[time-nuts] Fast than light neutrino

Poul-Henning Kamp phk at phk.freebsd.dk
Fri Sep 23 12:25:19 UTC 2011


In message <4E7C7556.6090007 at hvsistemas.es>, Javier Herrero writes:

>nr 2 = nr 3 is an assumption? I was thinking that it is a definition :)

No, not really.

Maxwells equations talk about electromagnetic waves in empty space
under the assumption that they have zero rest-mass, but we have
never proved those waves to be photons, for instance by proving
photons to have zero rest-mass.

We have never been able to actually measure a rest-mass for the
photon either, at best we have experimentally constrained it to be
less than x * 10^-16 eV.

Based on that everybody _assume_ that it is mathematically zero,
and photons therefore identical to Maxwells EM-waves.

But we do not actually have a proof of that, it is only an assumption.

The neutrino was in a quite similar position until a few years go:

My entire generation grew up with neutrinoes being mass-less "just
like photons" and then we suddenly found out it probably wasn't
mass-less.

Mind you:  My money is on experimental mistake, quite likely
application of insufficient general relativity.

But if the experiment holds up to scrutiny and is replicated, my
money will not be on overrelativistic neutrinos, but on photons
having rest-mass, because that would leave the theory of relativity
standing and confine the damage to only the already somewhat troubled
standard-model.

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk at FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
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Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.



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