Sunday, October 16, 2011

Special Relativity May Answer Faster-than-Light Neutrino Mystery

Special Relativity May Answer Faster-than-Light Neutrino Mystery "The relativistic motion of clocks on board GPS satellites exactly accounts for the superluminal effect, says physicist. "

2 comments:

Irina said...

This is what one of the comments said:

I'm skeptical that this paper offers a simple refutation of the apparently superluminal observations by CERN/OPERA. The relativistic factors associated with the GPS system have been well-known and understood since the system was designed. In fact, the system would not work if Special Relativity hadn't been taken into account when the system was designed. That's right--relativistic effects would produce gross navigational errors if the GPS system didn't compensate for them. Though I agree that the OPERA paper did not explain the timing system very well, I'll reserve judgment until I see what they have to say.

I have no idea if this comment is correct but it would seem that whoever designed the GPS would take relativistic factors into account. I wonder if anyone is trying to duplicate the experiment. Have not seen much in the news lately.

Howard said...

I know that GPS does (and has to) take relativistic effects into account. My understanding of the paper is that OPERA's use of GPS didn't.