In light of the recent story that neutrinos travel faster than photons, I realize the news about this is sensationalistic and many tests still remain, but let's ASSUME neutrinos are eventually proven to travel "60 ns faster than light". If so, how much lead time would they have over light from local supernovas (e.g. SN 1987A) and distant (e.g. SN 2011fe)?
What does the math look like to calculate this?
The calculation is done for 1987A here. Basically, the neutrinos' fractional speed increase from the new paper is $2.48\pm0.28\pm0.30\times10^{-5}$ (statistical / systematic errors, respectively) . SN1987a was $166\,912\pm10.1$ ly away, so multiplying the fraction by the travel time gives $4.14\pm0.97$ years. In reality, we got the neutrinos a few hours beforehand, but mostly because the light had to scatter out.
If light is interacting with ions/atoms and neutrinos do not, that would mean that light has a variable speed no? Therefore neutrinos are more constant at the "speed of light". If this is true, then can we devise an experiment that slows light? It is energy and has mass, why not? If this is correct, then wouldn't nuetrinos be affected too and we should be able to slow them down? Do they change state? Interesting questions.
I would think that if neutrinos travel faster than light the first thing one would need to know is their velocity.
Yesterday or today the Opera folks announced that they had found a loose cable connection and had calculated that the error it caused was the same as the discrepancy between the expected time of arrival and the time recorded by the experiment. It's all to be confirmed, of course.
Here's a link: http://www.iol.co.za/scitech/science/news/was-einstein-s-theory-of-relativity-wrong-1.1240964 Use a search engine such as Google to find more.