From Yahoo News:
CERN claims faster-than-light particle measured
GENEVA (AP) — Scientists at the world’s largest physics lab say they have clocked subatomic particles traveling faster than light, a feat that — if true — would break a fundamental pillar of science.
The readings have so astounded researchers that they are asking others to independently verify the measurements before claiming an actual discovery.
“This would be such a sensational discovery if it were true that one has to treat it extremely carefully,” said John Ellis, a theoretical physicist at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, who was not involved in the experiment.
Nothing is supposed to move faster than light, at least according to Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity: The famous E (equals) mc2 equation. That stands for energy equals mass times the speed of light squared.
But neutrinos — one of the strangest well-known particles in physics — have now been observed smashing past this cosmic speed barrier of 186,282 miles per second (299,792 kilometers).
Full story here: http://news.yahoo.com/cern-claims-faster-light-particle-measured-180644818.html
From the BBC:
Neutrinos sent through the ground from Cern toward the Gran Sasso laboratory 732km away seemed to show up a tiny fraction of a second early.
The result – which threatens to upend a century of physics – will be put online for scrutiny by other scientists.
In the meantime, the group says it is being very cautious about its claims.
“We tried to find all possible explanations for this,” said report author Antonio Ereditato of the Opera collaboration.
“We wanted to find a mistake – trivial mistakes, more complicated mistakes, or nasty effects – and we didn’t,” he told BBC News.
“When you don’t find anything, then you say ‘Well, now I’m forced to go out and ask the community to scrutinise this.’
Full story here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15017484
h/t’s to WUWT readers Peter Hodges and pearlandaggie
Peter says:
September 23, 2011 at 12:48 am
The good news is that they are being skeptical of their findings!
And they’ll surely urge lots of $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ now.
What if something was travelling at the speed of light on earth, and the earth is travelling at 885,139 kilometres per second through space, then if the direction of travel of what is travelling at the speed of light is the same direction as the earth is moving through space, then that item will be travelling faster than the speed of light relative to the bit of space that the earth is travelling through.
This is what people thought a century ago and what we know since that time as being wrong. This is precisely Einstein’s and Lorentz’s insight that this was wrong that lead to the special relativity.
See the experiment which showed that this way of thinking was wrong : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_experiment
Perhaps transmitter and reciver were 60 foot closer than thought.
Ken Hall, no the sped of light is always a constant. Michelson-Morely (google it) performed an experiement in the early 20th century that demonstrated this.
It has been my hope that the scientists at Cern would measure them selves out of business.
It would appear that is happening, the Higgs bosun has gone missing and now this extraneous particle has exceeded the speed limit. Sirs at Cern please tell us what is gravity, electricity, magnetism, it would be nice to know these things before you tell us about the wonderful spin and charm of your imaginary particles. I can thank you for your openness in asking others to look at your results but I would prefer that you all digressed one hundred years and started anew.
Quantum mechanics and the standard model is looking iffy.
So, if I ride on a neutrino, I’ll be able to watch tomorrow’s news.
Stupid question, but did they account for the curvature of the earth? Its pretty easy to hop on Google Earth and measure the distance between the source and receiver, but that is the distance along the surface of the earth. Since the neutrinos are travelling in a straight line they will travel along the chord of that arc, which over the distances they are travelling would more than account for the difference.
Not saying they would make that mistake, but then NASA lost a Mars mission due to the conversion between miles and kilometers, so its not inconceivable.
I could say that neutrinos modify the speed of time along the axis of their travel but I won’t;)
TheBigYinJames says:
September 23, 2011 at 12:33 am
Amusing as it might be, some of the displays of scientific ignorance on this thread just give more ammo to the warmists that we are a bunch of loons.
+++++++++++++
And they are bunch of humourless, pessimist morons.
Lots of embarrassing posts here. Special Relativity is the most well validated of all physical theories. Don’t write it off in a hurry; but don’t assume that the physicists have overlooked something obvious.
Very clever! That would save us some real money.
We used to call them Smoke Emitting Diodes back in the day!
An amusing commentary.
” Look, light is a wave, right? And if there is a wave then something must be waving? Right?
The Newtonian universe demands it.”
…… .
…….
“HAH.
Take that Einstein, denier. The CERN results give us just one more confirmation of the Newtonian consensus..”
http://www.countingcats.com/?p=10847
Wednesday, 19 July, 2000
http://www.princeton.edu/~adogariu/fast/propag.gif
Beam smashes light barrier
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/841690.stm
“Scientists have seen a pulse of light emerge from a cloud of gas before it even entered.
“This astonishing and baffling observation was made by researchers from the NEC Research Institute in Princeton, US. “They conducted an experiment that involved lasers, a chamber containing cold caesium atoms and a super-fast stopwatch.
“The end result was a beam of light that moved at 300 times the theoretical limit for the speed of light. ”
http://www.google.com/search?q=Wang+Experiment%3A+Light+Traveling+Faster+Than+Light
Ken,
When you are talking about light relative to an object that is moving things get a little weird. Instead of the apparent speed of the light moving the apparent frequency of the light gets shifted. If you are moving towards the light source the light will get shifted towards the higher frequencies and it will appear more blue than it actually is. If you are moving away from the light source the light will get shifted towards the lower frequency end of the spectrum and appear more red than it actually is. Here is some reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_shift
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_shift
“The result – which threatens to upend a century of physics – will be put online for scrutiny by other scientists.”
Didn’t someone clue these guys in that the scientific method is passe?
It’s true, the science is settled, so god God, hide that data!
Alex the Sceptic:
“So, if I ride on a neutrino, I’ll be able to watch tomorrow’s news”
We all will. Tomorrow.
Ok, interesting if real, but le’ts look at the numbers. A distance of 730km at the speed of light should take about 2 milliseconds. They claim that the neutrinos arrived 60 nano seconds too early. This represents only 1 part in a million deviation. The distance deviation is 18 metres. In other words, if the actual distance was 18 metres less than believed, this would account for the early arrival. Somehow, I can’t see them making a measurement error of this magnitude. There may be a possible explanation, though I can’t think of any.
Paul says:
September 22, 2011 at 2:25 pm
So now Einstein joins Spencer and Christy as a scientist whose work is full of errors requiring corrections.
You forgot the \sarc off
If you didn’t then you have a warped logic LOL
Alex the Sceptic:
“So, if I ride on a neutrino, I’ll be able to watch tomorrow’s news”
No, you’ll be able to watch yesterday’s again.
The fact is that we can’t account for the 60 nanoseconds at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t…
The ice core data proves this. We know the ice core data shows first it gets warm and CO2 levels lag by an average of 800 years. We also know that increased CO2 causes warming. Therefore, the CO2 from the future caused the warming in the past and therefore the CO2 must have traveled back in time to do this.
It’s basic physics/logic/climate science.
E = MN^2 where N = the speed of neutrino.
There, fixed it.
If you look at the basic relativistic equations, you see that any hypothetical particle going faster than the speed of light introduces a factor proportional to the square root of minus one into the equations. So far, there has been no physical meaning given to this indication. It is like negative energy or negative absolute temperatures. If complex numbers can have significance for physical parameters, then the only thing that is really forbidden by these equations is a particle with nonzero rest mass going at exactly the speed of light. The speed-of-light limitation is based on the assumption that physical parameters can only be represented by real numbers.
There have been proposed particles called tachyons that introduce an extra minus one in the square root term of these equations, such that they cannot go *slower* than the speed of light. Perhaps they will find that these neutrinos have just been ‘tachyonized.’
Nuke Nemesis says:
September 23, 2011 at 7:36 am
In that case we are not to blame. It’s the people in the future!
Haven’t you people learned anything from the climate hoax? Science is now ALL about hype and funding. The hucksters, er scientists, at CERN are desperate to feed their enormously expensive black hole for money. This is just one in a weekly series of press releases designed to justify their existence and convince the Euro bureaucrats to keep wasting money on these bozos. Remember all the hype about the Higgs boson over the last year? Well what happened – nothing. The same will be true for this “discovery” – after milking it for several months or a year there will be a little noticed release saying in so many words “never mind.” The CERN people are highly educated parasites that need to be kicked out into the real world and to get a real job, i.e., they need to become productive members of society.