Faster-than-light back with surprising CERN discovery
Posted: Fri Sep 23, 2011 10:46 am
La Reg
I'll wait till others verify it, but this is pretty damn big if it's true.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.