On Sep 23, 2011, at 9:58 PM, Kyle Mcallister wrote:
--- On Fri, 9/23/11, Horace Heffner <[email protected]> wrote:
This measurement conflicts with early arrival time data for
neutrinos from supernova. The New Scientist article quotes
Marc Sher of the College of William and Mary in
Williamsburg, Virginia, "It's not reasonable." ... "If
neutrinos were that much faster than light, they would have
arrived [from the supernova] five years sooner, which is
crazy," says Sher. "They didn't."
AFAIK, Sher wouldn't know this. Kamiokande I came online in 1983,
Kamiokande II in 85. SN1987A obviously happened in 1987, so how he
gets 5 years as being impossible makes no sense to me. If no
neutrino detector existed 5 years prior, then he doesn't know.
Sher based his comments on the fact that neutrinos arrived 3 hours
before the supernova - as predicted in advance. The prediction was
based on the longer time it takes photons to make it through a
supernova's interior. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SN_1987A
"It occurred approximately 51.4 kiloparsecs from Earth, approximately
168,000 light-years ..." "Approximately three hours before the
visible light from SN 1987A reached the Earth, a burst of neutrinos
was observed at three separate neutrino observatories." ... "At 7:35
a.m. Universal time, Kamiokande II detected 11 antineutrinos, IMB 8
antineutrinos and Baksan 5 antineutrinos, in a burst lasting less
than 13 seconds."
Sher's number seems to be off a bit, but he may have just been
talking top of the head estimates. In the CERN OPERA results,
neutrinos arrived about 2.48x10^-5 the travel time sooner than
expected. For a 168,000 ly trip the expected photon arrival delay
time Dt should be
Dt = (2.48x10^-5)*(150,000 yr) = 1359 days = 3.72 years
This also assumes that the neutrinos produced in SN1987A would have
traveled at exactly the same speed greater than C as those produced
at CERN. That's a big assumption. A supernova obviously has a /
slightly/ greater power output than a human-made collider.
[snip]
The CERN result did not show any dependence on neutrino energy in the
range checked. If neutrino energy is not a factor then the size of
the burst only has to do with the number of neutrinos arriving, not
the difference in time from neutrino arrival to light arrival due to
distance.
The fact early arrival time is not dependent on energy indicates the
fast tunneling is more likely provided extra-dimensionally than
simply due to ordinary wavefunction collapse. If the teleporting were
due to wavefunction collapse then delay should be a function of the
de Broglie wavelength, which is a function of momentum. Under the
hypothesis, collision of a neutrino with a virtual particle then
results in the taking of an instant (or nearly instant) path to the
other side of the position occupied by the virtual particle.
Another variation of the hypothesis exists if sound can travel on
strings at superluminal speeds. The interaction then involves a
neutrino-virtual-photon string merging on the arrival side and
similar string separation on the departure side. If the string
vibration propagation speed is not instant, but significantly larger
than c, the same result occurs - an early arrival of the neutrino.
In the case of the OPERA experiment this merely means the 18.1 meter
cumulative tunneling distance I calculated would be replaced by a
longer cumulative distance during which neutrinos effectively travel
at the speed of sound in the strings. The neutrinos then are
momentarily converted from a separate string into a vibration, a
pulse, traveling on a momentarily merged string.
Best regards,
Horace Heffner
http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
