Brian Cox on Cern's baffling light-speed find

[Tank]

Brian Cox on Cern's baffling light-speed find

Puzzling results from Cern, home of the Large Hadron Collider, have confounded physicists - because it seems subatomic particles have beaten the speed of light.

Neutrinos sent through the ground from Cern toward the Gran Sasso laboratory 732km away in Italy seemed to show up a tiny fraction of a second early.

Something appears to be moving faster than the speed of light.

[Xjeepguy]

They've gone to plaid!

I'm not quite sure what to think of this. Could the equipment be inaccurate?

[Tank]

They've gone to plaid!

I'm not quite sure what to think of this. Could the equipment be inaccurate?

Well that's the reason the team published as they now need some other people to pull their work apart. That's a brave thing to do. Can you imagine claiming a discovery like this and then finding it was a false reading, it would be a nightmare. So this publication is along the lines of "We think we have found xyz. Please check our method."

[Stevil]

I wouldn't be surprised that something can break the speed of light barrier.
By my logic, space would be full of black holes if this "limitation" could not be beaten.

The big bang is percieved to be from a singularity, a black hole is perceived to be a singularity and there is a theory of an inflationary period within the early stages of the big bang. It makes sense to me that sub atomic "particles" can go that fast.

[DeterminedJuliet]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/science/scientists-in-shock-after-breaking-speed-of-light/article2176328/

Scientists at the world's largest physics lab said Thursday they have clocked neutrinos travelling faster than light. That's something that according to Einstein's 1905 special theory of relativity – the famous E (equals) mc2 equation – just doesn't happen.

Wow. I really wonder what the full implications of this will be if they can confirm it.

[DeterminedJuliet]

Oops! Tank beat me to it!

[Tank]

Topics merged 

[Whitney]

While this is very interesting I can't say I'm surprised...I operate on the general idea that pretty much everything we think we know could be shown to be false as we acquire more information.  Since we are so new into researching quantum level bits of our world and space in general I keep on expecting there to be a big change in how we view even the most basic of models. 

I'm wondering how this will end up affecting our understanding of the universe and if 'creation' models will have to be adjusted.

[McQ]

It's great to watch science at work here. I love it. What will be disappointing will be the tools like Deepak Chopra who will now incorporate this into their books before anything is even verified or falsified.

[joeactor]

It's great to watch science at work here. I love it. What will be disappointing will be the tools like Deepak Chopra who will now incorporate this into their books before anything is even verified or falsified.

This.

I just remembered the future, and forgot what I was doing.

[xSilverPhinx]

Amazing. It would be really cool if it were really confirmed to be an accurate reading.

I really don't know squat about this, but if I were to guess, I'd say that Einstein's model would be restricted to some frameworks only, such as the mentioned 3 D universe, but not necessarily false.

[Tank]

Particles Appear to Travel Faster Than Light: OPERA Experiment Reports Anomaly in Flight Time of Neutrinos

Another article, this time via Science Daily.

...The OPERA result is based on the observation of over 15000 neutrino events measured at Gran Sasso, and appears to indicate that the neutrinos travel at a velocity 20 parts per million above the speed of light, nature's cosmic speed limit. Given the potential far-reaching consequences of such a result, independent measurements are needed before the effect can either be refuted or firmly established. This is why the OPERA collaboration has decided to open the result to broader scrutiny. The collaboration's result is available on the preprint server arXiv (http://arxiv.org/list/hep-ex/new).

"This result comes as a complete surprise," said OPERA spokesperson, Antonio Ereditato of the University of Bern. "After many months of studies and cross checks we have not found any instrumental effect that could explain the result of the measurement. While OPERA researchers will continue their studies, we are also looking forward to independent measurements to fully assess the nature of this observation."...

[xSilverPhinx]

This is interesting...though if Einstein was right and the speed of light really is the top limit of the universe and neutrinos beat that limit because they take short cuts through other dimensions, as Brian Cox said, then why doesn't light also take those short cuts?

It's a pity this came a bit too late, if CERN had mentioned this earlier, they might have already added a question about this in our national college entry exam. Whether people know the answer or not doesn't really matter to them.

[Chronos]

By my logic, space would be full of black holes if this "limitation" could not be beaten.

In my mind, space couldn't have black holes without something being able to exceed the speed of light.


Perhaps the universe we see is already in a black hole.

[Tank]

This is interesting...though if Einstein was right and the speed of light really is the top limit of the universe and neutrinos beat that limit because they take short cuts through other dimensions, as Brian Cox said, then why doesn't light also take those short cuts?

"The course of least resistance." Electrons, when faced with the choice of passing through a plastic insulator or a copper wire core go through the copper. It's possible that the course of least resistance for a neutrino and a photon are different.

It's relatively easy for us to examine the behaviour of photons compared to neutrinos so we know a lot more about the behavior of photons. It is only in the last few decades that we have had the technology to measure the behaviours of neutrinos and thus we are finding things out about them.