Report: Neutrinos Faster Than Light
Scientists working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, in Geneva, Switzerland, have announced they have observed neutrinos traveling at speeds faster than light. This has prompted many to debate whether the results challenge Einstein’s Theory of Relativity or simply point to a more complex, quantified model of space-time.
The experiments at CERN, conducted over three years, involved moving subatomic particles called neutrinos over distance through air, water and rock, measuring the time it took for the particles to reach their destination.
Neutrinos are not theoretical, but their exact nature continues to stump researchers, as they possess very little mass and don’t interact a great deal with what is understood to be “normal” matter. The time differences measured are also extremely small – billionths of a second – and, therefore, present their own difficulties in recording and calculation.
“At these levels of precision,” said George Hrabovsky, former chair of the University of Wisconsin Theoretical Physics Department and president of Madison Area Science and Technology, “it is practically impossible to completely synchronize clocks. These errors seem to have been accounted for [in the CERN research], but it will require a lot of careful analysis to make sure.”
Einstein’s theory of relativity states that as “ordinary” or baryonic matter accelerates towards the speed of light, its mass increases to the infinite, rendering faster-than-light travel physically impossible. If the CERN researchers can reproduce their results, it follows that the existence of particles — even non-baryonic matter such as neutrinos — that travel faster than light challenges Einstein’s model of space-time and the matter within it. Or does it?
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