Friday 23 September 2011

Can Neutrinos Travel Faster Than Light?

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The speed of light is the Universe's ultimate speed limit, and much of modern physics - as laid out in part by Albert Einstein in his special theory of relativity - depends on the idea that nothing can exceed it. But puzzling results from Cern, home of the Large Hadron Collider, have confounded physicists - because it appears subatomic particles have exceeded the speed of light.

Neutrinos sent through the ground from Cern toward the Gran Sasso laboratory seemed to show up a tiny fraction of a second early. The result - which threatens to upend a century of physics - will be put online for scrutiny by other scientists. In the meantime, the group says it is being very cautious about its claims.

4 comment(s):

Unknown said...

I've come across several links about the speed of light slowing down (which has huge implications) but mostly the data has been dismissed because of the widely held belief in the constancy of the speed of light. If these new results hold true then we could be in for some very interesting times.

Anonymous said...

Tesla thought so

Anonymous said...

Anything can travel faster than light, even soul.

Brian K said...

I will wait until Fermilab has a chance to review the CERN team's findings about this. While I would welcome the discovery, they have yet to explain HOW these tau neutrinos were moving faster than light speed. And if they did, why didn't they convert into energy? Too many questions for us to get all excited about yet. Let's see a reproduction.