Are Superluminal Neutrinos Possible?

reply to post by CLPrime


I did say barely approaches....regards black holes.

Another thing about black holes of course is that photons are unable to escape, yet radiation is able to evaporate and escape in great fountains from the poles, this infers the black hole is a toroid that is spinning faster than a neutron star, it further infers that mass/gravity is related to rotational momentum.

Photons have no mass because they have no rotational momentum hence they travel in straight lines, would it be too far fetched to suggest that if we could stop the rotation of atoms/ electron shells and particles that we may get close to the reduction of inertial mass as well as rest mass ?

Cosmic..

Originally posted by Cosmic4life

I did say barely approaches....regards black holes.

They don't barely approach infinite mass or energy either. They have masses equal to that of large stars, because large stars collapse to form them.

Another thing about black holes of course is that photons are unable to escape, yet radiation is able to evaporate and escape in great fountains from the poles, this infers the black hole is a toroid that is spinning faster than a neutron star, it further infers that mass/gravity is related to rotational momentum.

Radiation doesn't escape from the poles, radiation is ejected from near the poles of rotating black holes because the magnetic fields surrounding these black holes channel particles to the poles where they then escape at high velocities (the magnetic field of a rapidly rotating black hole is a toroid, not the black hole itself, which is roughly spherical, depending on its type)

Photons have no mass because they have no rotational momentum hence they travel in straight lines, would it be too far fetched to suggest that if we could stop the rotation of atoms/ electron shells and particles that we may get close to the reduction of inertial mass as well as rest mass ?

Photons have rotational momentum. It's called spin, and photons are spin-1 particles. They travel in straight lines because this is what all particles do when they are not being acted on by external forces.

I thought this was realted....my understanding is a little limited in this.,....but I think is was interesting and it came to mind when reading the original post



Antarctic balloon sees particles with a million times more energy than the Large Hadron Collider

They are looking for the answer to one of the great questions in astrophysics. We know that there are really really high energy particles hitting the Earth all the time from outer space. We would really like to know where they are coming from. The aim of ANITA (Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna) is to address this by looking for neutrinos.

In their first flight, though, they found something else

www.guardian.co.uk...

www.hep.ucl.ac.uk...

I've never understood why "FTL" represents a causality problem.

To me, this is a common-sense failing. Space and time are no more the same thing than temperature and time.

I've always felt it makes far, far more sense to apply the space-time concept of relativity in the same manner as the temperature-time concept of chemical reactions. Perhaps this is a bit "common man" compared to the in-depth studies and mathematical models that have been constructed around Relativity in the years since its formulation... but it really just doesn't make any sense to entertain the notion of faster than light travel creating an instance in which you travel backward in time.

It's nonsensical, to say the least. Taking a massive object and accelerating it to near the speed of light does for subatomic activity what a refrigerator/freezer does to molecular activity. Nothing more, nothing less.

Going faster than the speed of light would - sensibly - require a transformation; a transition from a liquid to a solid, for instance. Achieving this form would require a certain amount of energy (such as with specific heat, heat of fusion, etc) - and lead to an altered state of the material that would then begin functioning in a slightly different manner (which could be quite difficult to predict from its current state).

Again - I'm no expert, either. However - it seems like Relativity and many of the models we stacked around it took the nonsensical approach to inseparably link space, time, and causality. Many of our existing qualms with FTL possibilities are predicated on the notion that causality and rates of subatomic activity are linked (IE - that "atom time" is the same as "time-time" .... if that makes any sense).

Anyway - I don't have much to base that on other than my own "this is what makes sense to me." Which doesn't hold much value outside of those who revere my opinion on technical/scientific matters.

Originally posted by newyorkee
I thought this was realted....my understanding is a little limited in this.,....but I think is was interesting and it came to mind when reading the original post

Yes of course that's related, I addressed the energetic cosmic rays in the OP, which I'm not sure if you read.

Nobody disputes that they can be extremely energetic. And observations related to these high energy cosmic particles doesn't support the FTL neutrino concept.

But what's interesting, is that everyone's understanding of these high energy particles is limited by the fact that we don't understand how they can get so much energy....

It's an unsolved problem in physics that nobody knows the answer to. So if you did fully understand how they got so much energy, and could prove it, you might get a Nobel prize for that.

But we don't really have to know the answer to that question to observe them and calculate their effect once they enter Earth's atmosphere, so they are useful sources of information despite the mystery surrounding them. In fact we may have to rely on studying particles like those in lieu of building ever larger colliders, so some have suggested that may be the future of particle physics.

Originally posted by Aim64C
I've never understood why "FTL" represents a causality problem.

As this link explains, let's say you have a radio transmitter with a firing button, and a radio receiver attached to a bomb.

As long as the radio signals never travel faster than the speed of light, the bomb will never detonate before you push the button to detonate it. If instead of using radio waves, you used a neutrino generator and the neutrinos traveled at twice light speed, and the bomb was hooked up to a neutrino detector, then the bomb could explode before you actually push the detonater button to make it explode. You may not have a problem with that, but some people do, that's why they call it a causality violation. Personally I prefer the bomb going off AFTER I push the detonater, not before.

If you aren't familiar with space-time diagrams, it might be a little hard to understand why, but perhaps you should study those before you dismiss the causality concept?

en.wikipedia.org...

Also, any general technical means of sending signals faster than light would permit information to be sent into the originator's own past. In the diagram, an observer at O in the x-ct-system sends a message moving faster than light to A. At A it is received by another observer, moving so as to be in the x'-ct'-system, who sends it back, again faster than light by the same technology, arriving at B. But B is in the past relative to O.

This is how faster than light signals allow the bomb to detonate before you even push the detonator.

reply to post by Arbitrageur

As this link explains, let's say you have a radio transmitter with a firing button, and a radio receiver attached to a bomb.

This is exactly what I am talking about.

One of the major problems us intelligent people have is being so eager to think of our next step that we don't think about where we are or where we were.

Why is it supposed that causality and time are linked?

When I place chicken in a refrigerator that is just above freezing, I am suddenly able to keep it for a couple weeks, as opposed to a few hours at room temperature.

Am I slowing time?

No. Not really. I'm slowing the rate at which molecules interact with each other.

Why, then, should anyone suppose that a gravitational field and/or velocity equate to a change in time? All we are really talking about is slowing the rate of subatomic activity. Since all methods of determining passage of time are linked to the same phenomena affected by proximity to a gravitational field and/or velocity - it is no different than attempting to measure the passage of time with a chemical reaction that is influenced by temperature (in fact - all clocks are, to some degree, influenced by temperature - even atomic clocks, as the mass of an object changes with its temperature, if only slightly).

Linking this phenomena to the idea that I could, somehow, send a message before it exists is... well - stupid. And I have no problems saying that to people preaching this nonsense with PhDs.

If instead of using radio waves, you used a neutrino generator and the neutrinos traveled at twice light speed, and the bomb was hooked up to a neutrino detector, then the bomb could explode before you actually push the detonater button to make it explode.

Once again.

How?

This is what CL was talking about in his white-board theoretical physics comment. On paper, the idea of time travel works. However - reality is less kind.

Quantum mechanics offers the explanation. Objects assume a position based upon their energy states. This is a very simple principle, and I am likely going to be told I am abusing it, to some degree or another - but it is this same principle that allows Neutrinos (and other particles fired at high energies) to pass through objects virtually unhindered. Planck constants provide for a 'smallest unit' of time - the smallest amount of time relevant to the universe. It is not without precedent for particles to 'skip' regions of space, entirely, in order to assume a new energy state. Exactly how and why can be debated until long after our lives are anthropology academia.

Those two principles combined mean that, as far as our universe is concerned, no two events can occur in less time than a Planck Second. Which means your lowest conceivable latency in superluminal communications is 2 Planck Seconds (really, three, if you consider reception, processing, and return can be generated inside of a single Planck Second). The signal 'simply' assumes a location relative to its energy state within the Planck Second.

Time travel is impossible.

Theoretically, you could travel to a region of space that is very similar to a reference point as it existed within your own history - but that isn't the same as time travel (and taking a few things for granted - white-board engineering, you could say).

If you aren't familiar with space-time diagrams, it might be a little hard to understand why, but perhaps you should study those before you dismiss the causality concept?

While I appreciate you attempting to be helpful - I have studied them; and my issue with it, while seemingly naive, is not due to a lack of familiarity.

I'm very familiar with the sentiment.

However, sending a signal from one refrigerator to a colder refrigerator (which echoes the signal) does not result in a causality violation. According to chemical clocks; yes. According to electronic clocks; no. According to reality; no.

There's no reason to jump to the conclusion that gravity has any additional effect other than slowing the rate of activity. Any more than there is reason to suspect that putting chicken in the refrigerator can lead to a situation where a chicken kills itself.

reply to post by EthanT


Clearly in our normal 4-dimensions Lorentz invariance applies. The only reasonably sensible theoretical explanations are probably ones which involve dimensions with different transformation laws (i.e. c isn't the limit there): some of the particle interactions excite "modes" in those other dimensions which then decay (probably in a very short amount of time) to regular neutrinos in our 4-dimensional Einsteinian space time world where 'c' is the speed of light and maximum speed, and neutrinos are no faster and probably a tad slower. These other dimenisons must usually be irrelevant for most normla particle interactions.

So this means that if you had twice a long track over which to measure the neutrino delay, it wouldn't be as if the speed increment over light is just as much----it would just be that same 'headstart' in nanoseconds ahead, because the rest of the way the neutrino travels normally.

As CLPrime pointed out this isn't sufficient on its own, you have to assume some additional physics as well.
For instance, this proto-neutrino when it has projections in the extra dimensions must be able to somehow transport in normal 4-space faster too. I.e. lorentz invariance with a fixed 'c' is a simplification of the real thing (transformatoin laws in the full space) which applies only when the projection into the exotic dimensions is zero, and the physics is such that the excitation in those dimensions decays extremely rapidly, so for most of the things we deal with, it's an excellent approximation to say that it is zero.

The lorentz invariance we know and love is independent of |phi|^2 for particles with the wavefunction. Is this always necessarily the case?

Quantum mechanics offers the explanation. Objects assume a position based upon their energy states. This is a very simple principle, and I am likely going to be told I am abusing it, to some degree or another - but it is this same principle that allows Neutrinos (and other particles fired at high energies) to pass through objects virtually unhindered.

What exactly are you getting at, I don't understand.

Neutrinos in particular pass through objects virtually unhindered because they have no charge, are (as far as we know point particles), so they have no internal electromagnetic structure in contrast to neutrons, so they cause no long range collective effect, and their only interaction is via weak force which is quite localized to the target nuclei so there's just not very much to hit.

The matrix element for the interaction just happens to be small.

Originally posted by Aim64C
While I appreciate you attempting to be helpful - I have studied them; and my issue with it, while seemingly naive, is not due to a lack of familiarity.

I'm very familiar with the sentiment.

However, sending a signal from one refrigerator to a colder refrigerator (which echoes the signal) does not result in a causality violation. According to chemical clocks; yes. According to electronic clocks; no. According to reality; no.

There's no reason to jump to the conclusion that gravity has any additional effect other than slowing the rate of activity. Any more than there is reason to suspect that putting chicken in the refrigerator can lead to a situation where a chicken kills itself.

I think your issue is due to a lack of understanding based on your arguments here. I mentioned you should study space-time diagrams and you're giving me arguments about gravity.

If special relativity is correct, and a lot of evidence suggests it is, then space time diagrams can show a causality violation with FTL. In order to dismiss this causality violation you have to dismiss special relativity.

And gravity isn't even a part of special relativity so you don't understand this topic nearly as well as you think you do. But I'm pretty impressed with most of your other posts on ATS, and you're a smart person. You just are missing the boat on this one issue by talking about gravity on a special relativity topic. Gravity has nothing to do with special relativity.

reply to post by Arbitrageur

I think your issue is due to a lack of understanding based on your arguments here. I mentioned you should study space-time diagrams and you're giving me arguments about gravity.

*sigh*

Massive influence (gravity) propagates at the speed of light. The reason velocity compounds to an increase in mass is due to attenuation.

This stipulates two things. First - Relativity is, to some degree or another, self-invalidating. Velocity is absolute. All one must do to determine this is calculate the result of a relativistic impact between two bodies moving at a relative super-luminous velocity. In pure relativism - the impact is super-luminous, and should get into undefined mathematics.

This, however, is not the case. Which implies that there is an absolute baseline that is interacted with. Call it whatever you want - but it serves as a universal reference frame for the functions of relativity and special relativity. All interactions, that we know of, must interact with this 'baseline' that acts to derive the absolute energies involved.

If special relativity is correct, and a lot of evidence suggests it is, then space time diagrams can show a causality violation with FTL. In order to dismiss this causality violation you have to dismiss special relativity.

I've studied those.

They are predicated on an unsubstantiated assumption.

Return to my correlation between temperature and time, using chemical reactions/clocks. Colder temperatures slow the rate of molecular activity, which 'slows' clocks that derive metrics of time from those reactions. Cooling something doesn't slow time. It alters how it experiences that time.

What precedent is there that gravitational field density (and velocity, as it is derived) alters -time-?

None.

Taking the bomb issue - where the weapon explodes before another frame of reference is able to observe the push of the button; if that same observer were to then 'leap' to the button-pusher, they would find themselves there, well after the button had been pushed (despite their lack of observing it).

Referencing the discussion in your first link. They would not drop in to see the button somehow not pushed.

The only way you can entertain this nonsensical idea is if you accept the notion that one object traveling faster than the speed of light is somehow going to send it into the past. That, however, requires classical movement - which will become broken at the extremes of velocity (where you begin to approach Planck energy densities with the very mass of the object moving). Exactly what will happen at such extremes is anyone's guess (Cerenkov radiation, 'skipping' through space, combination thereof).

It's an "if and only if" assumption. It breaks down under any other case.

And gravity isn't even a part of special relativity so you don't understand this topic nearly as well as you think you do. But I'm pretty impressed with most of your other posts on ATS, and you're a smart person. You just are missing the boat on this one issue by talking about gravity on a special relativity topic. Gravity has nothing to do with special relativity.

On the surface.

As I explained - the effects of special relativity are derived from the principle of relativity and the propagation of massive influence. Spectral shifting contrasted to relative velocity is only half of the picture.

From there, it's a simple matter of matching distortions. Two observers moving the same velocity do not perceive each other to be moving - but they, in fact, are. However, they cannot be moving faster than the speed of light (at least, not classically). While it may appear that velocities are entirely relative - that is purely in a mathematical sense. It can only be presumed the universe contains more information about the absolute status of an object than we can obtain.

reply to post by mbkennel


I have to apologize, here. I got a couple things crossed. First - in relation to the Bragg Curve (or Bragg Peak).

The second being Quantum tunneling.

Even given classical acceleration - it is not without consideration that an object can "skip" at super-luminous velocities once it encounters its own propagation 'barrier' - the point at which an object would exceed Planck energy should it accelerate any faster.

Of course - it could also just start emitting showers of exotic particles as radiation. I can't communicate the scenarios nearly as fast as I run them in my head.

Though, wikipedia blatantly states spin-0 particles can tunnel at FTL, backed by: ^ a b c d e f Mohsen Razavy, "Quantum Theory of Tunneling", page 4. World Scientific Publishing Co. 2003

reply to post by Aim64C

What precedent is there that gravitational field density (and velocity, as it is derived) alters -time-?

None.

Of course, there is observational proof that velocity alters time. Short lived particles produced in a quantum interaction traveling at relativistic velocities last much longer to an "outside" observer than they should. Even at the macroscopic level, at non-relativistic velocities, time dilation can be observed, albeit measured in nanoseconds.

In order to understand why time "slows down," perhaps you should go back to the "elevator experiment." Imagine traveling through space in an elevator accelerating "upward." You pass an object moving at right angles to the direction of your path, moving at a constant velocity in its own frame of reference. From your point of view, the object's path appears to curve "downwards." This downward acceleration is the equivalent of gravitational acceleration. Now, imagine that the object has a beacon that flashes ten times every second. We observe the the object flash for, say, 100 flashes. From the object's frame of reference, it travels x units of length during those 100 flashes. From our accelerating frame of reference, it follows a much longer curve, with the distance between each flash growing over time. Here's where the mental jump comes in: From our perspective, either the object travels faster between each flash, or the object's speed remains constant and the flashes are coming at longer and longer intervals. In relativistic terms, both statements are equivalent!

In a purely theoretical context, one can read Feynman diagrams symmetrically, that is, one can read them as either moving forward or backwards in time. It is only our commonsense perception of causality that insists that the arrow of time be read from the bottom to the top of the diagram. (Or left to right, for that matter!) We organize time and, hence, causality, based upon our experience of entropy. This is where your analogy with freezing a chicken comes in. Lower temperatures decrease entropy, but it is not equivalent to the relativistic effects of space-time.

In sum, there is no reason to believe that things cannot travel faster than light, provided that it is possible to travel "backwards" in time. Objecting to this possibility based on concepts like causality is a philosophical objection. Personally, I like causality but it would be arrogant of me to assume that Nature holds the same opinion.

reply to post by Aim64C


You are absolutely correct regarding energy states.

Everything in the universe has a unique energy state, lets say an atom, if said atom changes to another state which happens to be the same as an atom on the other side of the universe then that atom will also change, in effect all atoms in the universe are constantly switching to maintain uniqueness, they are doing this instantaneously, clearly a mechanism FTL is in operation.

I would suspect the Higgs Field is operating as a whole with immediate cause/effect , you squeeze a balloon it expands elsewhere, you let it go it contracts.

This effect is faster than light as it is instantaneous, but does not imply time travel,it implies connectivity.

I'm no expert either (that may already be obvious) but like you i do think there is a way.

Cosmic..

Originally posted by Cosmic4life

Everything in the universe has a unique energy state, lets say an atom, if said atom changes to another state which happens to be the same as an atom on the other side of the universe then that atom will also change, in effect all atoms in the universe are constantly switching to maintain uniqueness, they are doing this instantaneously, clearly a mechanism FTL is in operation.

Do you have any evidence of this? Or are you just guessing that this is what happens? If this were actually the case, then complex structures would be unable to form, because no two atoms would be allowed to exist in the same energy state, severely limiting the number of atomic configurations in the universe. And suppose the universe is infinite; then matter would not be possible, because, for each atom, a duplicate must exist.

Originally posted by Aim64C
reply to post by Arbitrageur

 

If special relativity is correct, and a lot of evidence suggests it is, then space time diagrams can show a causality violation with FTL. In order to dismiss this causality violation you have to dismiss special relativity.

Taking the bomb issue - where the weapon explodes before another frame of reference is able to observe the push of the button; if that same observer were to then 'leap' to the button-pusher, they would find themselves there, well after the button had been pushed (despite their lack of observing it).

You're basically just confirming what I said.

If you dismiss special relativity, then the causality problems that can be demonstrated using special relativity math can also be dismissed. You point out that " if that same observer were to then 'leap' to the button-pusher" there wouldn't be a causality problem. That's correct. But you have to in some sense dismiss special relativity to allow that to happen, because special relativity doesn't provide any means for the observer to make that leap.

But one of the reasons the faster than light neutrino results are of so much interest is the suggestion that at least in part, special relativity may not be correct if neutrinos are found to be traveling faster than light. So yes, if we dismiss special relativity, (or somehow re-write it to accommodate new findings) the assumptions associated with special relativity would be dismissed along with it, or at least modified to accommodate the re-written version of relativity.

Originally posted by DJW001
In sum, there is no reason to believe that things cannot travel faster than light, provided that it is possible to travel "backwards" in time. Objecting to this possibility based on concepts like causality is a philosophical objection. Personally, I like causality but it would be arrogant of me to assume that Nature holds the same opinion.

Technically it's traveling AT the speed of light that seems to cause the problems like infinite mass, in relativity. But yes, I think you have a point there.

And I too am intrigued by the possibility of time travel which has been posited by numerous theories in physics, including wormholes. Here is a list of possible "time machines" in physics:

TIME MACHINES AND PHYSICS
However I don't see how we will be able to test the grandfather paradox or an equivalent causality experiment anytime soon using any of those time machines. Which is kind of disappointing because inquiring minds want to know what would happen if you went back in time and killed your own grandfather before you were conceived; Would you vanish?

That may be a philosophical question to some extent but I think it goes beyond philosophy too. It can boggle the mind to try to solve it, and yes, the universe may not bow to our preference to assume this can't happen because we don't like the apparent paradox.

Of course your comment raises a question about faster than light neutrinos: If they are traveling faster than light, what are the implications for traveling back in time? Personally I'm not trying to solve that problem until the FTL results are experimentally well confirmed. But I suspect there are people thinking about it!

reply to post by CLPrime


Erm it's called the Pauli Exclusion principle..

...surely you've heard of that ?

Cosmic..

reply to post by Arbitrageur

Of course your comment raises a question about faster than light neutrinos: If they are traveling faster than light, what are the implications for traveling back in time? Personally I'm not trying to solve that problem until the FTL results are experimentally well confirmed. But I suspect there are people thinking about it!

One thing that occurred to me while thinking about this problem is that we might not be able to perceive superluminal particles directly, because in interacting with them, we would need to emit them onto their "backward" traveling world line. This would be like dropping the teacup because it will break, if you know what I mean. If superluminal particles exist, we could only detect them by the indirect effects they have. This led me to wonder if perhaps quantum entanglement is mediated by superluminal particles of some sort. Changing the state of one entangled particle emits a, well, lets call it a tachyquark, that travels through space backwards in time at a velocity proportional to the distance between the entangled particles. Maybe my brain is starting to melt, but I wonder if one could devise some manner of beam splitting experiment... of course, you would need to observe the results before you perform the experiment. (Take that, Schrodinger's cat!) Needless to say, this has nothing to do with the mystery of the faster than light neutrino. I'm still going with experimental error on that one.

reply to post by Cosmic4life

Erm it's called the Pauli Exclusion principle.

That's for an atom, not the entire universe.

reply to post by Cosmic4life


The Pauli Exclusion Principle says that no two fermions can occupy the same quantum state. It says nothing about atoms in the universe occupying the same energy state.

Originally posted by DJW001
This led me to wonder if perhaps quantum entanglement is mediated by superluminal particles of some sort. Changing the state of one entangled particle emits a, well, lets call it a tachyquark, that travels through space backwards in time at a velocity proportional to the distance between the entangled particles.

I like that idea, did you read that somewhere or did you just come up with that yourself? It sounds far less wacky to me than Poplowski's paper about us living inside a black hole! It's at least worth testing. I'd love to know who the "ghosts" are that perpetrate the "spooky action at a distance" Could they be tachyons? Until we understand the mechanism better, I sure wouldn't rule it out, in fact I like the idea.

Maybe my brain is starting to melt, but I wonder if one could devise some manner of beam splitting experiment... of course, you would need to observe the results before you perform the experiment. (Take that, Schrodinger's cat!)

You mean sort of a variation of the Quantum eraser experiment?

Needless to say, this has nothing to do with the mystery of the faster than light neutrino. I'm still going with experimental error on that one.

I'm not restricting this thread topic to just neutrinos. Anything related to other faster than light particles, and related implications on existing theories, or new theories related to faster than light particles is on topic here. So your tachyon proposal is quite on topic here, if I'm allowed to say what's on topic in my own thread, which I think I am.