Saturday, October 01, 2011

Neutrinos on the brain-5

There are three main lines of attack on the OPERA "faster-than-light" neutrino measurements:
1. Physics issues
2. Measurement issues
3. Data analysis issues

IMO, the data analysis is the least likely to have mistakes. Measurement issues, are for example, C.R. Contaldi's issues with the synchronization of clocks between CERN and Gran Sasso.  The real killer, however, is the Cohen-Glashow argument, that superluminal neutrinos, weakly interacting though they are, must shed energy rapidly; so much so as to make some OPERA observations impossible.

Peter Woit points out a slew of papers finding exotic ways to justify the OPERA results.
hep-ph is chock-a-block with papers purporting to explain the OPERA results, using theoretical models of varying degrees of absurdity.
Perhaps Sabine Hossenfelder has it right, in her tweet:
Explanation for OPERA result: A 5th force connecting the GPS with the collective physicists' subconsciousness begging for unexplained data.