Scientists: Particles appear to travel faster than light

[FreddyG]

This is pretty crazy

(CNN) -- Scientists in Switzerland say an experiment appears to show that tiny particles traveled faster than the speed of light -- a result that would seem to defy the laws of nature.

The physicists say that neutrinos sent 730 kilometers (453.6 miles) underground between laboratories in Switzerland and Italy arrived a fraction of a second sooner than they should have, according to the speed of light.

The report was published Friday by a group of researchers working on the so-called Opera experiment, based at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, in Switzerland. CERN is the home of the Large Hadron Collider.

"I was surprised, shocked," by the findings, Antonio Ereditato, Opera spokesman at the University of Bern in Switzerland, told CNN. "However, we are confident in what we did and we think we did it correctly.

"We concluded after a long scrutiny of all systematic uncertainties that we could not explain (the result) otherwise."

The 150 or so researchers on the Opera project will continue their research, he said, but now they want the worldwide scientific community to come up with "new ideas to explain or new experiments which should -- could -- confirm or disprove the effect."

The finding would seem to challenge Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity, and the long-established law of physics that nothing can exceed the speed of light.

"It is very, very remarkable if it's true," said Professor Neville Harnew, head of particle physics at Oxford University.

"If this proves to be correct, then it will revolutionize physics as we know it."

He will be among scientists from around the world tuning into a webcast seminar held by CERN Friday afternoon, to discuss what Harnew describes as an "ultra-exciting" development that has come "totally out of the blue."

Early universe revealed at 4 trillion degrees

The Opera team's result is based on the observation of more than 15,000 bunches of neutrinos sent between CERN and the Gran Sasso Laboratory in Italy. A neutrino is an electrically neutral subatomic particle, an elemental building block of the universe.

The physicists, from Europe and Japan, say the measurements of the distance and the time involved were performed with great precision, to nanosecond accuracy.

And the results seemed to show the neutrinos travel "at a velocity 20 parts per million above the speed of light, nature's cosmic speed limit."

Professor James Stirling, head of the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University, said part of what is so surprising is that "the effect is so large, relatively speaking" -- that is, that the particles traveled a significant degree faster than should have been possible.

"This is a violation of this speed of light limit," he said. "This is really a result that would challenge one of the cornerstones of the whole of physics."

Sergio Bertolucci, research director at CERN, said the Opera team followed good scientific practice by throwing open their findings to other scientists.

"When an experiment finds an apparently unbelievable result and can find no artifact of the measurement to account for it, it's normal procedure to invite broader scrutiny," he said.

"If this measurement is confirmed, it might change our view of physics, but we need to be sure that there are no other, more mundane, explanations. That will require independent measurements."

Ereditato said more research is needed -- and that the Opera team wants to be prudent for now because of the apparent magnitude of their finding.

"The potential impact on science is too large to draw immediate conclusions or attempt physics interpretations," he said in a CERN news release. "My first reaction is that the neutrino is still surprising us with its mysteries."

Harnew told CNN the new finding "cannot currently fit in the standard theories at all" and would have to be confirmed by another experiment -- to ensure there is no subtle systemic error at play -- before a discovery can be claimed.

And he cautions that "neutrino measurements are extremely difficult experiments," making it hard to verify results independently.

Neutrinos, which are emitted during the process of radioactive decay, have only a tiny mass and usually pass through matter without interacting with anything else, making them very hard to detect.

CERN is one of only a handful of laboratories capable of running an experiment like the Opera project, Harnew said. Other possible sites could be J-Parc in Japan, home of the multinational T2K project, and Fermilab in Illinois.

Stirling also wants to see more experiments to replicate and test the results, but predicts that theoretical physicists will struggle to write papers on such a revolutionary finding.

It was only recently discovered that neutrinos, which come in three types, can switch from one type to another -- thereby proving that they have mass, Stirling said.

If they can indeed travel faster than mass-less particles, like light, then these mysterious particles will have done even more to turn the world of physics on its head.

[Mr Kleen]

Was this a new experiment? An experiment with similar results was announced a few weeks ago but the results were later disproved.

[FreddyG]

this was back in september, i just found it browsing though, im slow haha. nvm false alarm

[Sabre]

No worries Still pretty cool science. The field of theoretical physics has always been a hobby (and yes, I actually said that...). If anyone ever wants to talk String Theory, TOE etc., I'm game.... and I just threw away my coolness card, haha.

[Raven]

and I just threw away my coolness card, haha.

Don't lie, you know that got revoked years ago.

[Sabre]

[Raven]

It's not like I have one either.

[FreddyG]

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/e ... e-1.980085

A second experiment clocking the speed of subatomic particles called neutrinos confirms previous reports that the elusive particles can travel faster than the speed of light.

Both experiments involved shooting a beam of neutrinos produced at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva, France, to a veritable landing pad 450 miles away at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy. In the first experiment, the neutrinos arrived about 58 billionths of a second sooner than a light beam, the researchers concluded.

The discovery from Opera, the group of scientists performing the research, was met with disbelief from the world's physicists. It also challenges Albert Einstein's theory of relativity asserting that matter cannot travel through space faster than light.

But the enigmatic neutrinos, which have been observed to penetrate lead walls like light through a window, where not yet discovered when Einstein published his theory of special relativity in 1905.

When Opera first presented their spectacular findings at CERN in September, skeptical scientists pointed to a potential issue in how the experiment was carried out, claiming the length of time it took to beam the neutrinos was longer than the reported arrival time, CNN reported.

Opera repeated the experiment so that the neutrinos could be beamed out in shorter bursts, purportedly eliminating the potential error CERN scientists cited.

The neutrinos still arrived early, about 62 billionths of a second earlier than the light beam, supporting Opera's original results and negating the possibility that the duration of the neutrino pulse had anything to do with the results.

Despite the success of the second experiment, many scientists remain unsatisfied and unconvinced, namely questioning how the clocks were synchronized between Geneva and Gran Sasso, and how the distance between the cities was measured.

Alvaro de Rujula, a CERN theorist, said there were two interpretations of the experiment. "One is that they have stumbled upon a revolutionary discovery; the other, on which I would place my bet, is that they are still making and not finding the very same error."

[Mr Kleen]

I thought of this post when I saw that story. There's hope yet for warp drive!

[drwrx]

There's hope yet for warp drive!

For subatomic particles anyway.

[Sabre]

Very happy to see this was proven again. It could lead to some pretty cool discoveries and technology!

[FreddyG]

imagine if this particle had no friction coefficient and we created some sort of device to record the travel of these type of particle movements, we could technically map out the entire universe from earth

[Mr Kleen]

F that, I'm making a ship out of these magic particles and mapping the universe myself!

[Sabre]

Great article: If them neutrinos are faster than light, physicists have a lot of work to do

We are now in a very interesting situation, because the assumptions used in both papers are very straightforward: energy and momentum are conserved and linked to each other in ways we think we understand quite well. Yet, they cannot be true under all conditions if the OPERA results are actually correct. Ideas like conservation of energy and momentum are at the very foundation of all of physics. In short, the OPERA results, should they stand, will strike deep at the heart of most established physics. But it should also be pointed out that these are more than ideas—conservation been verified to be true in all but the most exceptional circumstances (e.g., the OPERA result).

Some new physics is out there somewhere, because we already know that gravity and quantum mechanics have fundamental disagreements with each other. However, although there may be a deeper layer of foundations yet to be built in physics, whatever new ideas we develop must smoothly transition to the physics we know and love today. And right now, it appears that the OPERA results don't provide this sort of transition.

[Cereb Daithi]

What I love is how some news articles I've seen portray this potential new information. It reminds me of a talk given by Neil deGrasse Tyson. He talked about his amusement about how new discoveries are often reported on by journalists.... Actually he can tell the story better than I can. I'll leave the whole video since it's an awesome watch but if you're short on time fast forward to the 56 minute mark to get to the part about new discoveries.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAD25s53wmE[/video]

[Mr Kleen]

[Raven]