I don’t think this is an accurate assessment. One of the most obvious error forms was a statistical error (since they were using long neutrino pulses and then using careful statistics to get their average arrival time). That is eliminated in this experiment. Another possible error was that detection of a neutrino could interfere with the chances of detecting other neutrinos which could distort the actual v. observed average (this is a known problem with some muon detector designs). This seemed unlikely, but is also eliminated by the short pulses. They also used this as an opportunity to deal with some other timing issues. Overall, a lot of possible error sources have now been dealt with.
My understanding of the chances is that in the situation above, the chances are still very low until they deal with almost all of the chances of error, and are still low even then.
For instance, dealing with 4 of 9 different sources of error, the calculations I did gave a chance of them being correct is around 1.78%. If they deal with 8 of the 9 different sources of error, they’re still only around an 8.33% chance of being correct. (Assuming I calculated correctly as well.)
Also, I do want to clarify/reiterate that I wasn’t trying for that much accuracy. 9 sources of equally likely error are a gross simplification, and I’m not a physicist. I didn’t even count individual explanations of error to get to 9 so that assumption was itself probably influenced by heuristic/bias. (most likely that (11*9)+1=100.) It was more of a rough guess because I jumped to conclusions in previous threads and wanted to try to think about it at least a little bit more in this one before establishing an initial position.
All that being said, I’m definitely glad they can address multiple possible sources of error at once. If they do it correctly, that should greatly speed up the turn around time to finding out more about this.
I don’t think this is an accurate assessment. One of the most obvious error forms was a statistical error (since they were using long neutrino pulses and then using careful statistics to get their average arrival time). That is eliminated in this experiment. Another possible error was that detection of a neutrino could interfere with the chances of detecting other neutrinos which could distort the actual v. observed average (this is a known problem with some muon detector designs). This seemed unlikely, but is also eliminated by the short pulses. They also used this as an opportunity to deal with some other timing issues. Overall, a lot of possible error sources have now been dealt with.
My understanding of the chances is that in the situation above, the chances are still very low until they deal with almost all of the chances of error, and are still low even then.
For instance, dealing with 4 of 9 different sources of error, the calculations I did gave a chance of them being correct is around 1.78%. If they deal with 8 of the 9 different sources of error, they’re still only around an 8.33% chance of being correct. (Assuming I calculated correctly as well.)
Also, I do want to clarify/reiterate that I wasn’t trying for that much accuracy. 9 sources of equally likely error are a gross simplification, and I’m not a physicist. I didn’t even count individual explanations of error to get to 9 so that assumption was itself probably influenced by heuristic/bias. (most likely that (11*9)+1=100.) It was more of a rough guess because I jumped to conclusions in previous threads and wanted to try to think about it at least a little bit more in this one before establishing an initial position.
All that being said, I’m definitely glad they can address multiple possible sources of error at once. If they do it correctly, that should greatly speed up the turn around time to finding out more about this.