quote:
Nothing in this universe is perfect. The mas (energy) of a proton has been measured at 1.672621777(74)10−27 kg (about .938 GeV). Note the (74) in this measurement. That is the error bar. Some protons may be slightly more massive, some less so, than the mean measurement. The neutrino mass is given as less than 3x10-36 kg (about 2 eV). We cannot yet be certain how much less then 2 eV in mass the various flavors of neutrino are but we can be sure that, as with everything else, it will vary across some (very small) range.
The high energy protons generated by CERN (or anywhere) will be generated over a range of masses. The masses of the resultant pulse of protons will form a bell curve with very narrow arms and a steep high peak at the mean value. Most of the generated protons would have measured mass clustered very close to the mean with a few (100,000s?) of slightly greater and slightly lesser mass within the narrow arms around the mean value.
—AZPaul3
Correction: we believe that all protons have the same fundamental mass. The bell curve is not due to a spread in
mass, but due to uncertainty in our
measurement of the mass.
The protons extracted from CERN will have a small spread in
energy, determined by the details of the accelerator. But because the beam is highly relativistic and the neutrino production target is very close, this should have essentially no effect on the timing.
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Similarly, the timing of proton generation will vary. So we will have another bell curve where most of the protons in the pulse are generated around a specific mean time with a few (100,000s?) generated ever so slightly earlier and ever so slightly later.
—AZPaul3
This timing is determined by the extraction pulses. No protons will be extracted until the kicker magnets are fired. But jitter in the timing system would have the same effect as the mechanism that you describe, and this is a plausible issue.
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Now to speculate on the OPERA results. And, yes, admittedly, with the view that Relativity is preserved.
There are three (3) speculations that may be at work here.
1. There may be a correlation between the (slightly) increased mass (energy) of a generated proton and a (slightly) increased mass (energy) of the neutrino generated by that specific proton collision.
—AZPaul3
We believe that the
masses of protons and each flavor of neutrino are fixed fundamental constants. There is certainly a correlation between proton
energy and neutrino
energy. But how would this make the neutrinos appear to be super-luminal?
quote:
2. There may be a correlation between (slightly) higher proton mass and its (slightly) earlier release from the proton generator.
—AZPaul3
Assuming that you mean
energy instead of
mass, it is indeed possible that there is a correlation between proton energy and time along the extraction pulse. But again, how would this make the neutrinos appear to be super-luminal?
quote:
3. There may be a bias in polystyrene scintillators that detect (slightly) higher energy neutrinos only (and very few of those anyway).
—AZPaul3
Yes, there will be some energy dependence to the neutrino detectors. But again, how would this make the neutrinos appear to be super-luminal?
For what it's worth, I suspect the problem will turn out to be a subtle error in either the timing or the distance:
Timing: Have they mis-measured or mis-calculated a time delay in their electronics chain somewhere? Have they ever calibrated the timing through the entire systems which generates their trigger pulses and their detection pulses? This would be an easy mistake to make.
Distance: They have relied on GPS measurements, which are very
precise, and are very
accurate for short-range differential measurements. But how
accurate is GPS over the distance from Geneva to Gran Sasso? (GPS mapping reduces to a differential short-range measurement, since the map-maker and the user both rely on the same GPS signals.)
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