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Geek Culture / the error in CERN's neutrino calculations may have been found.

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Neuro Fuzzy
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Posted: 16th Oct 2011 20:52
sounds like it's been solved, and for once it sounds simple enough to explain easily! They weren't accounting for the relativistic motion of GPS satellites.
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/27260/

it seems like kind of a simple mistake to make, and I haven't heard anything else, so I'm kinda skeptical that this is the actual reason, but at least we have one good contender.

TheComet
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Posted: 16th Oct 2011 23:23
Wow, who would have thought? I'm glad that they now think it didn't travel faster than light, or we'd have to re-invent a lot of our mathematics

TheComet

IanM
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Posted: 16th Oct 2011 23:39
Maybe, maybe not (and I think, after looking at some of the facts and using some common sense, not)

I seem to recall that the timing was made on the ground using clocks that were synchronised before the experiment started, in addition to GPS clocks - the results would not be the same for each type of clock if this was a simply GPS-related mistake.

Also, the GPS satellite that this guy is talking about is not the only one in the sky - there are several used by every receiver at many different angles, not just 55 degrees to the equator, and at different times (approach and departure). Again, those different GPSs and times would give different results if this kind of thing wasn't taken into account.

There's no way to tell at this point whether he's right or wrong about this until his paper has been properly peer-reviewed, but expect some of the press to jump on this as the answer anyway.

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