Sep 22, 2011 -- 6:21PM, bone_naga wrote:

One thing that was mentioned was the possibility that the neutrinos could have made up the distance by traveling through extra dimensions rather than traveling faster than light, which if true would lend more credibility to string theory.

Yeah sure but then that quote was followed by one from a different scientist that said that many discoveries about neutrinos can be taken with a grain of salt since they tend to not be that reliable.

I do like how the team is just publishing their findings without saying that such must be true. That even the researchers are taking their results with a grain of salt expecting someone else to possibly find their mistake.

Of course it was also mentioned that it might be the neutrino which has the universal speed limit and light travels just slightly slower than it. It would make sense to some degree since there is a hypothesized massless neutrino and well light can be equated to mass via E=mc^2 (not the full equation but the simplified version that most are familiar with).

Oh and today during the Colloquium at school Dr. Partovi (theoretical physicist) brought this up after the speaker was done talking (an astrophysicist from Fresno state). Partovi ended up mentioning how he thought this is all just BS. The speaker was a bit excited but also taking it with a grain of salt since such claims of finding things that go faster than the speed of light have been claimed in the past and found out false.

Sep 22, 2011 -- 6:21PM, bone_naga wrote:

One thing that was mentioned was the possibility that the neutrinos could have made up the distance by traveling through extra dimensions rather than traveling faster than light, which if true would lend more credibility to string theory.

So they may have been cheaters that took a short cut, rather than law breakers that exceeded the speed limit?

Sep 24, 2011 -- 1:49PM, bone_naga wrote:

Sep 24, 2011 -- 10:52AM, calronmoonflower wrote:

Sep 22, 2011 -- 6:21PM, bone_naga wrote:

One thing that was mentioned was the possibility that the neutrinos could have made up the distance by traveling through extra dimensions rather than traveling faster than light, which if true would lend more credibility to string theory.

So they may have been cheaters that took a short cut, rather than law breakers that exceeded the speed limit?

Possibly. Of course its also possible that there was something wrong with the experiment, the calculations, or the equipment, but it's an interesting theory.

It was also even possible that the particles were in two places at once.  A recent experiment in quantum mechanics (discussed in the Discovery channel's "Curiosity" show about parallel universes) have appeared to confirmed that quantum behavior can happen at non-quantum scales.