Cosmologic philosophy: special relativity proven again (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, July 16, 2018, 20:57 (2112 days ago) @ David Turell

A study of Lorentz symmetry proven again with neutrons:

https://phys.org/news/2018-07-einstein-date-lorentz-violation-high-energy.html

"The universe should be a predictably symmetrical place, according to a cornerstone of Einstein's theory of special relativity, known as Lorentz symmetry. This principle states that any scientist should observe the same laws of physics, in any direction, and regardless of one's frame of reference, as long as that object is moving at a constant speed.

" For instance, as a consequence of Lorentz symmetry, you should observe the same speed of light—300 million meters per second—whether you are an astronaut traveling through space or a molecule moving through the bloodstream.
But for infinitesimally small objects that operate at incredibly high energies, and over vast, universe-spanning distances, the same rules of physics may not apply. At these extreme scales, there may exist a violation to Lorentz symmetry, or Lorentz violation, in which a mysterious, unknown field warps the behavior of these objects in a way that Einstein would not predict.

"Now MIT scientists and their colleagues on the IceCube Experiment have led the most thorough search yet of Lorentz violation in neutrinos. They analyzed two years of data collected by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, a massive neutrino detector buried in the Antarctice ice. The team searched for variations in the normal oscillation of neutrinos that could be caused by a Lorentz-violating field. According to their analysis, no such abnormalities were observed in the data, which comprises the highest-energy atmospheric neutrinos that any experiment has collected.

"The team's results, published today in Nature Physics, rule out the possibility of Lorentz violation in neutrinos within the high energy range that the researchers analyzed. The results establish the most stringent limits to date on the existence of Lorentz violation in neutrinos. They also provide evidence that neutrinos behave just as Einstein's theory predicts.

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"The team's results set the most stringent limit yet on how strongly neutrinos may be affected by a Lorentz-violating field. The researchers calculated, based on IceCube data, that a violating field with an associated energy greater than 10-36 GeV-2 should not affect a neutrino's oscillations. That's .01 with 35 more zeros preceding the 1, of one-billionth an electronvolt squared— an extremely small force that is far weaker than neutrinos' normally weak interactions with the rest of matter, which is at the level of 10-5 GeV-2.

"'We were able to set limits on this hypothetical field that are much, much better than any that have been produced before," Conrad says. "This was an attempt to go out and look at new territory we hadn't looked at before and see if there are any problems in that space, and there aren't. But that doesn't stop us from looking further.'"

Comment: the universe is designed to follow very specific rules.