Scientists at CERN, the worldâs largest physics lab, announced a startling finding yesterday that would be enough to make Albert Einstein roll over in his grave: Subatomic particles, called neutrinos, have been found to be traveling faster than the speed of light.
Einstein
If true, this development would break a fundamental pillar of physics. Einsteinâs special theory of relativity has always told us nothing is supposed to move faster than the speed of light,Â
299,792,458 meters per second.
CERN scientists are now asking others to verify the measurements before claiming the discovery to be true.
âThe feeling that most people have is this canât be right, this canât be real,â said James Gillies, a spokesman for CERN.
Rob Plunkett, a scientist at Fermilab, one of only two labs in the world that can try to replicate CERNâs results, says heâs keeping an open mind, but âitâs dangerous to lay odds against Einstein. Einstein has been tested repeatedly over and over again.â
Post science writer Joel Achenbach says that heâs sticking with Einstein, at least for now, because:
Einsteinâs theory… isnât based primarily on measurements.
Einsteinâs theory emerged from thought experiments. It was a deep insight into the nature of the universe. Subsequent experiments for more than a century have verified that he was right.
For the new finding to carry a lot of weight, it would need more than an instrumental measurement. It would need a theoretical foundation. Otherwise you have something that is enigmatic rather than revolutionary.
When CERN clocked the neutrino beam, it was traveling 60 nanoseconds faster than the speed of light. Scientists put the margin of error at just 10 nanoseconds, making the difference significant.
If the results are confirmed, they wonât change how we live or how the universe behaves. But it will shake the very foundation of what we believe.
via Neutrinos may have traveled faster than the speed of light – BlogPost – The Washington Post.