Has the speed of light, of the photon, really been surpassed by the speed of the neutrino as the top speed of an essence in our universe?
Has Albert Einstein’s famous equation E=MC2 (energy equals mass multiplied by the velocity of light squared) been invalidated? Will it have to be rewritten replacing ”velocity of light squared,” the velocity of the photon squared, with “the velocity of the neutrino squared” or something else?
A second team of scientists has clocked, for the second time within the late-summer through mid-fall months of this year of 2011, the subatomic-processes-byproduct the neutrino particle in another solo run to have impossibly broken the cosmic speed limit of the speed of light, a speed limit postulated by the great physicist Albert Einstein. Skeptical scientists are musing that perhaps a subtle error is repetitively being made in clocking the speed of the neutrino, if nature has not changed or if Einstein’s experimentally long reliable postulation is not wrong. Probably a major reason these solo clockings of the speed of the neutrino exceeding the speed of light are questionable to much of the physics community, despite two separate clockings showing the same superior speed for the neutrino, is because the light particle or unit, the photon, has no mass, whereas the neutrino has a small mass, and, so, on the basis of this fact they would reasonably expect the photon, the basic unit of light, to travel faster than a neutrino, somehow, nevertheless. Scientists, one of which I am not, may intuit such an “Elementary, Watson! Elementary!” consideration and leave it out of the questioning conversation, taking for granted that this is presumed by their peers. The other glaringly obvious and important but rectifiable procedural issue, as well as a repeated flaw, with the two recent experiments clocking the speed of the neutrino and determining its superior speed or racetrack performance over the photon is that they involved solo, one-critter runs of the neutrino, alone in a scientific reality vacuum, rather than two-critter races including its competitor the photon in both fully scientific and fully reality-based, truth-showing scientific test events.
I share the skepticism that the speedy massless photon could normally be out raced by the speedy neutrino particle with a mass as well as am critical of the result coming from the procedure of doing a solo clocking of the neutrino particle where a track meet between the two different particle species could have been held and produced a different and clear, real-time comparative result. To quell this skepticism, I propose such a track meet between the two particle types for all interested to witness live, in process. A little quantum or cosmic science sports-theater would be a lot of fun and educational.
The photon versus the neutrino for the title of speed champion of the universe at The Particle-Physics Cosmic Olympics
For determining the quantum particle gold-medal speed champion with finality:
Conduct a quantum physics Olympics racetrack experiment simultaneously pairing and clocking the defending champion photon quantum particle (unit of light) with the challenger neutrino quantum particle, and repeat the experiment 100 times.
In the event there are parameter differences, or measurable, often variable, shared characteristics (e.g., size of the widths, lengths, perimeter and area of a given rectangle; or the size of the circumference, diameter and volume as well as weight gradient of a given water ball), among individuals within each the photon and neutrino populations, it seems it would be prudent to not only conduct individual photon versus neutrino clocked races but also team (group) photon versus neutrino clocked races. If there are significant individual differences in the shared characteristics of and within these distinct quantum particle species, and if they are not controlled for as much as possible by random selection of same type individuals composing each of the species particle teams, then coincidental individual rather than species characteristics might influence which is the victor particle in a match up between the photon versus the neutrino particle species in the clocked races. However, all of this may have been considered in the performed solo clockings of the neutrino, which actually may have been the solo trackings and clockings of a beam or stream of neutrinos misunderstood and misreported in lay news media articles as repeated solo trackings and clockings of a single neutrino.
This simultaniety experiment matching up and jointly testing the test objects (different types of quantum particles, being the photon and the neutrion) of examination and their performance under the same conditions, including possible systematic and unidentified experimenter error, would also subject both test objects to the same possible hidden experimenter error and/or the same undetected, confounding influence in the experiment itself, independent of the experimenter, that may have biased the outcome of the previous solo clocked runs of the neutrino in favor of the neutrino. In short, this kind of experiment would evenly distribute any error or bias in the experimental procedure and conditions across the test objects and negate a biased outcome for either in the experiment. It would make for a clean experiment and a definitive result from the experiment.
If by some definitive perplexing chance the neutrino is the consistent winner of the races, science spectators and citizen scientists will want to know mechanistically, why? For instance, they may be asking “Do neutrinos have a special relationship to dark energy and/or dark matter or the nature of these?” and, if they have such a relationship, “Do the laws of nature governing dark energy and dark matter deviate or significantly differ from the different or differently-charged energy and matter of our visible universe?” or “Can quantum particles hybridize or synergize (i.e., the photon with the neutrino), sort of like but more efficiently than atoms that can combine into molecules?” and "Can quantum particles mutate and variegate or, so to speak, speciate?" If the answer is yes to either or both of the last two broad questions, the corresponding fact or facts would mean that elemental quantum nature is not static but does change, as do atomic and macro-nature phenomena, and that not only do neutrinos move faster than the speed of light but that perhaps light, photons, can move faster than the former speed of light (photons) and still move faster than the speed of the neutrino particle species, but at a changed, accelerated speed of light, or of photons. Also, what if, as the strangest of all possibilities relating to the speed relationship between the neutrino and light (photons), as indicated by recent speed test findings on the neutrino alone (in isolation from the photon) and astronomical observations of the behavior of neutrinos and photons in a deep outer-space explosion of a star (observations reported to have found neutrinos in the presence of photons approximating or moving at the speed of photons), that indeed, without experimenter or experimental-conditions error or contamination, neutrinos time faster than photons in solo, separately clocked runs of each of these quantum particle species yet do not shed the required extent of energy nor precipitate the cosmic events mathematically or theoretically projected of any object, however small or large, exceeding the speed of light — with the cosmic events in this post-speed-of-light scenario projected to include a faster-than-the-speed-of-light barrier boom (a trans-photonic speed barrier boom analogous to a sonic boom when its speed barrier is exceeded by an airplane?), the radical warping of space-time and its inverting (cumulatively generating anti-gravity, dark energy and antimatter or dark matter?) or the reversing of the direction of space-time (from a cause-and-effect environment to an effect-and-cause environment?) and/or perhaps even to include the implosion, explosion or annihilati0n or radical (disequilibrium) expansion or contraction of space-time — but nevertheless in a simultaneous racetrack run of both the neutrino and photon together the neutrino’s travel time equals the speed or falls short of the speed of the photon? Who knows — the mysterious observable increasingly rapid expansion of our universe may have something to do with this possible conundrum unbeknownst to us? These far-out but empirically conceivable possibilities cannot be ruled out of or excluded from the realm of serious scientific consideration and are more reasons for holding a simultaneous two-critter quantum physics race between the photon quantum particle and neutrino quantum particle.
Which one would you wager on to win the race/s, the photon or the neutrino? I’m tempted to bet on the photon and Einstein.
I read several news articles, which I was led to by twitter links on November 18, 2011, reporting that a team of scientists had again, for the second time in the recent few months, clocked the neutrino to have exceeded in its travel speed the speed of light.
