Exploring Einstein's Special Relativity Theory & ICARUS Finding

[suleiman]

Dear all,
It is known that the recent ICARUS finding was in agreement with Einstein’s Special Relativity Theory (SR). When the result was announced to the public, Professor Carlo Rubbia, Nobel laureate and spokesperson for ICARUS said that: “Our results are in agreement with what Einstein would like to have,” (1). Given that I thought that Einstein’s SR should not encounter any difficulty in confirming the ICARUS result, particularly the lower limit of δt= 0.3 - 4.0 (stat) - 9.0 (sys) = -12.7 ns. Which falls within the limits of the speed of light.
I tried to perform the calculations using the above value for δt and the distance D from the point of departure at CERN to the destination point at Gran Sasso (D = 730,085 km - 55.7 (± 0.5) m. My calculations (and I checked several times) yielded a complex number!
I would appreciate it if someone could provide the correct calculations.
Many thanks in advance,
Ahwah

(1) See: Geoff Brumfiel, Neutrinos not faster than light- ICARUS experiment contradicts controversial claim, Nature News, 16 March 2012 Corrected: 19 March 2012.

 

[the_emi_guy]

suleiman,
Show us your calculations and we can help you sort it out.
You are not going to be able to make any meaningful calculation using just the 12.7ns and the overall flight distance. There are a lot of things happening between these.
Neutrinos are sent on this long journey (2.4ms) and their flight time is compared with the speed of light. Accurate timestamping involves calibrating out a lot of instrumentation delays including cable, electronics, GPS, and determining the uncertainty of many individual sources of timing error. In the end the measured error between speed of light and neutrino speed, viewed through the lens of statistics, are compared with the expected measurement errors. In the case of ICARUS the deviation between neutrino speed and light speed was less than expected measurement error. This contrasts with the previous OPERA results that showed neutrions arriving 57.8ns early and expected measurement errors almost an order of magnitude less than this.

 

[Mark M]

As stated above, you need to post the calculations so that we can show you where you made an error.