Scroll down to read this post.

 

Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. I keep the website clean from pop-ups and annoying demands. Instead, I depend entirely on my readers to support me. Though this means I am sacrificing some income, it also means that I remain entirely independent from outside pressure. By depending solely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, no one can threaten me with censorship. You don't like what I write, you can simply go elsewhere.

 

You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:

 

1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.

 

2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
 

3. A Paypal Donation:

4. A Paypal subscription:


5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
 
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652

 

You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.


Faster than light?

Can neutrinos travel faster than light? After three years of gathering data, an experiment at CERN says they do, though by only a tiny amount.

[Physicist Antonio] Ereditato says that he is confident enough in the new result to make it public. The researchers claim to have measured the 730-kilometre trip between CERN and its detector to within 20 centimetres. They can measure the time of the trip to within 10 nanoseconds, and they have seen the effect in more than 16,000 events measured over the past two years. Given all this, they believe the result has a significance of six-sigma — the physicists’ way of saying it is certainly correct.

You can download and read a preprint of their paper here.

What I find intriguing about this result, other than its exciting groundbreaking possibilities, is how it illustrates sharply the contrast between normal and healthy science, and the sad and sick state of the field of climate science.

Consider again the shocking nature of the CERN results. If it should prove true, the discovery that neutrinos can travel faster than light will rock more than just the field of physics. The entire field of theoretical science built up since Einstein first wrote his special theory of relativity more than a hundred years ago will be thrown into chaos.

Yet, despite these high stakes, no one at CERN or elsewhere has tried to hide these startling results. Nor has anyone condemned these scientists for daring to challenge the “settled” theories of physics. Instead, the scientists have published their results without fear, and have made that research data available to everyone else with the hope that someone else might spot an error, or it not, confirm their result.

Moreover, the rest of the physics community has embraced this situation with a kind of thrilled eagerness. Proving Einstein and their theories wrong isn’t considered a bad thing at all. Instead, it points to new knowledge, and a deeper understanding of the universe.

Contrast this response with that of global warming scientists Phil Jones and Michael Mann when other scientists wished to check their conclusion that the climate is warming and has only begun to do so since the industrial age. When Steven McIntyre wrote Jones to try to get his original data so he could check Jones’s conclusions, Jones refused to give it to him. McIntyre then filed freedom of information forms to get it the data, only to have Jones and Mann stonewall him, even exchanging emails about how they would destroy that data before they’d release it.

In fact, they might very well have done so. Jones at least revealed eventually that his original data has been lost or no longer exists. Thus, there is no way to check his results. For all we know, he made it all up.

In comparing these two approaches to science, which fills you with confidence? I know that I no longer have much faith in the field of climate science. Or to put it more bluntly, I consider many climate scientists today to be nothing more than con men, manipulating data for the sole purpose of sucking funding from government agencies so they keep their jobs and their fancy academic offices. Sadly, much of what they do has little to do with science and the search for knowledge.

Meanwhile, back at CERN, none of us should get our hopes up that anything startling has been found about the flight of neutrinos. We are talking about tiny and very precise measurements, with enormous opportunities for error. The scientists at CERN could very easily have made a tiny mistake somewhere and not noticed it.

Moreover, there is ample other evidence that suggests that something is awry with their results. For example, when supernova 1987a exploded 160,000 light years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud back in 1987, the neutrinos from that explosion arrived mere hours before anyone had detected its light. This early arrival occurred not because the neutrinos were moving faster than light, but because they could be detected instantly by neutrino detectors in Canada and Japan, while the supernova’s light needed time to brighten to visibility. If the CERN result is true, however, the neutrinos from that explosion should have arrived years earlier, not hours.

Regardless, it is so refreshing to see that in at least one field of science, open-mindedness still rules the day. May we someday see this open-mindedness return to the field of climate research as well.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

2 comments

  • woh great point! It is nice to see science in action without political monkey business

  • Joan Snow

    I seem to remember years ago that there was some discussion of this, along with cold fusion.
    I revolved around the concept that the preceeding surface of the photon, corona?, would by necessity, have to be faster than the quanta photon, itself, and that it was a fault in instrumentation, Heisenberg, that this phonomena was not recognized.
    Next, if a photon is a composite, neutrino form, then, as quanta, parts of it would, by definition, be faster than c.
    Next, if there is a laser, or Bose-Einstein condensate, then there could be faster than light.
    I agree with Mr. Walkie, and Mr. Zimmerman–it is so refreshing to have unbiased scientific investigations,
    thank you!

Readers: the rules for commenting!

 

No registration is required. I welcome all opinions, even those that strongly criticize my commentary.

 

However, name-calling and obscenities will not be tolerated. First time offenders who are new to the site will be warned. Second time offenders or first time offenders who have been here awhile will be suspended for a week. After that, I will ban you. Period.

 

Note also that first time commenters as well as any comment with more than one link will be placed in moderation for my approval. Be patient, I will get to it.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *