If they have to use a GPS, then I'm surprised they got there at all. But I guess they selected the fastest route.

A lovely article by an astrophysicist/blogger/beard aficionado, laying out all the conceivable possibilities.

http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2012/02/alright_neutrinos_the_gig_is_u.php

That's about what I was expecting. It would have been exciting to find some new physics to explore, but c is just so well established both theoretically and experimentally as an absolute speed limit that it's not going to knocked down easily. I'm pretty confident that the final analysis will rule out superluminal neutrinos.

(Maybe it's not true, but we'll check our facts because it's what we do).

http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2012/02/breaking-news-error-undoes-faster.html?ref=hp#.T0U73NhTAvg.twitter

According to sources familiar with the experiment, the 60 nanoseconds discrepancy appears to come from a bad connection between a fiber optic cable that connects to the GPS receiver used to correct the timing of the neutrinos' flight and an electronic card in a computer. After tightening the connection and then measuring the time it takes data to travel the length of the fiber, researchers found that the data arrive 60 nanoseconds earlier than assumed. Since this time is subtracted from the overall time of flight, it appears to explain the early arrival of the neutrinos. New data, however, will be needed to confirm this hypothesis.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but when particles come out of a quantum interaction, don't they simply change to have a new proxy wave function after their old wave function was collapsed by the interaction? So they aren't really accelerating in the classical sense, they simply go from one state to another instantly.

BTW, just to get a taste of the worth of our ruling class:
The first sentence makes it clear that she does not understand a fuck about science and that she didn't spend even 20' to read about it, but there's worse.

(from http://www.istruzione.it/web/ministero/cs230911 )
-----
Statement by the Minister of Education Mariastella Gelmini
"The discovery at CERN in Geneva and the Institute of Physics is a scientific event of the utmost importance."

I congratulate to the authors of a historical experiment. I am deeply grateful to all the Italian researchers who contributed to this event that will change the face of modern physics.
Exceeding the speed of light is a momentous victory for scientific research around the world.

For the construction of the tunnel between CERN and Gran Sasso Laboratories, through which the experiment took place, Italy has contributed a sum now estimated at around 45 million euros.

In addition, Italy today supports CERN with absolute conviction, with a contribution of more than 80 million euros per year and the events we are experiencing are confirming that it is a correct and far-sighted choice".
----
Emphasis mine...
What a bunch of clowns.

Plus, an object with infinite mass has infinite gravity pull.
You don't want that in your universe, at whatever speed.

Relativity doesn't actually rule out superluminal velocities, what it says is that it would take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate an object with rest mass to c in any given frame of reference.

Thus ruling out the acceleration of any physical object to the speed of light, let alone beyond it, as infinite energy is not available, and in any case the mass of the accelerated object becomes infinite when you reach c, making it impossible to accelerate further. The discontinuity at v=c precludes normal or tachyonic matter from ever reaching c, and forbids crossing the gap from either direction.

I'm going to have to disagree with you, Ursa. Relativity doesn't actually rule out superluminal velocities, what it says is that it would take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate an object with rest mass to c in any given frame of reference.

We do have very good evidence for certain superluminal phenomena, such as quantum entanglement. Bell's theorem pretty firmly establishes that QM must either violate the lightspeed limit or counterfactual definiteness. Given the mind bending implications of trying to get rid of counterfactual definiteness, I think most people tend to go with the superluminal alternative.

General relativity also does not limit changes in space time itself to c. For example, frame dragging around a rotating black hole could produce superluminal velocities, and cosmic inflation in cosmology also depends on space time going faster then c.

Relativity also allows for the possibility of exotic forms of matter that can go faster then c. A particle with an imaginary rest mass would have to travel faster then c in all frames of reference, and weirdly, the lower the energy of such a particle, the faster it goes. That's the theoretical basis for the idea of a tachyon, although it should be noted that so far there's zero evidence such a thing actually exists. As I recall, when neutrinos were first discovered, there was some speculation that they might be tachyons, but later experiments indicated that they have a very small real rest mass.

Regardless, if the CERN results are confirmed, it will certainly keep the theorists busy for a good long while.

Both general and special relatively definitively rule out superluminal velocities. So, if they are not correct, we have some very fundamental rethinking to do. I'm skeptical of this idea because of their successful predictive power, and the mountain of both experimental and observational evidence in their favor. I'm giving "we've got something new here" a very low probability.

Not under the set of conditions we currently know.
Thus the excitement: because we may discover something REALLY new.

maybe is possiblw, under some set of conditions, to exceed light speed?

It would seem to contradict a mountain of well-established evidence for the lightspeed limit, like the simultaneous arrival of the gamma ray flash and the neutrinos from an exploding supernova. I wouldn't rule out that the CERN neutrinos are subject to a very different set of conditions and therefore might behave differently, but it seems like a long shot.

LOL.
And BTW, I think it will turn out to be just a systematic error, but I hope it is not 'cause it would be so much more interesting!

Poems about anomalous neutrino velocity readings. What is this world coming to? :)

It wasn't you fundies that found this.
It wasn't you pious that broke your brains to understand nature.
It wasn't the damned pope.
(Maybe it's not true, but we'll check our facts because it's what we do).

It was us that did it.
Us scientists, us researchers.
Us curious about reality, regardless of our beliefs.

So fuck you relitards.
Because we have no dogmas.