The invariant mass of a particle is m^2 = E^2 – p^2 (energy squared minus momentum squared). Now we suppose the neutrino is moving faster than light.
These in turn scatter off to generate the neutrino and muon with k3 and k4, where again Now add these two k1 + k2 = E1 + E2, and square them The 4-mometa have a spatial component and a temporal component so k1 = (p1, E1) and k2 = (p2, E2), with p2 = p1 in the center of mass frame. We can transform this problem to the center of mass frame. In this case these correspond to the momentum of the nucleus and the proton. Suppose you have two particles with 4-momentum k1 and k2 which scatter.
This gets a bit technical, but for those familiar with some physics this should be understood. But they have 0 which puts some weight to the OPERA claim since if High Energy Neutrinos Generated In A Gama Ray Pulse are traveling at FTL then the standard method of matching them up by assuming they were traveling ether at or slightly less than the speed of light won’t work because the Neutrinos would arrive Years ahead of the pulse, and if the speed they travel is proportanal to their energy but are never slower then the speed of light that would explain supernova 1987a where the neutrinos arrived 3 hours earlier then they should have.
So far they have not made such an observation and per the existing data and the rate of pulses they should have had between 2 and 6 such events. The observation is high energy neutrinos correlated to an even like a gamma ray pulse. They used IceCube because some people are aware that IF IceCube makes a particular observation then we can toss out the OPERA data easily. IceCube just saw high energy Neutrinos and they then used their backwards logic to say IceCube observed high energy neutrinos so they couldn’t go faster than light. An observatory called IceCube is set up to observe these naturally occurring neutrinos in Antarctica as neutrinos collide with other particles, they generate muons that leave trails of light flashes as they pass through a nearly 2.5 kilometre (1.5 mile) thick block of clear ice. CERN’s method of producing neutrinos is duplicated naturally when cosmic rays hit Earth’s atmosphere. There is an experimental check of Cowsik’s theoretical conclusion. “What’s more,”Cowsik explains, “these difficulties would only increase as the pion energy increases. Within the present framework of physics, superluminal neutrinos would be very difficult to produce. What Cowsik and his team found was that if neutrinos produced from a pion decay were traveling faster than light, the pion lifetime would get longer and each neutrino would carry a smaller fraction of the energy it shares with the muon. The OPERA neutrinos had a lot of energy but very little mass, so the question was whether they could really move faster than light. They investigated whether “pion decays would produce superluminal neutrinos, assuming energy and momentum are conserved,” he said. SonierĬowsik’s and his team looked closely at this first step of the OPERA experiment. The muons never went further than the tunnel, but the neutrinos, which can slip through matter like a ghost passes through a wall, kept going towards Gran Sasso. This produced a pulse of pions, unstable particles that were magnetically focused into a tunnel where they decayed into neutrinos and muons (another tiny elementary particle). The OPERA experiments generated neutrinos by slamming protons into a stationary target. But, somehow, they did.īut Cowsik questioned the neutrinos’ genesis. Since neutrinos have mass, superluminal neutrinos shouldn’t exist. According to Einstein’s theory of special relativity, any particle with mass can come close to the speed of light but can’t reach it. This result created either a problem for physics or a breakthrough. In short, they appeared to be superluminal. The team was shocked to find that the neutrinos arrived at Gran Sasso 60 nanoseconds sooner than they would have if they were traveling at the speed of light in a vacuum. The experiment timed neutrinos as they traveled 730 kilometres (about 450 miles) through Earth from their origin point at CERN to a detector in Gran Sasso. Scientists at CERN managed to repeat their result of neutrinos travelling faster than the speed of light.