effects of gravity on that system. This video shows an example of this principle in action, and shows how you can quickly figure out gravity should bend the path of light, even though light has no mass (so Newton would say this cannot happen)! This principle also explains why inertial mass (the mass in F = ma) is equivalent to gravitational mass (the mass in F = GMm/r^2), which is why all objects fall at the same rate in a gravitational field. Note that general relativity leads to the Big Bang, black holes, stellar evolution, gravitational red shifts, precession of planetary orbits, effects on time (which are needed for GPS to be so accurate), frame dragging as planets and objects move through space-time, and so on. All are confirmed through observation and experiments. Check it out!

How to Play Einstein for a Day: Mass and Energy

We know that strange things happen when objects move relative to other objects. Clocks run more slowly, lengths get shorter, and mass increases for the moving object, relative to an observer at rest. These are well confirmed over the last century from countless experiments.  We also know E = mc^2 comes from special relativity. But how did Einstein do it? Where did he get the idea that energy and matter aren't just related, but actually equivalent to each other?

Check this out!!  It is one way of thinking about it, and getting to a result that shows energy and matter are of the form E = mc^2.  It makes use of the binomial approximation when thinking in terms of everyday speeds, which are far slower than light.