Possible Science breakthrough on Lightspeed?

GWC Community Off-Topic/Other
#1

So, I’ve seen this kicked around from some of my friends on Facebook, and I thought this was totally something to share here.

Scientists at the CERN Institute in Switzerland have gotten results where a nuetrino sent from their lab to one in Italy arrived 60 nanoseconds faster than the speed of light. They’re having trouble believing their results, so they’re asking other labs around the world to verify their results and check their math, etc. Here’s an article:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/09/22/ap/tech/main20110301.shtml

Now I’m no Sheldon Cooper, but this is awesome even if I can’t do the math in my head.

#2

i thought neutrinos can travel though about anything. Could it be that neutrino simply cut through earth and by passed earth’s curvature and got there by the short cut?

#3

Still regardless of the route, the neutrinos were arriving at a speed faster than the speed of life, not quicker than the light. At least I think. I don’t know the exact details of the experiment, but I would think they would know to account for the curvature of the earth and the projected path.

The article does mention that a lab in Chicago had similar results a number of years ago, but their results were not statistically significant.

#4

I read the article , is this statement accurate?

“Scientists at the world’s largest physics lab said Thursday they have clocked neutrinos traveling 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.”

so i looked here…http://www.worsleyschool.net/science/files/emc2/emc2.html

this will be huge… a new Golden age of advancement would follow …

#5

I would hope that they wouldn’t make that mistake, or that someone else would have found it when reviewing their findings.

Though I would hope that we wouldn’t forget to convert feet to meters and fling a probe past Mars but… :slight_smile:

#6

Yeah, I just caught wind of this a few minutes ago, passing through the break room playing CNN. I was dubious at just hearing it come from CNN. My first thought was, “What? Whoa! Wait a minute! When did it become so easy to detect neutrinos that we can run quantitative experiments with them now? The last I heard, they were having troubles detecting them in giant underground vats of gel, trying to avoid stray cosmic rays.”. But then I’ve always had my slight suspicions about the speed of light anyway. /shrugs… So I’ll just wait around until someone reproduces this observation.

#7

Heard about this on the Nature Podcast or on BBC online. Apparently the scientists have been making measurements like this for over three years and after ruling out all kinds of things that might be causing this to happen (measurement problems, math errors, etc.) they don’t have any other explanation for their results besides neutrinos going FTL. They published in the hope that someone else can design a different experiment that might either refute or confirm their results. Makes all those SciFi FTL drives just a tiny bit more possible, which is pretty cool. :slight_smile: