FTL Neutrinos Back? Medicare Payments rising? Privacy invaded?

View 714 Saturday, February 25, 2012

The FTL neutrinos may not be gone after all. The evidence is still murky.

This from one of our PhD physicist readers:

Subj: FTL Neutrino "Clarification"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17139635

On the one hand, the team said there is a problem in the "oscillator" that provides a ticking clock to the experiment in the intervals between the synchronisations of GPS equipment.

This is used to provide start and stop times for the measurement as well as precise distance information.

That problem would increase the measured time of the neutrinos’ flight, in turn reducing the surprising faster-than-light effect.

But the team also said they found a problem in the optical fibre connection between the GPS signal and the experiment’s main clock – quite simply, a cable not quite fully plugged in.

In contrast, the team said that effect would increase the neutrinos’ apparent speed.

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In other words, the much ballyhooed "loose plug" from the earlier reports, when corrected, makes the discrepancy even worse, rather than better. It’s a separate problem, the oscillator, that reduces he discrepancy.

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Meanwhile, I have finally looked at a few of the numbers. Given that classic tachyons of higher energies travel at speeds closer to the speed of light, and given that the mean energy of these muon neutrinos was something over 20 GeV, the measured speed is actually MUCH TOO FAST for these measured neutrinos to be classic tachyons if we assume the normally assumed rest energy in the vicinity of a few eV. Amusingly, the speed works out about right if the mass of the muon neutrino is sqrt(-1)*mass of the muon. But there is no apparent way to reconcile that with the obvious argument that it would suggest an electron neutrino mass of i*me.

And the fact remains as I noted in my presentation in November: EVERY quoted measurement of the neutrino mass is consistent with faster than light neutrinos. Even if this measurement falls, as noted above, it does not prove that neutrinos are not classic tachyons.

I will agree that it’s a mess and not getting cleaner until they get some good data with their hardware errors corrected.

Then we have:

The per person Medicare insurance premium will increase from the present monthly fee of $96.40, rising to: $104.20 in 2012; $120.20 in 2013; And $247.00 in 2014. These are provisions incorporated in the Obamacare legislation, purposely delayed so as not to ‘confuse’ the 2012 re-election campaigns. Send this to all seniors that you know, so they will know who’s throwing them under the bus.

I have no idea whether this is correct or not. It is from a partisan source. I haven’t read the Obama Health Care Act, (nor do I know anyone including some Members of Congress who has; it very long and complex) so I can’t say. Most of those who passed Obamacare didn’t know much about it – then Speaker Pelosi famously told the Congress they had to pass the act to see what was in it – but it is well known that it had lengthy time delays for many of its provisions. I am realizably informed that it has major changes in Medicare both A and B. I don’t want to get into a discussion of facts and interpretations, but do we have any experts who actually know in the readership?

I understand there is a new Internet Bill in Congress that has got past the Judiciasy Committee. It will require ISP’s to keep records of you internet visits, and make them available to law enforcement and also to discovery fishing lawyers in civil cases. Such as child custody or divorce – hah, he went to a porn site! – and any other civil suits. So all someone has to do is bring a lawsuit and collect everything your ISP knows about you, which is a lot.

I’ll have a lot more about this next week. I just heard about this on Leo Laporte’s radio show. More details later. Feel free to tell me what you know about this.

From the Show Notes, Saturday Feb 25 2012 of Leo Laporte’s radio show:

The EFF says Congressman Lamar Smith, you know, the SOPA guy, has introduced a new bill HR1981 which hides behind protecting children from internet pornography. But others are calling it the Internet Surveillance Act. Leo says it’s a grave invasion of privacy. It requires ISPs to keep track of all your search, electronics communications, email and IP addresses, credit card data for at least 12 months, and indemnifies ISPs from being sued for it. Leo also says it’ll give the MPAA and RIAA the ability to track you down easier.

On the air he said that the act would allow civil lawsuit lawyers access to all those records as part of discovery search. If so it’s not merely an invasion of privacy, it’s the end of any pretense of electronic privacy. Everything you have bought, every web site you went to intentionally or not, every place you have travelled…

Ands yet another warning: I got this Thursday but overlooked it.

GPS vulnerability

Jerry

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/02/23/gps-emerging-threat/

It’s worth reading. Excerpt:

For example, in 2010, UK researchers aimed a low-level GPS jammer at test ships in the English channel. The results were stunning: Ships that veered off course without the crew’s knowledge. False information passed to other ships about their positions, increasing the likelihood of a collision. The communications systems stopped working, meaning the crew couldn’t contact the Coast Guard. And the emergency service system — used to guide rescuers — completely failed.

Then, there’s the incident with the U.S. drone lost over Iran. Humphreys believes that by using simple jamming technology, Iranian authorities confused the ultra-sophisticated RQ-170 spy drone to the point that it went into landing mode. The drone’s Achilles heel? It had a civilian GPS system — not a military-grade encrypted model. It didn’t take much to blind it and force it down.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/02/23/gps-emerging-threat/#ixzz1nRJKFW69

Needless to say, If I can confuse ships at sea I can confuse airliners overhead. I’m not sure it’s as simple as this makes it seem,  but we know how to build directional antenna and oscillators of nearly any frequency you’d like, and…