It has recently been claimed by a group at CERN that they have measured neutrinos that move at a speed greater than c (the speed of light in a vacuum). The data is under current study to confirm the claim.
The neutrino is a spin-1/2 particle involved in weak interactions. It has a mass close to zero and it is uncharged. In analyzing tne data, I should like to remind the physicists that this is not a Newtonian discrete particle that moves from one place to another, as a particle would do. It is a wave, subject to the rules of wave motion. It moves with a wave train and interacts with diffraction at the target.
The speed of light in a vacuum, c, in relativity theory, is the speed of intetraction of any sort, gravitational, electromagnetic, weak, nuclear. etc. If the neutrino in this experiment had moved at a speed greater than c, it could not intertact with anything else, to make itself be known to the experimenters! If, on the other hand, relativity theory is in fundamental error, then all other experimental confirmations of this theory, since 1905!, including E = mc^2, must be wrong and would have to be re-explained with some other theory. As a scientist, I cannot reject this possibility. But I strongly doubt it!


Mendel Sachs
Posted in
Tags:
You are not the only one to doubt it. See
http://physics.aps.org/synopsis-for/10.1103/PhysRevLett.107.181803
neutrino a wave – okay. But on the gravitational field, or other?
Why are faster-than-light neutrinos out of this world, don't they cherenkov-radiate?
http://crisisinphysics.wordpress.com/2011/10/22/neutrinos-do-cherenkov-dont-they/
In my view, the neutrino is a (quantized) wave that trasmits the weak interaction between bound fermions. For example, I see the neutron as a composite of proton and electron, bound by the weak interaction, trasnsmitted between them by the neutrino. The beta-decay of the neutron into freed electron and proton is then accompanied by the remaining neutrino field. But the neutrino is not a particle in itself. Similarly, the hydrogen atom is a bound proton and electron, whose interaction is trasmitted by the the electromagnetic force, carried out by the photon transmitted between them. But the photon is not a thing-in-itself. The latter view of the photon was that of Planck himself. Thus, the weak interaction and the standard electromagnetic interaction are two phases of a single electromagnetic force, manifesting themselves at short and long distances.
It seems that the OPERA team at CERN found an error that could explain the difference in time measured.
http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2012/02/breaking-news-error-undoes-faster.html
They will perform a new round of tests in May.