So, the infamous OPERA result for neutrino speeds seems to be conclusively disproven, traced to a difficulty with a timing signal. Matt Strassler has a very nice explanation of the check that shows that the whole body can nearly certainly be traced to a timing mistake that cropped up in 2008. This difficulty is generally described as resulting from a “loose fiber optic cable,” and Matthew Francis’s reaction is honestly typical
The main culprit was a fiber optic cable that was slightly outside of alignment. This is not quite a “loose wire”, as it sometimes has been described: it’s far more subtle and harder to check than that, however it’s still fundamentally a simple technical difficulty. (My prediction that the effect was due to something really subtle turns outside not to be fair!)
As a professional Optics Guy, I would beg to differ a small. Assuming that this hasn’t been garbled by some sort of translation issue, this really is something subtle and surprising (albeit in a technical path, not a fresh physics path). You wouldn’t generally expect to get a significant timing delay from a loose fiber optic connector, since of the path that fiber optics employment, which is fundamentally different than the path ordinary electrical cables employment.
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