955: Neutrinos

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Neutrinos

Title text: I can't speak to the paper's scientific merits, but it's really cool how on page 10 you can see that their reference GPS beacon is sensitive enough to pick up continential drift under the detector (interrupted halfway through by an earthquake).

Explanation

The "Neutrino speed of light thing" is an actual story from the day before the comic was posted.

In short, there was a CERN experiment where they shot a stream of neutrinos from CERN in France to a receiving station in Italy. The initial findings from the experiment were that the detector was triggered before the neutrinos could have ever gotten to Italy if they followed the cosmic speed limit (the speed of light).

In this comic, Cueball decides instead of arguing with people about the result and preaching caution, he takes money from them in the form of a bet. Cueball's comment is that most of these papers that are supposed to turn the world upside down end up falling apart after further investigation.

It was later found that the data was probably wrong due to an incorrectly synchronized clock on the receiving end.

Transcript

[Megan and Cueball are talking.]

Megan: Did you see the neutrino speed of light thing?

Cueball: Yup! Good news; I need the cash.

Megan: Huh? Cash?

(Text above half-sized panel.)

Yeah. When there's a news story about a study overturning all of physics, i used to urge caution, remind people that experts aren't all stupid, and end up in pointless arguments about Galileo.

(Half-height panel.)

[Cueball sitting on chair, looking down at laptop in his lap. Books and things are on a desk in front of him.]

Cueball: No, this isn't about whether relativity exists. If it didn't, your GPS wouldn't work. -- What do you mean, "science thought police"? Have you seen our budget? We couldn't begin to afford our own thought police.

[Megan and Cueball talking again.]

Megan: That sounds miserable and unfulfilling.

Cueball: Yup. So I gave up, and now I just find excited believers and bet them $200 each that the new result won't pan out.

[Same as last panel.]

Megan: That's mean.

Cueball: It provides a good income, and if I'm ever wrong, I'll be too excited about the new physics to notice the loss.

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Discussion

When the news about the neutrino speed thing first came out, all these people I knew were asking if everything they knew was wrong because of the new discovery, and panning me for not believing the word of god that is the scientific journal. I don't know how these people get through life blindly believing everything that they're told. Davidy²²[talk]