{"id":3996,"date":"2011-09-28T14:21:48","date_gmt":"2011-09-28T18:21:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=3996"},"modified":"2011-09-29T22:43:22","modified_gmt":"2011-09-30T02:43:22","slug":"this-weeks-hype-26","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=3996","title":{"rendered":"This Week&#8217;s Hype"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It had to happen.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/mg21128322.900-lightspeed-neutrinos-point-to-new-physical-reality.html?full=true\">New Scientist<\/a> managed to find a physicist willing to describe the OPERA result as &#8220;evidence for string theory&#8221;:\t<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>So if OPERA&#8217;s results hold up, they could provide support for the existence of sterile neutrinos, extra dimensions and perhaps string theory. Such theories could also explain why gravity is so weak compared with the other fundamental forces. The theoretical particles that mediate gravity, known as gravitons, may also be closed loops of string that leak off into the bulk. &#8220;If, in the end, nobody sees anything wrong and other people reproduce OPERA&#8217;s results, then I think it&#8217;s evidence for string theory, in that string theory is what makes extra dimensions credible in the first place,&#8221; Weiler says.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Update<\/strong>:  hep-ph is chock-a-block with papers purporting to explain the OPERA results, using theoretical models of varying degrees of absurdity.  There is however one much more sensible paper this evening, from <a href=\"http:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/1109.6562\">Cohen and Glashow<\/a>, which points out that superluminal neutrinos would produce electron-positron pairs via bremsstrahlung, and lose energy, which is not observed. This is also incompatible with Super-Kamionkande and IceCube data.  No matter what sort of extra dimensions you introduce for the neutrinos to travel in, the OPERA claim seems to be in violent disagreement with other observations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It had to happen. New Scientist managed to find a physicist willing to describe the OPERA result as &#8220;evidence for string theory&#8221;: So if OPERA&#8217;s results hold up, they could provide support for the existence of sterile neutrinos, extra dimensions &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=3996\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-this-weeks-hype"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3996"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3996\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4003,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3996\/revisions\/4003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}