Yes, you do remember the same group I was talking about. Perhaps the news media over-exaggerated their claim to finding the higgs (or some new particle), but in any event it was a case of one group of well educated scientists making a fundamental mistake in their math.
When I use the term sophomoric, I mean it in the context of someone who has knowledge and experience in their area of expertise, but still ends up makes a fundamental mistake. Not necessarily immature, but more along the lines of overconfidence. And I believe this is a prime case of a group of well educated scientists being overconfident in presenting their conclusions.
Now, as Phil Plait mused, perhaps what they've "found" is a different form (flavor?) of neutrinos, ones that don't come from a supernova. I find that hard to believe that CERN could produce such drastically different neutrinos than a whole supernova, but I'm willing to give it consideration for the sake of argument. Then again, perhaps they've actually discovered a tachyon that appears to be (or generates) a neutron when it "hits" their detectors. I'd be willing to believe THAT theory before I believe that neutrinos can travel FTL. (The standard model would demand that if neutrinos can travel FTL, then electrons can as well, and so far we've never seen an electron travel FTL.)
Right now it appears that most scientists reviewing these results are mostly questioning the clocks, the distance, and everything related to velocity calculations, which is why I suggested that perhaps they've made a fundamental mistake, such as calculating the distance traveled 18 m longer than it truly is. Other possible affects such as frame-dragging is, IMHO, stretching it a bit. Yeah frame-dragging is real, but could it really affect a neutrino to such a degree? I find that hard to believe, considering they interact so weakly with matter in the first place.
Now, as to the possibility of neutrinos doing an "initial FTL jump" - Well I suppose that could be possible. But to prove that they simply need to move the detectors really close to the source and take more measurements. If the number of neutrinos drops off significantly the closer they get (assuming no change in the source emissions), then that would be proof. If true, I can see thousands of scientists scratching their heads trying to explain THAT idea.
Another possibility, one that I thought might have some legs, is the idea that a neutrino oscillating between tau and muon might go FTL during the transition period between the two flavors. That is, it would be sub-luminal when it's a tau, then lose its higgs causing it go super-luminal (transforming into ?), then regains its higgs, transforms into a muon neutrino and dropping to sub-luminal again. The only problem with that theory is, again, supernova records just don't support such a large FTL velocity as what they suggest their data says.
It's also been suggested that nothing travels FTL, but the space-time fabric itself could have a velocity, and to an outsider anything traveling inside such a piece of space-time fabric would appear to be FTL. That's an excellent idea, and when warp engines get invented, I certainly hope to own a space ship with such an engine. But could such tiny collisions at CERN create tiny pieces of space-time traveling along the same path as the neutrinos, and "carry" them along, causing us humans to think they've gone FTL? Hmmm... Something to think about.
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