Faster-than-light back with surprising CERN discovery

[Sabre]

La Reg

Only weeks since mathematicians proved it couldn’t be done, CERN boffins have put the smile back on sci-fi fans’ faces everywhere by discovering neutrinos travelling faster than light.

The astonishing results, reported by Reuters and others, came as the result of the OPERA experiment in which 15,000 beams of neutrinos were fired from Geneva to the Gran Sasso in Italy.

While the researchers are still advocating “prudence” in the face of these results, they believe their observations – in which the neutrinos made the 730 km journey 60 nanoseconds faster than light would have done – are accurate.

The difference between the neutrinos’ journey and light-speed is just 20 parts per million faster, in favour of the neutrinos. The researchers will be publishing their paper on arxiv.org today (23 September). CERN also plans a public Webcast to discuss the observations here.

Spokesman for the OPERA experiment Antonio Ereditato said the result is a “complete surprise”, while former Fermilab physicist Alfons Weber is quoted by AFP as saying the results still need to be replicated elsewhere. Earlier experiments have recorded faster-than-light neutrinos, but only within the margin of error for the experiment.

I'll wait till others verify it, but this is pretty damn big if it's true.

[PGT]

will this allow me to bypass the traffic jam on the beltway every day? if so, cool!

[zaxrex]

will this allow me to bypass the traffic jam on the beltway every day? if so, cool!

Tell you what, I bet if you can find a way to mount a 400 giga electron-volt subatomic particle accelerator in your car, there won't be many cars that would be in a coherent physical form to stop you from traveling on the beltway.
Have at it
I think I might need more that my standard tinfoil hat on the days that you drive, though.

Take a look at their paper to see why they claim 6-Sigma accuracy in their claim.
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1109.4897v1