Almost all of my colleagues had put very, very low odds on the OPERA experiment’s result being correct — not because the people who did the measurement were considered incompetent or stupid, but because (a) doing experimental physics is very challenging; (b) this particular result was especially implausible; and (as everyone in the field knows) (c) most experiments with a shocking result turn out to be wrong, though it can take months or years to find the mistake.
I haven’t seen the vitriol or scorn the author mentions, but I don’t read everything. Complex experiments are hard, as he notes. In the kinds of experiments I’ve worked on we’ve spent lots of time chasing down subtle vacuum problems and electronic problems like ground loops — if your circuitry has a “loop” configuration it acts as an antenna, converting changes in magnetic fields into voltages (from Faraday’s law) and picking up the noise radiated by all of the electronics in your lab.
“Loose cable” was not high on the list of problems by the betting bystanders, since “Einstein was wrong” and “GPS is fouled up” sounded much sexier, and one might not expect such a mundane-sounding problem to either survive or cause these problems, but there is subtlety there. (I can recall a recent problem with an sma connector with a bad thread — it felt properly tight, but wasn’t. Caused all sorts of weird signals, and took an extra set of eyes to help spot the problem.)
They still need to confirm that this was indeed the source of the anomaly. That’s just good science.
Finding out what you did wrong is a big part of science. I find it is also the key to personal learning, you try things and make mistakes. Only by understanding where you went wrong can you truly understand what is right.
With respect to OPERA, one has to remember just how big a project this is. It is very complex and rather mundane issues can course massive problems.
I am sure you have experienced this yourself Tom, simple things can mess us your experiments.
Or maybe all the electrons in the OPERA detectors are linked to all the other electrons in the universe?
Am I now permanently banned from this blog?
@Emory Kimbrough: “Or maybe all the electrons in the OPERA detectors are linked to all the other electrons in the universe?”
I was purposeful in not mentioning the strong link with another post by Tom.
Tom Swanson is not full of sh*t.
@ajb – Did you read that as me poking fun at Tom or replying to you? I was just poking fun at the entire massive multi-blog dust-up as a whole.
The experimenters were right to make their anamolous reading known and to ask that other professionals review the results. That is good responsible experimental science.
They were also right not to jump to a final conclusion or to make a formal submittal to a major journal until their initial results were reviewed and confirmed.
Were the results to be ultiimately upheld it would be a seminal piece of data, and require extensive revision to the theoretical underpinnings of science.
Were the results to be found to be in error, it is important to understand the source of error for the benefit of future experiments.
The latter seems to be the case at this juncture. The experimenters did what I would expect of good professionals. Complilcated experiments can have subtle problems. They looked deeply and see to have found a problem sufficient to account for the anamolous data. I understand that they will continue to work to verify that this is indeed the case.
Addendum.
Finding your mistakes is good.
Admitting your mistakes is equally good. Brian Cox might want to try it.
@Emory Kimbrough:”I was just poking fun at the entire massive multi-blog dust-up as a whole.”
That is how I see what you said.
FTL anything carrying information (with rest mass!) is gobsmackingly putrescent. Reality does not tolerate contradiction. Vigorous and abundant theorists’ support on arXiv illustrates business as usual. The past 40 years of physical theory lack physical validation and are orthogonal to empirical falsification. Self-consistent, rigorously derived mathematics is not constrained by physical reality. It jibber-jabbers elegant nonsense universes that will not die.
Professionally managed physics desperately embraces success. Theory is preferred to experiment because virtual mud packs tighter than real gems. “Do math” is the profession’s version of “buy IBM.” Behold that magic moment when classical administration discovers “impossible” failures uncontrollably dribbling from its… ah, research proposals. Who Madoff with physics?
Negative temperatures kelvin are trivially accessed as population inversions. Zero kevin is not transgressed – they go the long way around. Interested readers are invited to pull the same trick, theoretically, for Special Relativity.