9 ms·

Neutrinos from CERN to Gran Sasso Respect Cosmic Speed Limit

56 points by mvanga 14y ago

taligent 14y ago
“Although this result isn’t as exciting as some would have liked,” said Bertolucci, “it is what we all expected deep down. The story captured the public imagination, and has given people the opportunity to see the scientific method in action – an unexpected result was put up for scrutiny, thoroughly investigated and resolved in part thanks to collaboration between normally competing experiments. That’s how science moves forward.” Couldn't agree more. Whilst there has been a lot of criticism from the science community it was wonderful to experience a bit of drama and excitement. God knows everyone is looking for something/anything hopeful to distract from the endless bad news.
- okamiueru 14y ago
  Really? Has there been that much criticism from the science community? I though everyone with respectable opinions thought it was handled exactly like proper scientists should have handled it. OPERA had unexpected results contradicting the status quo of our understanding of fundamental physics. They did everything they could to determine and correct and calibrate possible errors. They published the results and methodology in hopes that their peers could either help them understand what went wrong, or confirm it. An they did (the former). I saw it as the science community at its finest. Sure, there was a lot of skepticism and disbelief in the accuracy/correctness, but that is part of the game. You don't take things at face value, and you don't ignore unexpected results. ----- So, I don't have any objection to what you wrote, but, is my impression wrong?
  - atakan_gurkan 14y ago
    There has been enough criticism from scientific community at large and more importantly from within the OPERA collaboration that their spokespeople resigned from their position. Not much of that criticism coming from respectable scientists made it to mainstream media, though. I presume that is because they did not want to show a "holier than thou" attitude openly. But internally a lot of people thought "they must have done something wrong" and after they found the error "what were they thinking?". I think your impression is wrong, but very understandable unless you interacted with people offering criticism directly or semi-directly through one or two persons.
    - mayneack 14y ago
      While I don't disagree with your characterization of the criticism, it was more complex than just "people within the scientific community were critical and people outside thought they did the right thing in opening up the data and methodology to criticism when they could not identify a problem in the initial troubleshooting." A large part of the community took a "wait and see" approach that was (obviously) skeptical of the results. Because of the hype associated with the event, it's not surprising that people would end up resigning whether or not they really did anything wrong. I can't say that I have enough of a background to know if they should have resigned or not, but I certainly wouldn't use the fact that they resigned as conclusive proof that whatever was done wrong was handled incorrectly as opposed to a reasonable error.
  - planetguy 14y ago
    In an ideal universe I think they did everything right. On the other hand, knowing what we know about the state of the popular press and the imagination of the internet it might have been worth being a little more careful to make it clearer that this is probably just an experimental error.
  - rbanffy 14y ago
    > I though everyone with respectable opinions thought it was handled exactly like proper scientists should have handled it. Not all criticism towards science comes from people with respectable opinions. In fact, most criticism towards the scientific community comes from people who have nothing but the most tenuous grasp on what science actually is and, more often than not, to defend a specific agenda.
ck2 14y ago
I hope someday they can explain why 186282 miles per second is the limit in the first place.
- Cushman 14y ago
  c is 299,792,458 m/s only because the meter is so defined; it makes just as much or more sense to say that the speed of light is 1, and this is where we get the Planck units. From this perspective, it becomes obvious that the question, "Why is the speed of light one unit length per unit time?" is an absurd one. There is no other alternative.
  - benihana 14y ago
    Seems tautological. I think what he's asking is, why is there to be a limit to how fast light can go, and he's looking for a better answer than "because there is one." I would love to know why there's an arbitrary speed limit to lights that (from our understanding) spacetime doesn't necessarily have to obey.
    - Nogwater 14y ago
      Here's the best explanation that I've seen: http://www.reddit.com/tb/fjym4 http://www.reddit.com/tb/fjym4 And what do you mean "spacetime doesn't necessarily have to obey"?
    - Cushman 14y ago
      Well, yeah, it is tautological. If there weren't a limit on the rate of information transfer, everything possible would happen instantaneously and there would be no way to really experience anything. Call it selection bias if you like. The speed of light is like the rate of time; it is because it can't not be in any meaningful way. This isn't to say that, given the tenets of simulationism, we can't hypothesize an "external time", and describe the rate of our universe as some amount of Tx/t. But the fact that that's an amount of time per time should also demonstrate why it's a meaningless concept in-universe.
    - planetguy 14y ago
sp332 14y ago
The original generated lots of discussion 8 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3029922 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3029922

56 points by mvanga 14y ago

“Although this result isn’t as exciting as some would have liked,” said Bertolucci, “it is what we all expected deep down. The story captured the public imagination, and has given people the opportunity to see the scientific method in action – an unexpected result was put up for scrutiny, thoroughly investigated and resolved in part thanks to collaboration between normally competing experiments. That’s how science moves forward.” Couldn't agree more. Whilst there has been a lot of criticism from the science community it was wonderful to experience a bit of drama and excitement. God knows everyone is looking for something/anything hopeful to distract from the endless bad news.

okamiueru 14y ago
Really? Has there been that much criticism from the science community? I though everyone with respectable opinions thought it was handled exactly like proper scientists should have handled it. OPERA had unexpected results contradicting the status quo of our understanding of fundamental physics. They did everything they could to determine and correct and calibrate possible errors. They published the results and methodology in hopes that their peers could either help them understand what went wrong, or confirm it. An they did (the former). I saw it as the science community at its finest. Sure, there was a lot of skepticism and disbelief in the accuracy/correctness, but that is part of the game. You don't take things at face value, and you don't ignore unexpected results. ----- So, I don't have any objection to what you wrote, but, is my impression wrong?
- atakan_gurkan 14y ago
  There has been enough criticism from scientific community at large and more importantly from within the OPERA collaboration that their spokespeople resigned from their position. Not much of that criticism coming from respectable scientists made it to mainstream media, though. I presume that is because they did not want to show a "holier than thou" attitude openly. But internally a lot of people thought "they must have done something wrong" and after they found the error "what were they thinking?". I think your impression is wrong, but very understandable unless you interacted with people offering criticism directly or semi-directly through one or two persons.
  - mayneack 14y ago
    While I don't disagree with your characterization of the criticism, it was more complex than just "people within the scientific community were critical and people outside thought they did the right thing in opening up the data and methodology to criticism when they could not identify a problem in the initial troubleshooting." A large part of the community took a "wait and see" approach that was (obviously) skeptical of the results. Because of the hype associated with the event, it's not surprising that people would end up resigning whether or not they really did anything wrong. I can't say that I have enough of a background to know if they should have resigned or not, but I certainly wouldn't use the fact that they resigned as conclusive proof that whatever was done wrong was handled incorrectly as opposed to a reasonable error.
- planetguy 14y ago
  In an ideal universe I think they did everything right. On the other hand, knowing what we know about the state of the popular press and the imagination of the internet it might have been worth being a little more careful to make it clearer that this is probably just an experimental error.
- rbanffy 14y ago
  > I though everyone with respectable opinions thought it was handled exactly like proper scientists should have handled it. Not all criticism towards science comes from people with respectable opinions. In fact, most criticism towards the scientific community comes from people who have nothing but the most tenuous grasp on what science actually is and, more often than not, to defend a specific agenda.

ck2 14y ago

I hope someday they can explain why 186282 miles per second is the limit in the first place.

Cushman 14y ago
c is 299,792,458 m/s only because the meter is so defined; it makes just as much or more sense to say that the speed of light is 1, and this is where we get the Planck units. From this perspective, it becomes obvious that the question, "Why is the speed of light one unit length per unit time?" is an absurd one. There is no other alternative.
- benihana 14y ago
  Seems tautological. I think what he's asking is, why is there to be a limit to how fast light can go, and he's looking for a better answer than "because there is one." I would love to know why there's an arbitrary speed limit to lights that (from our understanding) spacetime doesn't necessarily have to obey.
  - Nogwater 14y ago
    Here's the best explanation that I've seen: http://www.reddit.com/tb/fjym4 http://www.reddit.com/tb/fjym4 And what do you mean "spacetime doesn't necessarily have to obey"?
  - Cushman 14y ago
    Well, yeah, it is tautological. If there weren't a limit on the rate of information transfer, everything possible would happen instantaneously and there would be no way to really experience anything. Call it selection bias if you like. The speed of light is like the rate of time; it is because it can't not be in any meaningful way. This isn't to say that, given the tenets of simulationism, we can't hypothesize an "external time", and describe the rate of our universe as some amount of Tx/t. But the fact that that's an amount of time per time should also demonstrate why it's a meaningless concept in-universe.
  - planetguy 14y ago

sp332 14y ago

The original generated lots of discussion 8 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3029922 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3029922