Paging Mister Fahrenheit?

Tim Worstall sparked an interesting discussion on yesterday's neutrino preprint, canvassing for opinions on whether the special principle of relativity will remain standing (link). The best bit of the discussion has to be the name given to one of the neutrino-capturing processes. (It's genuine. Read the discussion to find out.) The news story itself is fascinating, especially for me as it's well within my broader area of expertise and interest. (I'm a theorist, though, rather than an experimentalist, so I'm not even thinking about picking it over for potential sources of error.) I hope it will be interesting for my students, too: I start teaching our third year quantum mechanics class on Tuesday, so what a week to start out on the topic!

Anyway, I thought I'd reproduce here what I wrote (with some edits to explain references to preceding comments). The executive summary is that if I could find the right contract and liquidate my assets in due time, I would put every brass penny I have on the special principle of relativity emerging unscathed. Of course, I don't know how quickly this will happen, but I'm absolutely convinced it will.

Thinking about money, there is one other comment I thought I'd make. The difference between the neutrino speed and light speed was six times the estimated standard error : a 'six-sigma' result. The last time I saw a six-sigma result was the transition in the Swissie's exchange rate after the Swiss Central Bank announced it was price-fixing pegging to the Euro. We live in a world of 'fat tails', where six-sigma events can happen more often than naïve probability theory says they should.

1. The media, for once, are accurately reporting a potentially big story as a potentially big story. I’ll go on to explain why I think it won’t be, but they’ve got the potential magnitude about right.
2. I would bet heavily on current physics rather than anything new. That, not least because the special principle of relativity has stood up to every single test thus far. The ‘speed limit’ emerges straight from the special principle.
3. So what is it, if current physics (probably) still stands? [The extra dimensions idea, which would amount to string theorists smugly saying they'd told us so] is possible, and at the tail end this could be paradigm-shifting; but my prior distribution assigns the bulk of the probability to the dullest of the null hypotheses: systematic error of some sort or another.
4. Notwithstanding all of this, the one thing it is not about is frames of reference, pace the idiot editors at the BBC. They promoted to ‘Editors’ Recommended’ some below-the-line nutter who thinks it is to do with whether the speed of light is different when you’re on the earth. Twit. Even the other BTL nutters have given the comment -38 [since, it has declined even further]. Hanging’s too good for the lot of them.
5. Science is working, folks. The CERN crowd are doing the right thing by exhibiting scepticism themselves and trying to debunk their own result.

Oh, and the title? Trust Freddie Mercury to have got there before us. Sort of.

I'm a shooting star leaping through the sky
Like a tiger defying the laws of gravity
I'm a racing car passing by like Lady Godiva
I'm gonna go go go
There's no stopping me

I'm burnin' through the sky yeah
Two hundred degrees
That's why they call me Mister Fahrenheit
I'm trav'ling at the speed of light
I wanna make a supersonic man out of you (src; mp3)