Neutrinos have proved to be nothing but trouble for scientists over the years.
They could not detect them from the Sun (where they are produced as a by-product of fusion), then they did or did not have mass. Now, it seems, they travel faster than light and are threatening to overturn the apple cart of relativistic space-time. If my dimly recalled understanding of relativity is correct, this would imply that, from the netrino’s point of view, it travels in the opposite direction to the way we see it moving in our reference frame: plainly, either the experiment is giving the wrong results or our theory of space-time is very seriously flawed.
Of course, what these troubles mean is that neutrinos have been huge allies in our search for a better understanding of physical reality. Though this new finding – which has plainly caused consternation amongst those who have been conducting the experiment – would be truly shocking if confirmed.
Related articles
- Faster Than Light Neutrinos? Not So Fast [Physics] (io9.com)
- This Extraordinary Claim Requires Extraordinary Evidence! (scienceblogs.com)
- Neutrino experiment sees them apparently moving faster than light (arstechnica.com)
- Faster-than-light travel discovered? Slow down, folks (blogs.discovermagazine.com)
- Faster than light particles found, claim scientists (guardian.co.uk)
- Scientists Find That Neutrinos Move Faster Than Light (lezgetreal.com)
- Scientists Say E=MC2 Might Be Wrong, Say Neutrinos Are Faster Than Light (inquisitr.com)
- Neutrinos Travel Faster Than Light, According to One Experiment at CERN (nextbigfuture.com)
- Neutrinos and Quantum Gravity (quantumdiaries.org)
- Particles break light-speed limit (nature.com)
- CERN Experiment Indicates Faster-Than-Light Neutrinos (sascho.wordpress.com)
cartesian product ... stuff about computing mostly 