2011/10/13 by Olivier Besida, Besida, Olivier
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Experiment (hep-ex) #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #hep-ex #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1110.2909
arxiv created 2011/10/13 · arxiv updated 2011/10/18
We found three mistakes in the article " The OPERA neutrino velocity result and the synchronisation of clocks" by Contaldi \citeContaldi. First, the definition of the angle of the latitude in the geoid description leads to a prolate spheroid (rugby ball shape) instead of an oblate spheroid with the usual equatorial flattening. Second, Contaldi forgot a cosine of the latitude in the centripetal contribution term. And last but not least, a profound conceptual mistake was done in believing that an atomic clock or any timekeeper apparatus was carried in a journey by car or plane between CERN and Gran Sasso; instead of that atomic clocks are continuously resynchronized through a GPS device, and the variation of the potential term applies only for the neutrino travel itself. Thus instead of a Δt ≈ 30ns correction claimed by the author in a travel of 12 hours plus 4 days at rest for an atomic clock, we have found a time correction only for the neutrino itself Δt=3.88 10-16 s! That means, that this paper \citeContaldi does not give the right explanation why the neutrino is seen travelling faster than the speed of light in the OPERA neutrino experiment.