CERN Neutrinos Through a Wormhole?
Most recent answer: 9/28/2011
Q:
Is it possible that the neutrinos went through a microscopic worm hole? That would explain why they arrived sooner than expected and SR would still be intact proven that results are indeed true!
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
A:
Here's a first response, which may get updated if we hear from more knowledgeable colleagues.
The problem is that if you make an SR (Special Relativity) picture of the 3+1 dimensional space of this particular experimental result, in some reference frames the neutrinos traveled backward in time. Allowing for backwards-in-time travel of information leads to all sorts of horrible science-fiction paradoxes. So there are big problems reconciling this sort of event with SR.
Now it's true that SR is only a limiting case of GR, applicable to flat patches of space-time without major gravitational effects. Nevertheless, the possibility raised by GR of backwards time travel via wormholes has always been a serious worry. The usual suspicion is that no information could survive such travel in a fully quantized description. This neutrino business would eliminate that loophole, in the unlikely event that it turns out to be correct.
Of course there are other problems: what sort of micro-wormhole would be stable and moving along with the earth for the duration of the experiment? Etc. So either there's a calibration error of some sort or there's a true revolution in physics. We expect revolutions in physics, and soon, but we certainly haven't been expecting one like this right in the middle of what seems to be a well-understood domain.
Word on the street is that other geometrical modifications, involving higher dimensions, are a more plausible interpretation if somehow the result turns out to be right. These interpretations still involve the loss of Special Relativity right in the range where it has seemed to work so well.
Mike W.
The problem is that if you make an SR (Special Relativity) picture of the 3+1 dimensional space of this particular experimental result, in some reference frames the neutrinos traveled backward in time. Allowing for backwards-in-time travel of information leads to all sorts of horrible science-fiction paradoxes. So there are big problems reconciling this sort of event with SR.
Now it's true that SR is only a limiting case of GR, applicable to flat patches of space-time without major gravitational effects. Nevertheless, the possibility raised by GR of backwards time travel via wormholes has always been a serious worry. The usual suspicion is that no information could survive such travel in a fully quantized description. This neutrino business would eliminate that loophole, in the unlikely event that it turns out to be correct.
Of course there are other problems: what sort of micro-wormhole would be stable and moving along with the earth for the duration of the experiment? Etc. So either there's a calibration error of some sort or there's a true revolution in physics. We expect revolutions in physics, and soon, but we certainly haven't been expecting one like this right in the middle of what seems to be a well-understood domain.
Word on the street is that other geometrical modifications, involving higher dimensions, are a more plausible interpretation if somehow the result turns out to be right. These interpretations still involve the loss of Special Relativity right in the range where it has seemed to work so well.
Mike W.
(published on 09/25/2011)
Follow-Up #1: Do neutrinos go faster than light?
Q:
Sir, by the recent researches in jeniva that is the velocity of the nuetrino can cross the velocity of light. Is it possible? If it is possible we can give the energy to nuetrino to gain hat velocity. So I think it is possible to store the energy of light. Please clarify that it is possible or not?
- Anand ragula (age 19)
Karimnagar,andhrapradesh,india
- Anand ragula (age 19)
Karimnagar,andhrapradesh,india
A:
Lee and I don't have any special knowledge about this beyond what the rest of the physics community knows. We think it's very unlikely that the neutrinos were going faster than light, because if that were true Special Relativity would break down right in the middle of the range where it has been working perfectly.
For example, slightly lower-energy neutrinos traveled to us from a supernova at almost exactly the speed of light, and over a significant range of energies. The new CERN results would require that the speed changed significantly for slightly higher energies, then stayed about constant over the range of energies of the CERN experiment. That would be weird even if it didn't violate relativity.
It'll be very interesting to see the tests from other groups. If somehow, against the odds, the CERN results are right, it would be a very big deal.
Mike W.
For example, slightly lower-energy neutrinos traveled to us from a supernova at almost exactly the speed of light, and over a significant range of energies. The new CERN results would require that the speed changed significantly for slightly higher energies, then stayed about constant over the range of energies of the CERN experiment. That would be weird even if it didn't violate relativity.
It'll be very interesting to see the tests from other groups. If somehow, against the odds, the CERN results are right, it would be a very big deal.
Mike W.
(published on 09/28/2011)