Neutrinos: faster than the speed of light? By Frank Close To readers of Neutrino, rest assured: there is no need yet for a rewrite based on news that neutrinos might travel faster than light.
I have already advertised my caution in The Observer, and a month later nothing has changed. If anything, concerns about the result have increased. The response to my article created some waves. There were a couple of cogent remarks on The Observer’s comments section. Leading Light: What Would Faster-Than-Light Neutrinos Mean for Physics? The stunning recent announcement of neutrinos apparently exceeding the speed of light was greeted with startled wonderment followed by widespread disbelief.
Although virtually every scientist on record expects this discovery to vanish once more detailed analysis takes place, dozens of researchers are exploring the question whose answer could shake the foundations of physics: What if this anomaly is real? Neutrinos are ghostly particles that only weakly interact with normal matter; trillions of neutrinos stream through our bodies every second. Last month researchers from the European OPERA (Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus) collaboration reported clocking pulses of neutrinos moving at speeds that appeared to be a smidgen faster than light-speed. That might seem impossible, given the universal speed limit set by Albert Einstein's long-standing and well-tested special theory of relativity, but neutrinos have proved chock full of surprises over the years. Remember those faster-than-light neutrinos? Great, now forget 'em. Finding puts brakes on faster-than-light neutrinos. Neutrino. Physicists check whether neutrinos really can travel faster than light.
According to Einstein's theory of special relativity nothing – not even neutrinos – can travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum.
Photograph: Cine Text/Allstar The scientists who last month appeared to have found that certain subatomic particles can travel faster than light have fine-tuned their experiment to check whether the remarkable discovery is correct. Their modified experiments – which are the result of suggestions from other physicists about potential flaws in their research – should be completed before the end of the year. The original experiment, reported last month, involved firing beams of neutrinos through the ground from Cern near Geneva to the Gran Sasso lab in Italy 720 kilometres (450 miles) away. Quantum levitation! The physics behind.