A few days back, in the comments section to THIS POST, I posted a link to a PDF paper refuting the statistical method underlying the claim of very-slightly FTL neutrinos produced over Europe way a little while back. A few things have happened since then. Primary one, the same feller has retracted that paper, and published a new one, where he admits that *he* made mistakes in his analysis, and that the CERN group got it right in the first place.
Second thing, I looked at this guys webpage. Ummm.
http://assassinationscience.com/johncostella/
More specifically, look at the root home page:
http://assassinationscience.com
Boils down to whackjob conspiracy loonies… Apollo was a hoax, 9/11 was an inside job, something or other about the JFK assassination coverup. Gah.
That’s what I get for not surfing the web deeply enough.
6 Responses to ““Why CERN’s claim for faster-than-light neutrinos is not wrong””
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When I was in college 25 or so years ago, I took a “critical thinking” class from the good Dr. Fetzer. He was bat fucking insane then as well. Or, as I’ve also said about him, “I’ve never seen anyone else cut themselves with Occam’s razor like he can.” He’s not longer on the faculty, so there’s at least that.
When I was in college 25 or so years ago, I took a “critical thinking” class from the good Dr. Fetzer. He was bat farking insane then as well. Or, as I’ve also said about him, “I’ve never seen anyone else cut themselves with Occam’s razor like he can.” He’s not longer on the faculty, so there’s at least that.
I assume that the supposed distance the neutrinos travels was based upon a measured distance between two points along the Earth’s surface. However if the neutrinos traveled “through” the Earth, they would be traveling a shorter distance (the Earth being a globe) and would arrive “sooner” than what would be the calculated time at “light speed” going along the surface of the Earth. If this is the case, then the neutrinos did not exceed the velocity of light afterall.
The neutrinos went through the Earth’s crust, and that straight-line distance was what was measured.
The distance between CERN and the Gran Sasso detector is measured very, very accurately. It is measured regularly to check any changes caused by the movement of tectonic plates (about a centimeter a year in this case). I don’t think that CERN physicists are going to confuse a great circle distance with a straight line distance. 🙂
Anyone can have a senior moment. I have them all the time. We saw the Mars probe lost over a confusion between metric and standard measurements, and there was that photo of a satellite that loked to be a victim of Parkour all over the floor, so, who knows. Even woo woos might get something right a time or too. But not here it seems. If so, this goes from “interesting” back to “discovery” again.