The physicists who claimed to see neutrinos moving faster than light are moving quickly to replicate their experiment, hoping to substantiate their results before submitting them for publication. Since announcing their bizarre, seemingly impossible findings last month, physicists around the world have offered a few possible explanations. But perhaps the best test will be a retest.
The OPERA experiment sends a beam of neutrinos from CERN in Geneva, through the mountains to Italy's Gran Sasso National Laboratory. The point is to look for flip-flops in neutrino flavor, which requires precisely measuring and averaging the chargeless particles' arrival and departure times. It was in this routine timing that a team led by Antonio Ereditato found particles apparently moving faster than light. They were arriving at Gran Sasso about 60 nanoseconds earlier than the time it would take light to travel the same distance.
This violates the known laws of physics, but the OPERA collaborators saw it happen so frequently that it couldn't be a fluke; they released their findings to the greater scientific community, hoping for some insight. Several other physicists have since proposed new theoretical explanations, including the possibility that the clocks on the GPS satellites used for the precise arrival-departure timing do not themselves account for relativistic motion. Other researchers have said the OPERA team must be committing some unknown and repeated systematic error. This is part of the team's motivation for rechecking their findings, according to BBC News. CERN research leader Sergio Bertolucci said the team is sending a different time pattern, which will allow OPERA to repeat the measurement with different data. This could remove some of the possible systematic errors, he said.
Bertolucci said the experimenters would not "fool around," given the physics-shattering implications of the results.
The new measurements will fire protons in super-short bursts (one or two nanoseconds), then wait about 500 nanoseconds before firing another burst. The short burst will allow for precise measurements and efficient neutrino monitoring, Bertolucci told BBC. Originally, the protons were fired in a long beam lasting a comparatively long 10 microseconds. This new beam run will end in November, when CERN has to switch the type of particles it is accelerating. Then the team will re-check its calculations and submit their findings for publication, BBC says.
"They actually planned to make the results public in 2015, but they traveled faster than light and came out last month," says Associate Editor Paul.
Haha a little Eintein humor!
"They actually planned to make the results public in 2015, but they traveled faster than light and came out last month"
i just hope these great scientist keep doing this. they are finding stuff out that we thought was impossible last week lol.
The people of the world only divide into two kinds, One sort with brains who hold no religion, The other with religion and no brain.
- Abu-al-Ala al-Marri
Even if they aren't moving faster than the speed of light, shouldn't these bad boys have nearly infinite mass? Something is clearly wrong.
Does anyone think that if Einstein was still around he would use the term "DUH" a lot?
hopefully they will find that they were actually going faster than light so something exciting will finally happen and then we can go see our friends in alpha centauri!
@Batqul Its easy to disprove a theory, but you cant prove a theory. There would be solid evidence that Einstein was wrong that could not be agrued with, or there would be years of trials, never actually being able to prove it.
@hatandboots...actually, a theory can be proven correct, it would then be a fact.
Thumbs up to them, again I hope they discover something but also take in account what has been said by the wider physics community on the possible calculating/relative errors that could occur. If they can eliminate those then it would definitely help motivate other teams to perform some similar tests themselves.
Personally, I hate the idea of nothing can go faster then the speed of light concept, it puts a MASSIVE cap on what we can conceivably do as a species in the distant future. If we can never find a way faster (even communication wise) then the speed of light then we will be in for a very slow haul through space and time.
There is still hope in the worm hole tech that some people have been experimenting with, that also shows promise of a speedoflight cheat.
And I will follow it all on m android device using the LHSee app freely and exclusively available in the android market
Easy. If they're faster they've less mass than electrons.
If scientists understand the relativity theory of Einstein according to the concepts, principles and laws of quantum theory, they will understand why they measured the speed of the neutrino greater than light speed in vacuum. I predicted that we can measure speeds greater than speed of light in 1996 when I did my graduation project , but teacher did not believe me at that time. My project was concerning to modify relativity according to quantum concepts. My project located at
As I understand what is the meaning of measuring speeds greater than the speed of light in vacuum according to my modified special relativity theory. There is a difference between we are measure the speed of light depending on delta(x)/delta(t). This will not give us the actual velocity of the neutrino, but the velocity I observe. The actual velocity of the neutrino is less the C as seen by an observer located on the frame of the trajectory the the neutrino. To understand this review http://vixra.org/pdf/1111.0001v1.pdf