It’s just another possible answer to explain a new riddle… and a confirmation of a new revelation. Is this the final answer for traveling faster than the speed of light? No. So the total correction is 64 nanoseconds, almost exactly what the OPERA team observes. But this must be doubled because the same error occurs at each end of the experiment. Van Elburg calculates that it should cause the neutrinos to arrive 32 nanoseconds early. “From the perspective of the clock, the detector is moving towards the source and consequently the distance travelled by the particles as observed from the clock is shorter,” says van Elburg.Īccording to the news source, he means shorter than the distance measured in the reference frame on the ground and the OPERA team overlooks this because it thinks of the clocks as on the ground not in orbit. This means the clock on the GPS is seeing the neutrino source and detector as changing. The orbiting probes are positioned from West to East in a plane inclined at 55 degrees to the equator… almost directly in line with the neutrino flight path.
If they are moving relative to one another, this calculation needs to be included in the findings. Here we have a scenario where one clock is on the ground while the other is orbiting. Sure, radio waves travel at the speed of light, so what difference does the satellite position make? The truth is, it doesn’t. But is it possible the team overlooked the amount of time it took for the satellite signals to return to Earth? In his statement, van Elburg says there is one effect that the OPERA team seems to have overlooked: the relativistic motion of the GPS clocks. Keeping time is again the domain of the GPS satellites which each broadcasting a highly accurate time signal from orbit some 20,000km overhead. The neutrino flight time is then measured by using clocks at the opposing ends, with the team knowing exactly when the particles left and when they landed.īut were the clocks perfectly synchronized? Regardless, the OPERA team took this into account and provided an accurate distance measurement of 730 km to within tolerances of 20 cm. However, the Gran Sasso Laboratory is located beneath the Earth under a kilometre-high mountain. They began in CERN and were measured via global positioning systems. To get a clearer picture, the distance the neutrinos traveled is straightforward.